Real Bread: where your dough goes

‘Why does Real Bread from a local, indie bakery cost what it does? I can make a loaf at home for pence.’

Yes, you can and we encourage you to do so!

When you’re calculating your homebaking costs though, do you factor in everything? What about the other costs a small business incurs that you don’t?

One bakery's breakdown

Back in 2025, we asked microbakeries and small bakeries in our network to break down the costs of making and retailing a large loaf of Real Bread.

Each bakery is unique and their costs varied as widely as their circumstances, so there was no meaningful national average. 

Instead, here’s what we were told by one organic bakery, which sells at farmers’ markets and wholesale, about a large (800g), white, organic loaf of Real Bread, made by the sourdough process. 

Of the £6 retail price:

210p = Staffing costs (salaries, NI, holiday and sick pay etc.) 
150p = Premises costs (rent, cleaning, fitting, maintenance etc.) 
120p = Ingredients
36p = Energy (gas and/or electricity)
36p = Equipment and vehicle costs (purchase, maintenance, depreciation, fuel etc.) 
24p = Other operational costs (accountancy, marketing, admin, payment system, web design etc.) 
12p = Taxes, business rates and insurance 

That left a net profit of just 12p.

Yes, of the £6 a customer spent, just twelve of His Majesty’s good British pence might end up in the pocket of that bakery owner for a rainy day – and many costs have gone up (some more than once) since then.

Again, every bakery is different, so some will make more profit on a loaf, some less.

This is all before even considering the tangible and intangible values of delicious, nutritious, additive-free bread; or of the small, independent local business, training and employing skilled artisan bakers to craft products at the heart of your local community and help keep money circulating in local economies...

What's your version of this?
If you run an SME bakery and are happy to share a breakdown of your costs for making and selling a large (700-1000g) loaf, please email them to us. (We're happy to anonymise before publishing.)

Real Bread For All

Many people in the UK can afford to pay £4-6 for a loaf of Real Bread. Other people cannot. How to bridge the gap between what it costs an SME bakery to make, and what people on the tightest budgets can realistically afford is something we work on in our Real Bread For All initiative.

See also

Supermarket loaves: why the massive markup?