Nicholas & Harris is one of the UK’s leading artisan and speciality bakeries, with a heritage in craft baking dating back to 1840. It became part of the Finsbury Food Group in 2003. The business now produces a wide range of products, including sourdough and speciality breads, rolls and hot-cross buns for major UK supermarket and foodservice customers.
The Nicholas & Harris team bakes with traditional long-fermentation and craft methods. Using equipment such as the stone-bed ovens, but to modern manufacturing standards. They now employ 350 people, including a large team of fully trained and qualified bakers.
Nicholas & Harris Challenge
The Finsbury Group has agreements with national suppliers for its temporary labour needs. Because Nicholas & Harris is in a rural location and the volumes are not high, the national providers opted out of supplying them. This meant that they had to rely on local high street recruitment businesses.
This solution worked well, but at the end of the pandemic, when volumes started to increase to ‘peak’ levels all year round, the senior management had to enlist another agency to support. As these agencies had multiple clients, their concentration on bakery waned and due to falling fulfilment the bakery had to go out to market again and bring in more local suppliers.
The Major Solution
Our solution is different. We want to work on site, we want to work in partnership and we want to concentrate on one client per sector per location.
We didn’t have a presence in the area, which means that we didn’t have existing clients in the area that would compete internally for our candidates, our workers or our time. Our solution was to provide sole supply services to the client, transferring existing workers from the exiting suppliers.
Nicholas & Harris bought into the solution and after a period of due diligence both parties agreed on an implementation timeline. Our Head of Implementation oversaw the transition liaising flawlessly with the client, the workers and the exiting suppliers.
During the transition phase, the site started to ‘ramp up’ for their Easter peak. As a leading supplier of hot cross buns, Easter is their busiest time.
The Result
The implementation was a success. The transition was smooth and no time was lost during the process. Our team made time to meet and talk every single worker and provide assurances.
Another benefit of the transition, was a full audit of the worker files. As the new employer, we never blindly accept documentation from exiting suppliers. We were able to check every file for compliance and provide this assurance to Nicholas & Harris.
Our team has successfully met all requirements. The Easter peak was such a success that the site Operations Manager emailed to thank us. This was the first Easter he felt comfortable enough to enjoy the bank holiday and spend time with his family.