Paul Kirby, The Organic Cake Company

The Organic Cake Company is a small, artisan bakery producing gourmet organic cakes which are sold at specialist organic shops in London and throughout the Southeast. The business has been running for three years and Paul is hoping to expand the range of fresh bake foods produced by the bakery. The Organic Cake Company won Silver at the Soil Association Organic Food Awards for their Carrot and Walnut Cake with Lemon Cheese Icing.

• Can you give a short history of how you got to where you are now, including why and when you 'went organic'?
  The way I was brought up in the sixties and seventies led me to the organic food movement. It occurred to me after moving from London in the nineties that whilst it may be possible to find real organic food in the capital it was a virtually impossible to find in smaller communities – except perhaps in my chosen Sussex village of Forest Row. Here we had local organic dairy, fruit, veg and meat. No decent cakes though! So I decided to set myself the task of producing cakes for taste rather than profit. The formula worked. The cakes were received enthusiastically and the volume of production will soon justify our expensive time honoured methods of baking.

• Can you describe a typical day in your life?
  I get up at 6am and go straight to the bakery around the corner. I have coffee and make sure the bake order is correct and all the batches of ingredients we will use are prepared. At 6:30am the baking starts and goes on until around 2pm. Whilst this is going on the cakes cooked the previous day are iced and packed. As the day progresses the order is continually updated until around 2pm. After lunch stock shortages are ordered, emails and calls answered. Any work that’s not finished by the time the staff leave I tend to finish so we have a clean slate in the morning. After supper I often work on the staff cover for the following weeks and Soil Association approvals for new recipes.

• Who are your customers and where are they?
  The cakes are sold mainly to organic shops in London and the Southeast.

• Organic principles – why do they matter?
  It may be a cliché but if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. I was not prepared to passively watch the rape and despoliation of our planet.

• What does the Soil Association mean to you?
  The Soil Association is a rare heavyweight organisation fighting for the good of mankind.

• What is your greatest achievement?
  Keeping The Organic Cake Company trading two years.

• How do you plan to progress in the future? What is your vision?
  The principles of premium food without the price will be applied to other types of freshly baked food.

• If you were starting all over again, what would you do differently?
  Nothing.

• What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
  Keep going through thick and thin.

• Who or what's your biggest inspiration?
  The emergence of organic foods into the mainstream has opened the world to ethical organic food production.

• What is the key to your success?
  Perseverance.

• What do you love most about what you do?
  The pleasure of producing gourmet food at affordable prices.

• What keeps you awake at night?
  Lack of cash flow.

• What single thing would most improve your life?
  Decent Cash flow.

• What do you find most frustrating about what you do?
  Lack of cash flow and other retailers' defensiveness about the cakes we produce.

• Any unusual hobbies or past careers?
  I was, and still am, a TV News MCR/Links Engineer. I work for ITN dealing with all aspects of live broadcasting within the grand sounding Master Control Room. If you see a test signal instead of the ITV News or a war correspondent who cannot hear the studio during a live broadcast it is probably because I messed it up!

• How can the organic market be improved?
  Government subsidy and less importation of ready processed products.

• What's the main benefit of being organic for you?
  Great tasting food you can trust.

• What other organic ventures do you admire and why?
  Yeo Valley among many stands out for bringing the products they produce into the mainstream.

• Supermarkets – good or bad?
  A necessary evil I am afraid.

• What is the biggest threat to what you do?
  Globalisation of organic food production and processing.

• What's the best thing about organic farms?
  They produce healthy food and are not adding to the environmental meltdown that is occurring.

• What's the best thing about organic food?
  The positive effects it has on the environment and the welfare it brings to humans and animals alike.

• What is your favourite meal?
  Sunday lunch with hazelnut roast.

• If I was Prime Minister I would...
  Try and make England a green revolutionary to set the world an example of what a developed nation can achieve.

• The world would be a better place if...
  If we weren’t so greedy.

• I'd like to be remembered for...
  Doing my bit to destabilise mainstream commercial baking.

• When were you happiest?
  Watching a storm come in on the Cornish north coast last summer.

• What is your greatest fear?
  Being alone.

• What is your favourite word?
  Superb.

• What would be your 'Desert Island' luxury?
  Nicotine.

• Is the customer always right?
  I am afraid so.

For more information about The Organic Cake Company visit www.theorganiccakecompany.co.uk