Sheffield bakery forced to lay off almost a third of its staff as lockdown takes its toll

The popular bakery has been operating a takeaway and delivery service throughout lockdown, however it has been unable to reopen its cafe as its premises are too small for safe social distancing.

This has meant that while other cafes and restaurants were able to reopen on July 4, Forge continued to suffer the financial impact of staying closed as it had done since lockdown began in March.

A statement from Forge said: "Our cafe has now been closed since 18th March, and while seemingly everyone else around us woke back up and welcomed people inside, we cannot. Our small space continues to make it impossible to re-open.

“Too few tables with social distancing in place means it's completely unaffordable. We don't know when it will re-open.

“This has sadly meant that we have had to make redundancies in the last month, 7 in total.

“We held off as long as we could while we crunched numbers but to protect what staff we can employ and make sure the business continues to exist there was no other option. We are gutted it had to end this way.

“We miss everyone in the building, the bustling madness of busy weekends and the input that each member of the team had, whether they worked 1 or 5 days a week. We are now a team of 17.”

Although its cafe has to remain closed, Forge Bakehouse is continuing to operate its delivery, takeaway and cook at home services.

The statement said: “Our kitchen is still cooking though, we've filled our counter with sandwiches, savoury tarts, sausage rolls and pies everyday. Watch out for scotch eggs in the coming weeks.

“Our monthly At Home menus have been the creative release we need, a brand new menu each month exploring different cuisines.

“Our webshop continues to take orders for collection 7 days a week, and we have no plans to stop delivery Thursday to Saturday each week to many areas of Sheffield.”