An 89-year-old household bakery has turn out to be the most recent high-street casualty of Britain’s mounting value disaster, closing its doorways for good and taking with it one of many extra unlikely superstar enterprise partnerships of latest years.
Coughlans Bakery, which ran a series of retailers throughout Kent, Surrey, West Sussex and south London, ceased buying and selling on Tuesday after slipping into voluntary liquidation. The comic Romesh Ranganathan, who turned a co-owner in 2024 and as soon as billed the tie-up as “the partnership of the century”, mentioned he was “gutted” by the collapse.
The Crawley-born presenter, recognized for his deadpan stage model, reposted a video from managing director Sean Coughlan to his 1.4 million followers with the caption: “Gutted isn’t the phrase.” Ranganathan, who’s vegan, had first thrown his weight behind the enterprise due to its vary of plant-based merchandise.
For Coughlan, whose household agency first opened its ovens in 1937, the arithmetic merely stopped including up. He laid a lot of the blame on the federal government’s determination to carry employers’ Nationwide Insurance coverage contributions in April final 12 months, a transfer that raised the headline price to fifteen per cent and lowered the edge at which employers begin paying, alongside a business-rates invoice he mentioned had “completely smashed native enterprise”. The change, set out within the Nationwide Insurance coverage Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Act 2025, has landed hardest on labour-intensive trades comparable to retail and hospitality, the place wage payments dominate the fee base.
These pressures have been then compounded by a spike in gasoline costs following the latest battle within the Center East, which Coughlan estimated had value the corporate an additional £20,000 every week. The summer season heatwaves that pushed the South East in the direction of 35C proved, in his phrases, the “nail within the coffin”. With buyers staying at dwelling, weekly takings roughly halved whereas the outgoings, he famous, “remained precisely the identical”.
Coughlan was unsparing in regards to the human value, and beneficiant in the direction of his superstar backer. “I really feel like we’ve completely let him down,” he mentioned. “Every little thing he’s accomplished, it’s been from the center.” Ranganathan, he added, had been “wonderful”.
The love was mutual amongst clients. When the comic appeared behind the counter of the Dorking Excessive Road department final 12 months, a big queue shortly fashioned down the pavement. Josie Smith, who works close to the Crawley store, advised BBC Radio Sussex she was “actually unhappy” to see it go. “It brings lots of people collectively. It’s a large disgrace.” Her colleague Kaitlin Stinton praised workers who have been “devoted to their jobs, all the time making you content”.
Coughlan mentioned the agency had chosen the orderly route of voluntary liquidation particularly in order that it might nonetheless pay suppliers and workers, a choice that speaks to a proprietor attempting to do proper by his individuals even because the shutters got here down. “It’s heartbreaking,” he mentioned.
Coughlans is much from alone. Business knowledge reveals three pubs, bars and eating places now shutting daily as tax and price rises chunk, whereas the £28bn Nationwide Insurance coverage shock has run nicely forward of Treasury forecasts. Commerce press, too, has tracked the toll, with The Caterer amongst these charting a wave of closures throughout foods and drinks. With high-street closures set to surge because the business-rates burden grows, the lack of a beloved 89-year-old baker is unlikely to be the final story of its form this 12 months.
Amy Ingham
Amy is a newly certified journalist specialising in enterprise journalism at Enterprise Issues with accountability for information content material for what’s now the UK’s largest print and on-line supply of present enterprise information.
