Flour power
It all started when Ellie Birch’s mother gave her a copy of a cake decorating magazine just over 10 years ago.
At the time, Ellie was working in sales, as well as being a local club singer – but she knew she needed a change. “I had a young child at the time, Benji, who’s just coming up 18 this year,” she says. “I wanted something to fit in with him. I always dreamed that there would be this little business thing happening in the background. I’d tried all sorts from school and thought, this could happen – this could work.”
She began baking for friends and family, gradually perfecting her craft – and when she was asked to make a wedding cake for a friend’s daughter, things started to get “a bit real”.
Over the next three years, Ellie began doing her research and preparation. She got in touch with East Riding Council, which verified her operations and checked her kitchen arrangements. She obtained the necessary insurance and Elliegantly Made was born in 2015.
Up to this point, it had really been a bit of a hobby, but a move from Sproatley to Hedon a year later prompted a drive to get a proper business plan in place. “At the outset it was very small, very intimate – never really a business, because we knew we were moving, and there was an awful lot going on in the background,” she says. “So it was something that I made a little bit of pocket money from, to be honest. But when we moved to Hedon, my husband Ray and I sat down and said, “Let’s see what we’re doing. Let’s try to hit a market that we need. Not to make serious money, because that isn’t what it’s all about. It’s a very personal service.”
Still, bills have to be paid, after all, so in 2018, Ellie began to invest in some commercial equipment, including two large mixers – but the couple were then faced with a dilemma over where to accommodate the growing business. “At the time I was working from our home kitchen, and we had a Neff oven that did us proud – but my husband used to kick me out and say, right, come on, I need to make tea! So, we began to think, do we rent somewhere? Do we convert the garage?”
Not long afterwards, Ellie’s mother died – and it is hugely poignant that it’s what she left in her will that helped Ellie fit a proper bespoke kitchen. “It was always in the business plan that the proceeds from Elliegantly Made would fund a kitchen,” she says. “There were pockets of money that had been put away for that. But then I unfortunately lost my mum and her legacy allowed me to fit the kitchen and get the cake oven in – so Ray’s now got his oven back!”
When lockdown came along, it obliterated Ellie’s wedding trade overnight. But she didn’t sit back and watch her business go under – she turned it into an opportunity. “Obviously nobody could get married – nobody could go out. So we sat down and said, let’s find a niche, and we started offering ‘stay at home’ afternoon tea platters. We were either safely delivering or safely collecting on the doorstep, and it started from there.”
Ellie then began to specialise in what she calls “odd” cakes – as wacky and weird as customers wanted them. “I’ve always liked a challenge! So I said to Ray, can we take this to the next level? I basically pulled him out of retirement and he does a lot of the baking, and I do the fancy bit at the end. We do structured cakes, we’ve done trucks, animals, a bit of everything.”
Her background in sales is invaluable here as much of her business is done by word of mouth, and she also does all of her own social media, emailing, invoicing, you name it. Her brother, John Redhead, who has his own web development company, helped her with her website and branding. “People don’t just buy a product,” she says. “They buy a brand. They buy a person. And they’re buying into you. A lot of the time they speak to me first and then see the work. And people know that if they ring me, it’s me that’s making the cake. If there are any problems, it’s me they come to.”
Quality is Ellie’s top priority – every ingredient is bought in fresh, and cakes are delivered within hours of being baked. Most people understand that there is a price to pay for this, she says. “We’re another couple of years down the line from lockdown and people are now going back to work. All of a sudden they realise that they can’t knock out cupcakes at a pound each. As a viable business, I cannot do that. I like to think if people look at my work, they’ll say, yes, I’m going to have to pay a little bit for that.”
Maintaining a work-life balance is even more crucial when you work from your own home premises, Ellie points out. “I have my office hours, and I do put the out-of-office on after 6pm. I won’t answer a call at midnight – because it has happened! People will ring you or message you at 3am expecting the cake.”
Ellie has more personal reasons, too, for not wanting to be a workaholic. Nearly 20 years ago she suffered a stillbirth and she was told she couldn’t have children. A daughter, Charlotte, then arrived, but, tragically, she did not survive. “This is why I gave up singing,” Ellie says. “How could I get on a stage and entertain people when my heart was broken?”
Then came Benji, who was born at just 30 weeks. “I did not want to be out at weekends while working a nine-to-five job, when I had a miracle in my house. So I wanted something to fit around him and his schooling. I wanted to stay at home, but I wanted to keep busy, while enjoying the luxuries of life. Did I find the baking business, or did it find me? I’m a great believer that if there’s something out there that is meant for you, it’ll happen.”
The business is growing organically, but Ellie has no plans to take on any staff, as she feels this would destroy the key personal aspect of the service she offers. After all, her name is in her brand. And making sure she keeps across everything else is all in the planning. Ellie writes a to-do list and sticks to it, making sure jobs are ticked off in order every day.
She acknowledges that the nature of the business can mean that it’s often a bit of a lonely existence, so networking is crucial for both her sanity and to get the word out. Natalie Houfe, BW’s new events director and former chairman of Women in Business, encouraged Ellie to join the group a couple of years ago. “That was lovely for me,” she says. “And I think a lot of it is having the confidence to tell people that you’re out there, and to say I am here, I am good at what I do. It’s that ability to have a vision of something and believe that it’s going to happen.”
An example of this is Ellie’s ambition to break into the corporate market a few years ago. Her signature bakes were making waves on social media, and out of nowhere she got a call from parcel company DPD, for which she made some branded cookies and cupcakes. This ended up snowballing, and numerous local firms began to seek her out. Word even reached the South West as was she headhunted to made a statement cake for none other than the MOD in Bristol.
Word of mouth spread further, more recently, as she launched an initiative to raise funds for the victims of the Turkey-Syria earthquake by baking and selling as many cupcakes as she possibly could, on top of her regular work, which garnered her a fair bit of coverage in the local press. She ended up using 80 eggs and more than 25kg of base ingredients – and raised nearly £900 for the Red Cross.
Ellie says she’s living her dream – she adores her job, and she cannot remember saying this at any previous point in her life. “I used to enjoy singing – but I didn’t enjoy going to the venue and having to set up and everything else, but this, I absolutely love. And I can sing while I’m baking!”
