'It was amazing!' Church Stretton bakery named best in Shropshire at national awards

Steele's Family Bakery only opened its doors on Easthope Road in November 2024 - but was this week celebrating after scooping the Best Bakery 2025 category for Shropshire in the English Business Awards.

The family-owned firm will now go head-to-head with the best in the country for the national title later this year.

Co-owner Rachel Steele said the business was "incredibly grateful" to its loyal customers after a whirlwind six months since opening last year. Having started as "a home baking operation which got a bit out of hand" during the Covid-19 pandemic, the bakery and shop now employs seven members of staff having moved into a former butchers' premises in Church Stretton.

"I was dumbstruck that we had actually won it! We only opened in November so to be named top bakery in Shropshire was amazing. To be honest it hasn't really sunk in yet as we've been so busy," she said.

"We had a letter come through to say we had been nominated for the award, although we didn't know who'd put us forward for it.

"It was down to a customer vote but also they do things like sending out a secret shopper, they look at your reviews and they look at your website, everything about your business basically."

The business got underway around five years ago when mum-and-son team Rachel and Joe Steele began baking in their home kitchen in south Shropshire, taking payment via an honesty box at the end of their drive. 

"I've been baking with the kids since they were little and it started as a hobby for me really, and it's taken us on this incredible journey, it's been unbelievable," added Rachel.

"I worked for the NHS and Joe worked as a butcher when we started baking. 

"Joe had bought some chickens and we had so many eggs. We built an honesty box at the bottom of our drive to get rid of them and it just went from there in a roundabout sort of way.

"Someone said we should put some of our cakes in the honesty box, from there we started baking bread and it got bigger and bigger. People started knocking on the door asking if we had any more bread, we put it on Facebook. it went mad basically."

The pair were joined by Rachel's husband Mark and daughter Lydia and having quickly outgrown a home baking operation, they started looking for proper premises in 2024 and said they caught a lucky break when a former bakery and butchers' came up for rent.

After its early success, the business is now planning a further expansion into first-floor offices above the shop, which are set to become a "pie-room" to help the business broaden its range of sweet and savoury pies.

"Baking in the kitchen had become quite hard going to be honest," said head baker Joe.

"We decided to start looking for places last year and luckily we managed to find this one quite quickly. It was already a bakery before so we'd got a bit lucky really and we took it on.

"It's a traditional bakery and that's what we aim to do. We do pretty much everything like an old-fashioned bakery."

Since winning the award, director Rachel says they've been inundated with well wishes from their customers ahead of a national vote set to take place later this year, when Steele's will go head-to-head with some of the best bakeries in the rest of the UK.

"The customers have been lovely, they've come in, they love that we've won it and it's for Church Stretton as well. We've had people coming in with cards and flowers all week and congratulating us," she added.

"We can't thank our customers enough, they make the place what it is and we're so grateful to all of them."