Towngate
Mapplewell
Barnsley
S75 6AS
Telephone: 01226 382877
Contact Via Website: fostersbakery.co.uk
Category: Business Directory
THE HISTORY OF FOSTERS BAKERY
Throughout Emily Foster’s life, she was not able to go to work. As the youngest in a large family she looked after her ageing parents. This allowed her to develop her baking skills and as a treat, her father enrolled Emily for a cake decorating course in Leeds.
Age 23, Emily married Arthur Foster and in 1929, she made her own wedding cake and did all the catering for her own wedding reception.
It wasn’t until 23 years later that Emily decided to set up a cafe in the village with her daughter Betty. But, with only £40 of savings, the family set themselves a huge task. A friend offered an old disused blacksmiths shop for premises. Arthur and son Donald were excellent handymen so they fitted out the premises as a cafe cum bakery with just one domestic gas oven.
Emily had no big entrepreneurial dream, just a desire to bake the best food and serve it with as much friendliness as it was possible to give, an ethos still to be found in the company today. Emily’s daughter, Audrey, printed leaflets, advertising that the bakery’s bread and cakes were now going to be distributed to homes in the area. To transport the goodies Donald bought an old van from a scrap yard and fixed it up.
As her baking became more popular, Emily added a further oven and expanded capacity to near bursting point until September 1959 when the present limited company was founded and a new bakery built on Blacker Road, Mapplewell. Shortly after that the company invested in a mobile shop, which stood on Barnsley’s famous Market Hill, three days a week.
With the acquisition of two other bakeries (Bellamys and Coppings) the company expanded its number of shops and, through recommendations, the number of commercial accounts also grew.In 1971 the bakery moved to its current location on Towngate, Mapplewell. This bakery was expanded in 1980, 1990, 1997, 2016 and 2017.
The Company also has a separate warehouse. Fosters no longer run any shops but instead focus purely on commercial customers, servicing some of the World’s best known restaurants, pubs, airlines, caterers and much more.
THE TEAM
The team: Tom Allott, Elaine Foster, Heather Hague, Orsolya Szekeres and Adam Westnedge.
We each specialise in a different aspect but contact any of the team and they will find the best person to help you.
OUR ROLE
MANAGING FOOD SAFETY
We do this by testing, inspecting, auditing and making sure all of our staff have the correct training.
“It’s everyone’s job in the company to make sure that our food contains everything it should contain and nothing that it shouldn’t . . . for us it is our sole focus.”
FOOD INFORMATION
We provide food information to customers and to the bakery, including specifications and labelling; we ensure we are all singing [baking] from the same song [recipe] sheet.
“We’ll tell you what goes into our food so that you and your customers can make informed choices”
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
This includes inventing new products, improving existing products, trying and developing new baking processes, packaging, and using new ingredients. We have to balance recipes and processes as the weather and seasons affect our raw ingredients.
“Our job is to constantly change our products, because, in an ever changing world, our customers require new and exciting products.
