Inside the leadership strategies reshaping British baking

Bakery’s changing leadership priorities: overview

• The five finalists show that strong bakery leadership can’t be measured by turnover, headcount or production volume alone
• Skills development, employee wellbeing and visible leadership are becoming essential to recruitment, retention and operational resilience
• Successful leaders are protecting their companies’ founding values while adapting products, supply chains and commercial models for future growth

What does great leadership actually look like in a modern bakery business?

The five contenders for British Baker’s inaugural Bakery Leader of the Year Award show there’s no single answer. They work across businesses of vastly different sizes, have taken different routes to the top and bring their own ideas about growth, responsibility and the role a leader should play.

Aidan Monks of Lovingly Artisan, Gary Kadas of Seven Seeded, Helen Bowyer of The Compleat Food Group, Mike Woods of Just Love Food Company and Tona Erreguin of Imma Group are the finalists for the new category at the 2026 Baking Industry Awards.

The awards are organised by British Baker (see other finalists here) and form part of William Reed’s events portfolio celebrating excellence across the international food and beverage industry. Sponsored by Whitworth Bros, Bakery Leader of the Year recognises individuals who combine vision and commercial judgement with a measurable impact on their organisations and the wider industry.

I joined the judging panel alongside Gill Pendergrast, sales director at Whitworth Bros, and Stephen Ville, chairman of the British Society of Baking. Although the finalists couldn’t be more different, the same themes repeatedly surfaced during their interviews: visible leadership, employee development, commercial resilience and growth without sacrificing the values on which a business was built.

Aidan Monks: Building resilience from grain to loaf

Few bakery leaders would respond to supply chain uncertainty by building their own flour mill. At Lovingly Artisan, however, the decision has become central to a wider strategy built around resilience, provenance and local food security.

Co-founder Aidan Monks, a two-time winner of the Baking Industry Awards’ Baker of the Year title, has worked with local farmers to cultivate heritage grains including rye, einkorn, emmer and spelt. What began as a 10-acre trial has grown to around 100 acres.

The mill has allowed the Cumbria-based bakery to shorten its supply chain, gain greater control over its ingredients and develop other products, including sourdough pasta.

It has also brought the team closer to the raw materials with which they work. Monks recalled arriving at a local farm to discover that bakery and retail employees had turned up voluntarily to see the crops for themselves.

“Leadership is having that conviction, that understanding of our values, to be able to lead that team and inspire that team as we go forward,” he told the judges.

Although Lovingly Artisan continues to grow, success isn’t being measured through turnover or production volume alone.

“We’ve diversified, we’ve strengthened ourselves by diversification and we’ve shortened our food chain,” he said. “We’ve made ourselves more sustainable, more resilient and more nimble to shocks in the system.”

The ambition isn’t simply to turn Lovingly Artisan into one increasingly industrialised bakery. Monks hopes its model will encourage more bakers to work with nearby farmers, rebuild regional grain networks and improve local food security.

Gary Kadas: Creating skills instead of waiting for them

Seven Seeded’s Gary Kadas knows what it means to progress from the bakery floor. He joined the Hertfordshire wholesale business as a pastry chef 11 years ago and is now its head of production and operations.

Today, he oversees production, product development, quality control and training at a 30,000 sq ft bakery that operates around the clock and employs more than 100 people.

Kadas also led the bakery’s relocation, inviting teams from every department to help shape the new site. Yet one employee’s journey provides an equally revealing example of his leadership. The recruit was an accountant looking for a career change and started in an entry-level role cleaning trays, peeling potatoes and cooking porridge. He went on to learn mixing, baking and other production skills before applying to become an assistant head baker.

“People can change if they want to change, and we would love to give them an opportunity if they show that willingness,” Kadas told the judges.

Seven Seeded has now introduced training modules for entry-level employees, supervisors, team leaders and managers. The longer-term hope is to develop these into an academy open to people outside the company.

“I would like to show people – mainly young people – that this profession is still attractive,” he added. “I think it is going to be really difficult in a couple of years to find talented, strong bakers who know what they’re doing.”

At a time when skills shortages dominate industry conversations, the message is a practical one: bakery can’t continue looking for experienced recruits without also creating them.

Helen Bowyer: Making room for others to rise

Commercial growth provides one measure of Helen Bowyer’s impact at Wrights. Since she became commercial director in 2021, the business has grown from £35m to £90m in turnover.

