2013

HAPPINESS IS CAKE-SHAPED

The Happy Little Cake Company was born.

I baked cakes, cupcakes and a wacky collection of novelty cakes for customers in and around Northampton.

In 2014, word had spread far and wide about my gluten-free baking.

This triggered a rethink of the business in order to respond to increasing demand.

2014

SPREADING HAPPINESS, CAKE BY CAKE

The wholesale side of the business came to life.

I started working with food outlets across Northamptonshire, supplying cakes to tea rooms, coffee shops, pubs and restaurants.

More and more, people from across the UK were telling me they wished they could get hold of my products.

Something had to be done.

2015-16

MOST MARVELLOUS EXPANSION

I developed a range of gluten-free baking mixes based on my flour blends and recipes.

The idea was to sell these online, enabling people to confidently bake happiness at home with the benefit of my baking expertise.

Most Marvellous Baking was launched as a platform to sell the range.

Before long I was wholesaling these products into independent food retailers, farm shops and delis.

Demand for ready-baked happiness continued to grow and I expanded my range to include snacks and savouries.

2017

THE SEARCH FOR PREMISES

My modest home kitchen had taken quite a battering and was failing to cope with the demands placed upon it.

And so a search for dedicated commercial premises began.

This took far longer than I ever could have imagined!

2018

LOVE PIE, BAKE PIE, EAT PIE

I developed an obsession with pie-making and produced a range of pies made with British and locally sourced ingredients.

And my customers developed a passion for eating them 😉

I entered the British Pie Awards for the first time and was blown away to be crowned Gluten-Free Class Champion.

2019

TWO BECOME ONE

I *finally* found commercial premises for the business. Nene Court in Wellingborough became the new home of happiness.

The space and location enabled me to increase wholesale production and open a small walk-in craft bakery-patisserie for a few hours a day, three days a week.

As part of the move, I decided to bring both sides of the business together under a new name: The Little Bakery of Happiness.

2020

LEARNING TO PIVOT

The response to the bakery opening was beyond anything I could have dreamed of.

Keeping up with the demands of the wholesale business and the customers queuing at the bakery counter was the most challenging experience of my small business life.

Until Covid hit.

The pandemic took down the hospitality sector overnight and with it, 80% of my business.

So I had to pivot the business (repeatedly, it would transpire) in order to survive.

The era of click and collect and nine-hour delivery stints (not great for someone who couldn’t navigate her way out of a paper bag!) was upon me.

2021

TEARS OF HAPPINESS

The Covid years passed by in a blur of emotions on both a personal and professional level.

Without question, I got through them thanks to my incredibly loyal and supportive customers (you!)

During this time, I wanted to kick the happiness up a notch and finally bring gluten-free doughnuts to the bakery counter – the deep-fried, jam-filled, sugary ones.

You broke the website trying to order them. And I lay awake at night panicking that everything would go wrong on ‘fry-day’ (it didn’t).

Then we cried – the tears of happiness that only a fellow doughnut-deprived coeliac will ever understand.

This was, and continues to be, one of my most precious bakery memories 💕

2022

ON THE MOVE

Three years of baking seven days a week – often for 18 hours at a time – was not sustainable. Something needed to change

After a lot of soul-searching, I decided to relocate the bakery to a new home in rural west Northamptonshire.

There was no bakery counter at the new premises. This enabled me to focus on the wholesale business and online sales and importantly, to reclaim some of my weekends.

The bakery counter was replaced with a monthly collection / delivery ‘mini menu of happiness.’

I pulled up at my converted barn on moving-in day with a firm plan for the future, a warm welcome from my new landlord and a driveway scattered with sheep and daffodils. Happy days 🥰

2023-2024

THE WONDER YEARS

Having more time to focus on the wholesale business meant I was able to expand the number of outlets stocking happiness across Northamptonshire and beyond.

I was also able to pop up at events again, which was a great tonic as I really missed seeing the squishy faces of my customers from the bakery counter days 😍

For those of us operating in the food and hospitality sectors who thought the difficult trading conditions of the pandemic were behind us, we were about to be shown how wrong we were.

Food inflation, soaring energy prices and a cost of living crisis piled on the pressure, leaving us wondering ‘When will it ever end?’

2025

A FULL CIRCLE MOMENT

Having reached the end of 2024 with the business intact but really only treading water, it was time to once again reexamine my business plan against the backdrop of a pretty bleak economy.

Not one for standing still, I needed to find a way to continue innovating and drive the business forward again.

I was never going to be able to lower the price of chocolate or the pence per kWh tariff for electricity, but there were overheads within my gift to change.

So I decided to move the bakery back home to free myself of all the costs associated with leasing commercial premises and the feeling of having my business wings clipped.

2026

AND BREATHE

Squeezing back into a domestic kitchen was not without its challenges – it’s amazing how much you can spread out over the course of six years in commercial premises 🙃

I got there in the end, though!

Dusted down from some pretty big curve balls that life threw at me in 2025, I am back in the swing of things.

The online shop is booming (thank you!) and I have managed to add some exciting new products this year, with more in the pipeline.

And I continue to work with some fabulous small businesses who understand the importance of providing good quality gluten-free options as part of their food offering.

Now the business equivalent of a teenager, I am grateful to every single one of my happiness chasers for sticking with me through all the changes I have made to the bakery. 💕