Otterton Mill, the Devonshire food destination and visitor attraction is launching artisan bakery-cafes later this year in Exeter and East Devon.
Founders Simon and Caroline Spiller are looking for locations across the south west to launch the first Molina Bakery later this year.
Simon Spiller said: “We are looking for a number of locations across the South West, starting with Exeter and East Devon. Ideal sites will have an intrinsic “foodie”, cultural or heritage connection and be large enough for us to have an on-site bakery. We welcome approaches from landlords or others, who would like us to consider suitable sites and we are also starting to look for a team who will help us launch the cafes.”
The new sites are being added to the Otterton Mill business to mitigate risks from natural disasters that have affected the single site business.
“Having suffered over 40 flood events in seven years at Otterton Mill, including five floods of all the buildings, we are constantly looking for ways to reduce our risk exposure at the Mill. Expanding to other locations is a natural way for us to do this, and it will help to provide future security for us and our team,” said Simon.
A prolonged period of flooding in the winter of 2013/14 caused the Spillers to close their award winning cafe at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum just 18 months after it opened.
“We simply weren’t able to guarantee supply of our fresh bakery produce from the Mill to the Museum during periods of extreme weather and flooding and this position became untenable. So, regrettably, we had to leave” said Simon.
Now, the Molina Bakery will side step these flooding issues, with baking being done at each cafe. “The Molina Bakery cafes will be an urbanised version of Otterton Mill’s cafe, with an increased emphasis on flair in the food and stylish interior design. However, the Mill’s values of warm, prompt service offering natural, healthy and fresh food which is locally and sustainably sourced, will be central” said Caroline. “Molina is Latin for Mill. So the brand name for this business reflects our heritage at Otterton Mill and the ancient traditions of ‘real bread’ making which we employ. It also provides for a location-specific connection, e.g. Molina Bakery, Exeter,” she added.