However, the story she chose to highlight concerned someone else’s career. Now commercial director of foodservice at The Compleat Food Group, Bowyer encouraged development chef Howard Edwards to move into a commercial role after recognising that his technical knowledge and customer skills could take him further. He progressed from commercial manager to senior commercial manager and was recently appointed commercial controller.

“I’m only successful in reality if I’ve got the right people around me and they’re successful,” she said. “I need to almost keep moving myself to allow them to move into my position.”

Her own career reinforces that belief. After leaving university early, Bowyer progressed to director by the age of 35 – an experience that has made her a strong advocate for recognising ability and creating routes into senior roles through training and mentoring.

Her responsibilities now span a 14-strong commercial team and foodservice production across multiple sites and outsourced ranges. She also helped Wrights navigate its move from private ownership into the much larger Compleat Food Group without losing the bakery’s identity and specialist knowledge.

Attention is now turning to changes in consumer behaviour, including interest in protein, fermentation, longer-term health and GLP-1 weight-loss medications. Knowing which shifts will reshape demand – and which may disappear almost as quickly as they arrived – is becoming another test of leadership.

Mike Woods: Knowing when to say no and when to change

Just Love Food Company exists because Mike Woods identified a shortage of celebration cakes suitable for consumers with nut allergies. The business has since grown from 11 employees to 85 and expanded its ambitions from nut-free production to removing all 14 major regulated allergens from its recipes.

That mission was challenged during the company’s early years when investors questioned whether it should move away from allergen-safe manufacturing because the market was developing more slowly than expected.

“My vision and my purpose made it clear to me to say no to that decision,” said Woods. “There was pressure because you needed to get a start-up business over the profit line, but it was the right thing to say no.”

Remaining committed to the purpose hasn’t meant refusing to adapt the business. With sales of large celebration cakes declining, smaller individually portioned products now generate around 20% of Just Love’s revenue, while foodservice is becoming increasingly important.

Leadership inside the company is organised around four visible values: integrity, making things happen, joy and unity. Employees are allowed to make mistakes and take responsibility, while customer feedback is read to the workforce to connect factory tasks with the people buying the cakes.

“You might be putting the cake in the box today, but that cake goes into somebody’s house and provides a solution that brings a lot of joy,” he added.

Just Love’s experience shows that a clearly defined purpose doesn’t have to prevent change. It can help a business decide what must be protected and where it has room to evolve.

Tona Erreguin: Challenging bakery’s long-hours culture

Tona Erreguin didn’t enter herself for Bakery Leader of the Year. The head chef and baker at Imma Group only discovered shortly before the judges interview that three members of her team had nominated her. The gesture was particularly significant given the culture she has worked to create at Imma the Bakery in Stoke Row, South Oxfordshire.

Her approach was shaped by punishing working weeks, abusive kitchen cultures and discrimination during her earlier hospitality career. After being told that her sexuality ruled her out of running a kitchen, Erreguin decided to build the kind of workplace she hadn’t experienced herself.

“I wanted to make a space that was safe – where holiday is respected, where there’s no abuse and where there’s less ego,” she told the judges.

Only three employees have left the 15-person bakery team in four years, mostly to relocate or begin their own projects. Responsibility has also been spread across pastry, bread, front-of-house and wholesale operations.

Taking her first holiday in four years without repeatedly contacting the bakery became a small but meaningful sign that the approach was working. “None of that is achievable at the expense of someone’s health or someone’s mental stability,” she said. “We have managed to keep our people and keep the quality where we have it, and I’m deeply proud of that.”

Rather than chasing unlimited expansion, the 2025 Baking Industry Awards’ Baker of the Year is building partnerships with a micro-mill and established businesses. She sees a ceiling on Imma’s physical size, but not on the collaborations through which its ideas can spread.

What should bakery leadership be measured against?

The diversity of the shortlist presented the judges with a fundamental question: how do you compare leadership in a £90m food operation with leadership in a 15-person independent bakery?

Raw turnover, headcount or production volume can’t provide the answer. What matters is what changed because that individual was leading the organisation.

Across the five businesses, that change can be seen in regional grain networks, new production facilities, allergen-safe manufacturing, commercial growth, employee progression and a healthier workplace culture.

Bakery businesses are being asked to automate, reformulate, decarbonise, contain costs and manage increasingly complex supply chains. None of that can happen without people who have the skills, confidence and motivation to deliver it.

The finalists show that people development isn’t a soft addition to commercial strategy. It’s one of the foundations on which growth, innovation and operational resilience depend.

The winner will be revealed at the Baking Industry Awards ceremony on 25 November 2026.