Smart Cookies! Stacey Soloman names cake shop pair star bakers as her new book storms the bestseller lists
HOW she discovered it is a mystery – but Stacey Solomon loves a Leek cake shop so much she’s told all her readers all about it!
And given that the Loose Women star sold 104,000 copies of her new book in just three days, that’s a pretty big shout-out for bakers Sarah Barber and Beth Charles. The pair, who run Scrumbles in St Edward Street, were gobsmacked when they found out Stacey had included them in Tap to Tidy, her debut cleaning book which stormed the bestseller lists this month.
They make an appearance in her small business shout-out section.
Sarah, aged 26, and 31-year-old Beth – who run the St Edward Street shop – had no idea they were mentioned in the book until it was released.
Sarah, of Leek, said: “We didn’t knowingly send Stacey brownies in the post, we assume someone else must have ordered for her. We were never told we were going to be in it so the first we heard was when one of our customers sent us a picture of our name in the book.
“We’re huge fans of Stacey. We love watching her Instagram stories and so we’d seen her talk about her book many times, not knowing we were actually in it.
“It was a really surreal moment and took a while to sink in. We were so excited and couldn’t wait to receive our copies to actually see it in real life. We’re so blown away by the love for small businesses like ours in the country at the moment.
“To have a small business shout-out section in the number one bestselling book just shows how the pandemic has shone a spotlight on small businesses, and hopefully people will continue to shop this way in the future.”
Sarah and Beth set up Scrumbles in 2017 when they worked together at an insurance company. Looking for a career change, they launched their own bakery brand, selling at the Totally Locally Leek markets.
And when they were both made redundant in January 2019, they took the plunge to open up shop in April 2019. “It gave us the push we needed to take a risk and give Scrumbles a go full-time,” said Sarah. “We took on two members of staff a few months later. “We were going from strength to strength when Covid hit. We closed the shop at the end of March 2020 when lockdown was announced. It took us a little while to decide what to do as it was a very scary time, particularly because Beth was pregnant and due at the end of May.”
“The cake shop shut for seven weeks when the lockdown hit, during which time they set up their online shop for nationwide postals and local deliveries. On their online launch day, the pair sold 100 boxes of brownies and blondies.
Sarah added: “The second half of 2020 and the beginning of this year has been very up and down and we have traded in a way that we feel comfortable with.
“We’ve had the shop open for walk-ins when the risk was low last summer and we’ve closed completely when we felt we didn’t even want to risk our employees coming into work.”
The pair are currently delivering and offer click and collect. They hope to open the shop for Easter.
“We will be serving customers through the door to minimise risk but also because we’ve outgrown the space in the kitchen and need to use the front of the shop too,” said Sarah. “It also helps to have our products displayed in the window so that people passing by can see what we have to offer.”