Cooks the Bakery is a specialist retail

bakery A bakery is an establishment that produces and sells flour-based food baked in an oven such as bread, cookies, cakes, donuts, pastries, and pies. Some retail bakeries are also categorized as cafés, serving coffee and tea to customers who ...

chain of hot food,

sandwiches A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a po ...

and

coffee Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world. S ...

, based in

Solihull Solihull (, or ) is a market town and the administrative centre of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in West Midlands County, England. The town had a population of 126,577 at the 2021 Census. Solihull is situated on the River Blythe i ...

, in the

West Midlands West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The company went into administration on 21 November 2011. The trading rights to Three Cooks and Cooks the bakery were purchased from the administrators in June 2012, Three Cooks Bakery was re-launched under a franchising model with its first store opening in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent.

Three Cooks

Three Cooks was the name given to a trio of high street bakers formerly trading as Clarks Bakery, Stephen's Bakery and Wimbush the Bakers. Based in Solihull, it was taken over by

Rank Hovis McDougall RHM plc, formerly Rank Hovis McDougall, was a United Kingdom food business. The company owned numerous brands, particularly for flour, where its core business started, and for consumer food products. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange an ...

and expanded into a 255 retail bakery, and then sandwich chain business. In 2000, as high street trends changed, it sold the freeholds of the various retail premises. Due to financial difficulties arising from a downturn in high street trading conditions, in November 2006 the chain went into administration with a footprint of 158 shops, under the legal control of

Tenon Group RSM Tenon was a professional services firm based in the United Kingdom, which was listed on the FTSE SmallCap Index and part of RSM Global. The company was formed from the merger of the Tenon Group with RSM Bentley Jennison in December 2009. The ...

Tenon immediately closed 37 loss-making sites, with around 250 job losses.

Cooks the Bakery

Chairman Geoff Peppiatt bought 121 of the former Three Cooks shops, and managed to save 900 jobs, operating under the new brand Cooks the Bakery. Peppiatt left the business in late 2009, by which time Cooks the Bakery was no longer involved in Van Delivery or Schools Catering. After this point, the business was run by Richard Prime (Managing Director) and Steven Greaves (Director) until the final collapse in late 2011. Between Peppiatt leaving and final collapse, the chain faced reducing High Street footfall and rising costs, and had been constantly reducing the number of stores. The company went into administration on 21 November 2011, having shrunk to 16 outlets.

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Cooks the Bakery
{{UK Food, state=collapsed Bakeries of the United Kingdom Defunct companies of England Defunct retail companies of the United Kingdom Companies based in Solihull Food and drink companies disestablished in 2012 Retail companies disestablished in 2012 2012 disestablishments in England

Three Cooks

Cooks the Bakery

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