Our Great Grandfather, Thomas George Pullin, was a farmer from Gloucester. He had the land, crops, livestock and he was an early riser, so it seemed like a good fit. However, during the autumn of 1925 he decided to kick off his welly boots for the last time and start a bakery in a sleepy North Somerset village…

Before Thomas gave up farming he had two sons, Bryan and Leslie. When they were old enough to reach the dough table, Thomas began to train them in all things bread, ready to take over the reins later in life.

The early 1930s saw our first shop re-fit. We had just the one shop back then, next to a pub in the village. The shop is no longer there unfortunately, as we had to use the space to increase our production area in the 1990s.

Up until the mid 1930s we were delivering bread to our shops using horse and cart but these were slowly being replaced by Model T Ford motorcars. We also opened a shop on Hill Road in Clevedon and we are still there today.

Missing animals from his farming days, Thomas decided to keep (very happy) pigs in the back garden of the bakery, feeding them on surplus bread, buns and pastries. Today we donate any over-produced goods to Fareshare, helping feed the homeless and disadvantaged. Find out more here.

Leslie and Bryan carried the bakery through the war years, baking in darkness at times due to the blackout laws, with only the coal-fired ovens for light. Keep calm and carry on baking.

In 1952 we won our first award since before the war, when Leslie Pullin picked up the coveted Hovis Cup. His brother Bryan then won the following year against 800 other entries. Our trophy cabinet has been growing ever since. See a list of awards we’ve won over the years here.

Towards the end of the 70s and into the early 1980s, Angela (right) and Mike were born. Little did they know, pictured here playing in the snow in 1984, that soon they would be helping out after school in the bakery, icing buns and wrapping rolls…

Angela’s brother-in-law, Tristan, started helping out at the bakery in the mid 2000s just after university. Pictured here with Angela, together they launched a range of cookies under a new brand and started looking at supplying larger wholesale customers and the travel industry.

Tristan started working on rebranding the company towards the end of 2014 and the new look was unveiled early the following year to mark the bakery’s 90th birthday. The new logo uses Thomas George’s iconic hat and bushy moustache (created out of wheat).

In April 2016 we moved our cake production into a new bakery just over a mile down the road. The building had once been a ladder factory and we converted it into a BRC accredited bakery in a matter of months, with Mike frantically ordering ovens, organising freezers, deciding on the layout and generally not sleeping very much.

With two coeliacs in the family and a growing demand for gluten free bread that doesn’t taste of cardboard, we decided to set up a gluten-free bakery. A unit became available on a farm near Bath and we immediately set to work creating our brand and designing the range. In the Spring of 2017 Gleefully was born to critical acclaim, picking up several awards within the first year.

In December 2020 just two weeks before Christmas we opened our first Bristol shop in Westbury-on-Trym. It was a crazy time, with all of us working round the clock to make the launch a success in spite of Covid-19. We also launched an online shop that year to help people send gifts to loved ones they could no longer visit in person.

The disruption caused by Covid delayed the launch of our second Bristol shop, but finally in February 2022 we opened our doors on Cotham Hill – 90 years after opening our second ever shop in the coastal town of Clevedon. Good things come to those who wait.

After 10 years, our website deserved a bit of TLC. We launched our new site in April 2024 with a more functional online shop and a login area for our wholesale customers. We now offer letterbox cake gifts alongside our other products, which we send out daily all over the country. Next year we reach our first century of baking, so watch this space for more big news…