A TOP bakery has 30 new jobs up for grabs because of soaring demand for its flagship bread products.
Over the past year sales for the Jones Village Bakery’s own brand bread have increased by 20 per cent – with its signature Welsh Batch loaf proving particularly popular.
As a result, the family firm is ramping up production on the night shift at its bakery in Minera, near Wrexham, where the award-winning bread is made.
It’s then delivered fresh from the ovens by a fleet of vans to customers across North Wales and the Marches, as well as supermarkets across the UK.
The company is a Real Living Wage employer and night shift staff earn a premium of five per cent on top of that, with a shift pattern of four on and four off.
Pay rates start at £11.43 an hour and can increase up to £15.47 an hour.
Other benefits for staff to help combat the cost of living crisis include discounts of up to six per cent on their weekly supermarket shop at the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Asda.
Also available are cut price deals for holidays, gym membership, meals in restaurants, trips to the cinema and a host of other everyday items.
On top of that all employees are entitled to a 30 per cent discount on Jones Village Bakery’s award-winning products, including bread, crumpets, scones and pies.
Kevin Jones, the night shift manager at the Minera bakery, has been with the firm for seven years and said: “It’s a brilliant company to work for and it’s getting bigger and bigger because of the growing popularity of our products.
“Our own brand bread is flying off the shelves at the moment so we need to recruit more budding bakers to cater for that demand.
“Working nights is not for everybody but for some it really suits their individual or family circumstances.
“A lot of people prefer working nights and the four on, four off shift means you have loads of time to do other things on your days off. The world’s your oyster in those four days.”
Tom Breeze, 34, the bakery manager in Minera, started as an 16-year-old apprentice and worked his way up the ranks to his current job.
He said: “There are great career prospects at the Village Bakery for the right people who want to work hard and have the right attitude.
“We have a grow your own policy here which means that the vast majority of the bakery managers and supervisors are people like myself who’ve come up through the ranks. There are lots of opportunities for extra training, earning qualifications and career progression.
“There’s a great camaraderie amongst the staff and a lot of team become really good friends. Most of the people are from the local area and they have known each other a long time.”
Operations director Simon Thorpe said the phenomenal growth of the company was driven by great products.
He said: “The increasing demand for our products is testament to the fantastic work of our secret ingredient – the brilliant people who work here.
“When you look at the quality of the product coming out of the bakery in Minera, it’s really driving the growth we’re seeing in demand.
“We’ve got a really good team on the night shift and we just need more people to grow it.
“The whole business is growing at a rate of knots and the most important thing for us is to attract the right people who want to grow with us. We’ve had some fantastic success stories with some key individuals like Tom Breeze.
“There are also some people who’ve only been here a few months but are already working their way up the ranks.
“Working on nights here is a classic bakery role of making the freshest possible products and out to the customer virtually straight from the ovens into the vans.
“Being associated with the baking of our popular flagship products is a real positive and source of pride for the people who work here.”
HR manager Jason Page added: “It’s a great shift pattern because it gives you a chance to get all those things done Monday to Friday that you would otherwise struggle to do.
“We have a number of individuals for whom the night shift provides the perfect work-life balance.
“As well a starting salary on the night shift that’s better than the Real Living Wage, you can also benefit from a great package of perks with discounts on a lot of your every day spends that makes the net take home pay go even further.
“For example, I took my children to the cinema the other day and I saved £15 on the price of the tickets.
“I also get discount of five per cent shopping at my local supermarket every week – so everything adds up which is incredibly important when the cost of living is going through the roof.”
