THE GRAFTER AND THE FREELOADER
She’s the hard-working baker whose hilariously blunt putdown to a PR company trying to blag £675 of free cakes for an ex-Corrie actress went viral. Read about her battle to launch her business – and you’ll understand her anger
BEHIND towering displays of lemon meringue cupcakes and home-made raspberry macarons, staff at the Three Little Birds bakery in Keighley, West Yorkshire, have been rushed off their feet.
Customers have been queueing out of the door, the phone ringing off the hook and the small team of female bakers, in aprons and blue hairnets, working into the early hours to get on top of the mounting cake orders.
Amid the commotion, owner Rebecca Severs, 37, has been cursing herself for taking the week off work. it is her family’s first holiday since last August — and what a week to choose, after her small family business found itself at the centre of a heated online debate dubbed ‘Cakegate’.
Speaking exclusively to the Mail, Rebecca (who prefers to be called Bec) says she never imagined her company, whose shop only opened three months ago, would cause such a furore.
‘I don’t have a huge social media following, so i thought it would just be a bit of fun,’ she says of her viral Facebook post, in which she called out a VIP party planner — Leeds-based Nvrlnd — for trying to blag two cakes and 100 cupcakes for a celebrity’s 40th birthday, with payment ‘in the form of promotion on their socials with over 700,000 followers, as well as [being] promoted in OK! Magazine’.
In the post, which was liked and shared thousands of times, Bec wrote: ‘This poor celebrity apparently can’t afford to pay people for their products and services. Spare a thought! What happened to women supporting women.’
Depending on decoration and detail, she says, the now-infamous order should have cost around £675, a reflection of the hard work and expertise that goes into every one of her bakes.
Bec told Nvrlnd: ‘My mortgage provider doesn’t take payment in the form of promotion on their socials.’ ‘i’ve been approached before and it’s a very common theme in our industry,’ she explains. ‘i think it’s important that businesses get paid fairly for what they do. Without that, there is no business and there are no jobs.’
After Bec’s post made headlines, the celebrity was revealed by the daily Mail to be former Coronation Street actress and Strictly star Catherine Tyldesley, whose ill-judged retort on instagram described the outcry over the exchange as ‘utterly bizarre’.
Wearing a £120 sweatshirt and £180 glasses, in a video apparently recorded in a £72,000 BMW, Catherine insisted she ‘had no idea those emails were being sent’, adding: ‘i don’t really know what to say. i mean, i hope the cake lady got the exposure she was craving.’
THAT is something of an ironic statement, some might say, from a television actress who is known, in the Greater Manchester area where she lives with her husband and two children, for seldom turning down a red-carpet event, party invitation or glitzy dinner.
Much has been made, too, of the fact that Catherine — who earned £100,000 a year on Corrie and has a reported net worth of £800,000 — isn’t the type of person who needs freebies, when it’s clear she could easily afford to pay full price.
Bec, a hard-working mum- of-three who started her baking business in 2015 from her kitchen table, leads a very different life.
Though she doesn’t want to talk salaries, the contrast is stark: the average annual wage of a bakery owner is about £35,000.
London-born Bec started baking as a toddler, taught by her mum — ‘a fantastic baker and cook’ — and her late aunt Liz, who sparked her interest in cake decorating.
Before having children, she worked in legal publishing, designing cakes on the side for friends and family. She moved to Keighley in July 2008 to marry husband Aidan, who is from the area.
‘it was always the dream to open a shop in Keighley,’ she says. Baking furiously around the clock in the cramped family kitchen, she was so determined to succeed that she says she ‘didn’t charge nearly enough’.
‘i remember working it out after one Christmas — i made £2 an hour — and thinking, why am i doing this? it’s so stressful and it’s so time- consuming but i’m not really making a proper wage.’
Because of the pandemic, and a tenancy falling through in another property in town, it wasn’t until May this year that Bec’s longed-for shop finally opened its doors.
‘it’s gone better than i could ever have hoped,’ she says. ‘ We’ve already had to recruit more staff, and we’ve had brilliant support from the local community. Keighley is a town full of friendly, supportive and close-knit people.’ Three Little Birds prides itself on shopping local: butter is from a nearby dairy, milk is delivered by a milkman and they only use British sugar, organic eggs and sustainable chocolate.
Together with her husband, an education consultant, Bec funnelled all her savings into the project and worked non-stop.
‘On our opening weekend, i was in the shop until 2.30am finishing all the cakes,’ she says. ‘i’ve burnt the candle at both ends, getting up early to bake at the shop, then doing admin until late at night. And it’s not all glam decorating — there’s so much washing up.’
SHE relies on Aidan and their daughters isla, Amelie and Josie for morale and support, and is happy to pay them — but only them, she stresses — in cake.
‘i know they find it hard,’ she says, ‘ but they also understand why i’m doing it. My husband does a regular shift on the shop counter on a Friday, which he loves.’ The family have had to tighten their belts, too.
‘Pouring finances into the shop renovation meant sacrificing a lot of luxuries for a while,’ she says. ‘But the risks you take make you more determined to succeed. i had to weigh up whether to part with a stake in the business and i eventually decided against it. To keep full control, i’m paying a higher cost of capital.’
And it’s important to Bec that her six staff — including debbie, her manager and ‘right-hand woman’, who is always happy to pull an allnighter to get the work done — know how much she values them. ‘We all try to look after each other,’ she says.
Party planner Nvrlnd — whom Bec says has threatened her with legal action — say its enquiry was ‘completely misconstrued’ and insists the bakery’s ‘expenses and costs’ would have been paid.
The way Bec sees it, their email was crystal clear.
‘ It’s important to be transparent,’ she says, adding that women ‘ should not feel guilty about charging for their work and earning money’.