Kingsmill supporting the Stockport community
The team at Allied Bakeries have paid a visit to see Rachel and Nigel who run The Cherry Tree Project in Romiley. The bakery, famed for their Kingsmill loaf, have been supporting local charities and food banks, including the Cherry Tree project, with thousands of loaves since the outbreak of the pandemic.
The project provides youth support but, as the needs of the community changed during the pandemic, Rachel and Nigel supported the community with much needed food parcels. They also offered support to people who are isolated and assisted with shopping and friendly phone calls.
Since March 2020, the project has distributed 2,470 ingredients packs, providing 9,880 meals to families during lockdown and school holidays.
The project continues to provide weekly food supplies to families who are struggling and, with the help of the team at Kingsmill, free bread was donated to help those families in most need. Along with food parcels they have been running ‘fit and fed’ sessions – online cooking with families – just a small element of how they are helping the community.
Allied Bakeries were introduced to The Cherry Tree Project through Stockport Council to see first hand what they have been doing in the community and to find out how they could help.
“It was such a privilege to meet the team and Inge Challinor from Stockport Council. Their passion, enthusiasm and dedication to the work they are doing is just amazing and we left in absolute awe of them” said Carl Hampson, General Manager at Allied Bakeries Bredbury plant.
A fun, socially distanced visit gave the team a chance to catch up and maybe hatch a plan for further ideas on helping the community.
The Allied Bakeries site in Bredbury is the Northwest home of Kingsmill, employs over 500 people and producing up to 2 million loaves of bread a week!
The team have been committed to supporting Stockport’s most vulnerable residents; the bakery also donates bread to Stepping Hill Hospital and other NHS locations, helping those who need it the most.
It has been estimated that if all the crates of bread donated by Allied bakeries were stacked on top of each other, it would reach to 70m higher than the tallest skyscraper on Deansgate!
Rachel Stephens, co-founder Cherry Tree Project added:
“Allied Bakeries has become the community bakery. Rather than giving a single loaf to the man down the street that’s struggling, they gave thousands of loaves to group like The Cherry Tree Project so we could help the man down the street that’s struggling
“At the start of lockdown so many people were struggling and we didn’t know where to start until we were approached by Allied Bakeries who gave us fresh bread every week. The bread gave us a reason to check on the vulnerable, helped us get to know local families and became central to the way we worked.
No one goes hungry with the Kingsmill bakery down the road, there will always be bread”
