A bakery, a bank, and brilliant new jobs

Half business. Half charity. Nottingham-based bakery Half The Story’s creates life-changing jobs that lift people out of poverty and reduce unemployment.

For biscuit maker Heather, work at the bakery was genuinely life-changing. Seeking asylum with her son, she had no fixed address when she started the role, and didn’t know where they would sleep from night to night. Now she has a newfound sense of optimism for life: “It has boosted my confidence. My job has given me a reason to wake up in the morning. It gives me a sense of comfort that I’m coming to work and being productive.”

Work gives Heather greater financial resilience. She’s no longer homeless. And the bakery itself has created a community for her to belong to, where colleagues provide support inside and outside of work.

But in 2024, demand for Half the Story’s biscuits started to outstrip supply. In MD Matt Parfitts’s words, their original bakery was “too hot in summer, too cold in winter, too small all the time”. Meeting that demand would mean they could create jobs and give support to more people like Heather.

The Lloyds Bank Foundation helped make it possible for Half the Story’s great idea to grow. Funding from the Foundation helped a significant bakery expansion, allowing Half the Story to expand their bakery team from 20 to 40 employees, and increase biscuit production from 1 million to 5 million per year.

More biscuits means more jobs, and more jobs means more people in a good place. Which is why the Foundation introduced Half the Story to Lloyds Banking Group. They’ve now become the Group’s supplier of biscuits, delivering more than 5,000 packets each month.

As a result of the Foundation’s connection to Lloyds Banking Group, Half the Story can now offer at least 100 extra hours of work to Heather and her colleagues.

“We take the best of business, and the best of charity, and we mix the two together,” says Matt. The result? More delicious biscuits. And more people in a good place.

You can read so much more about the impact Half the Story makes on their website.