To visit the baker Seven Seeded is to walk into a world of temptation. The £11 million turnover business’s bread is considered so good it is the eighth course on a 12-course, three Michelinstar tasting menu, priced at a cool £295 a head, with the waiter talking diners through its provenance and how it is made. Its customers include the chefs Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, Angela Hartnett and, most recently, Tom Kerridge.
At the other extreme, shoppers at Panzer’s, a popular deli in St John’s Wood, northwest London, can buy Seven Seeded sourdough loaves loose on the shelf. In between, independent coffee shops such as Saint Espresso and Kaffeine stock its pastries and cakes.
David Dwek, the bakery’s managing director and largest shareholder, and Gary Kadas, the bakery director, are the resident Willy Wonkas, their ovens housed in a plain 30,000 sq ft building on a light industrial estate in Watford.
The bakery produces 150 different products, six of which secured Great Taste awards in July, the same number awarded this year to its much larger rival The Bread Factory, part of the Gail’s bakery chain group.
Sitting at a table laden with freshly baked samples, Dwek explains how they do it, his comments interspersed with mouthfuls of pastry and buttered bread, followed by pleasantly surprised “hmms”.
Backed by two investors, he acquired the business four years ago from its founder Aleem Hussein. At the time Seven Seeded had a loyal following but was in need of some love and a renewed sense of purpose.
Dwek and Kadas have given it both and in the last three years the business grew its revenues 57 per cent a year, earning it a place on this year’s Sunday Times 100 list of Britain’s fastest-growing private companies.
Dwek, 37, admits that at times they have been “winging it” and there have been some sleepless nights, but he has plenty of industry experience to draw on. His first job was at The Bread Factory, working in customer service.
At the time he thought the bread roll was a restaurant freebie at the start of a meal: “You cover it with butter, and if it is incredible or if it’s OK it doesn’t really matter.” That attitude changed for ever on his fourth day.
“I got a call from Michel Roux Jr from Le Gavroche to place an order for bread rolls. This is a two Michelinstar chef. He was not just calling to place an order, he was calling to change the order from 40 pieces to 37 pieces. At the time, little baguettes were 35p each. I was so excited about it that I went home and told everyone. It was the level of detail.
The bread has this much impact at the top tier. It is not cannon fodder.”
From 2016 until he left, he looked after many of The Bread Factory’s acquisitions, buying and running bakeries in Manchester and Bath.
“When I came to Seven Seeded I realised that people didn’t want to buy from the biggest bakeries. Not because they were big but because of the level of care for the customer. I interviewed 12 customers between saying I was leaving [The Bread Factory] and starting here and that was the feedback: be a bit nicer and easier to work with, innovate more frequently.”
For a self-declared average pastry maker, Dwek has an impressive knowledge of baking processes and the quality/cost trade-offs involved.
Any gaps, Kadas fills; he has worked his way up to management and is a finalist for baker of the year at the Baking Industry Awards for the second year in a row.
“The last four years here could definitely not have been possible without the skill of Gary,” says Dwek.
Kadas adds that he is happy to leave others to manage the customers: “I like being inside here, staying close to the dough, close to production.”
With my hands washed, white overalls on and hairnet in place, the bakery tour begins. Setting aside some overrunning building work to support its expansion, it appears a slick operation. The store room is full of 30 different bags of organic flour, 75 per cent of which is from UKgrown wheat, with others such as Canadian wheat sourced for its high protein content.
The bakery uses about 60 different ingredients a day and is constantly improving its sourcing. The cocoa is from a new French supplier called Valrhona with “much more interesting flavours”. It has also shifted from French to English butter, produced by The Estate Dairy. “We can tell you who the cows are, and that’s amazing. We also did blind tastings and it was 75 per cent ‘this product tastes better’. It has to taste better, otherwise what is the point?”
Seven Seeded uses four tonnes of sheeted butter a week.
Downstairs in the pastry room, the teenage daughter of one member of staff is stretching and rolling croissants, one of a team working at speed. “Young people do work hard when they find a job they love,” says Dwek. They have to: Seven Seeded handmakes 3,000 croissants a day.
Next door is the bread section, where the head of bread development Remek Sanetra is experimenting with meaty Spanish olives and peppers to create a spicy bread for a Spanish Michelin-star restaurant. One sourdough is called Meadow, produced to a brief from a different Michelin restaurant. Dwek says: “The reason it’s called that is because it uses the crop rotations where you turn the soil. So we have flowers, marigold and rosebuds; there’s legumes, lentils and peas; and there are seven wheat varieties. It has incredible flavour.”
Demand for its focaccia has also rocketed, helped by viral Instagram posts of the bakery’s handling of the olive oil-drenched, bubbling dough, which appears to have a life of its own. Orders for seven trays a day have become 350 trays. “The body we are able to get in the focaccia, no one does that to the scale that we are,”
Dwek enthuses.
Amid the steel surfaces and walk-in fridges, there is a warmth about Seven Seeded. Dwek embodies the passion for a craft that all want to champion. “We want to be the chef’s bakers. There are about 100 Michelinstarred restaurants in London and 40 won’t use bread, we’d like all the rest to buy from us. We have 15 at the moment.” Who is he wooing? “We are about to start work for the Ritz, which is a huge pinch-me moment.”
The cost of energy, which rocketed from £5,000 a month in 2022 to £49,000 a month at its peak, has been a challenge. “Thankfully it has now stabilised at double what it was in the good old days,” Dwek says.
He is also hearing of fewer wealthy London residents spending so much in the top restaurants in the last year.
He is concerned that some are leaving the UK, put off by the changes to non-domiciled resident taxation. “It is a worry. The challenge for us is supporting our customers, so not passing on [labour, energy and ingredient costs] as much as we can, selecting wisely so we don’t end up with loads of debtors and hanging on to the edge of our seat.”
After a period of rapid growth, Dwek sees future expansion as incremental. “I would like to be known as the best wholesale bakery in London for quality and service,” he says. “There is so much more to do.”
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