After being shoved unceremoniously on furlough during the first lockdown in 2020, Aiden Ryan joined millions of us in trying his hand a baking – likely an attempt to distract himself from all of those tedious Zoom quizzes and Tiger King follow ups.
Where we all stopped at the soggy banana bread and rock-like sourdough, Aiden created Loaf MCR – delivering truly wonderful loaf cakes across the city from his kitchen at Pollen Yard, and it all quickly grew and grew.
Helping to raise funds of the NHS, Aiden found himself baking more than 120 cakes per week, and now Loaf MCR supplies some of the city’s coffee houses and cafes, as well as still offering up delivery.
With this growth has come a new proposal – as this week saw Aiden launch a Kickstarter campaign so that they can open up a cafe on Oxford Road.
Aiden has already secured the site in the St James Building (at the old Patisserie Valerie bit), but to get the new site up and running, Aiden is looking to his customers to get involved – with a long list of rewards for pledges.
In return for helping get a local, independent business off the ground, Loaf will be matching amounts pledged with vouchers and experiences once the store opens. So a pledge of £5 will get you ‘Coffee & Cake’ and a pledge of £1250 will get you ‘Unlimited Coffee & Cake for a Year‘.
The current timeline for the new cafe is before Christmas, but Aiden is keen to stress that this is likely to move – with an opening date looking to be around March 2022 at the earliest.
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For more information on the Kickstarter, and to pledge – head on over to the project page below…
