Baked Earth brand baker Butt Foods expands into retail

Added by Love Business East Midlands | 8 October 2020

Specialist Naan Bread and Flat Bread Bakery Butt Foods has expanded into the retail sector with its Baked Earth brand as part of a plan to diversify.

The third generation Nottingham-based company, which is celebrating 30 years in the bakery business this year, has historically mainly supplied the food service sector. But the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the company’s plans to diversify into retail and it has now announced a raft of retail listings in the UK and Europe with its brand, Baked Earth.

Butt Foods has signed contracts to supply five major retailers with around 2,100 stores in total, including a major export deal with a company that has more than 600 stores in mainland Europe.

Butt Foods Managing Director Dan Butt said:

Our Baked Earth brand of Naan Breads and Flat Breads is very popular in the food service sector, and is served in pubs, bars, cafés, restaurants, hotels, sandwich shops, casual dining outlets, universities and other venues. This sector was obviously badly hit during lockdown but fortunately for Butt Foods we had begun to diversify into the retail sector just before the pandemic started – a process which we accelerated during lockdown, and which has been very successful. We saw the opportunities and were able to quickly adapt our business to supply to retail, as well as food service.

We’re delighted to now announce that we have secured deals to supply our Baked Earth Naan Bread to five major retailers, including a key export deal which will see the Baked Earth brand sold on mainland Europe.

Butt Foods, which is run by Dan and his brother Taz, who is operations director, has given its Baked Earth branding for retail a fresh look to include a black and white family photo of Dan and Taz’s parents taken in the early days of the business, which in 2020 is marking its 30th anniversary. The company has its roots in the first curry house in Nottingham, opened in 1973 by Dan and Taz’s grandfather and which developed an outstanding reputation for his naans. It was his son Mazhar, Dan and Taz’s father, who had the idea to launch a bakery some years later after a customer failed to pick up an order of naan breads and rather than see them go to waste, he put them on the counter for customers to buy and they were snapped up.

Butt Foods was founded on an opportunity 30 years ago and we have taken the opportunities we have identified in recent times to diversify and strengthen the business. During lockdown we worked hard to focus on extending our customer base, often remotely, and we were really pleased to win a number of taste panels and to subsequently secure listings in household-name retail chains.

The retail side will account for around 25% of the business, he estimates. Butt Foods, which is based on Lenton Lane Industrial Estate, Nottingham, produces a range of naan breads in different flavours, shapes and sizes, including garlic and coriander and plain, as well as flatbreads, such as its rectangular folded flatbread. Last year the company gained Vegan Society accreditation for its core range of naan and flatbreads and in 2018 it was highly commended at the Food Manufacture Excellence Awards.

Proud to be a family business with such strong history, the latest generation to join the company is apprentice engineer Subhan, grandson of Mazhar, and Dan and Taz’s nephew.

For more information visit www.buttfoods.co.uk