Rising star looks towards expanding enterprise

WHEN Amanda Perry first started baking cupcakes in the kitchen of her Sheffield terrace home she never envisaged that, four years on, she would be at the centre of a burgeoning cake empire.

After opening up Fancie outlets in Doncaster and Barnsley in January, the 34-year-old is now looking at selling her cupcakes in Leeds and York.

“I still live in the house in Hillsborough where it all started”, she said. “I hope one day there’ll be a blue plaque outside it! It’s also quite close to the bakery, which is just off Penistone Road, so it’s not too bad if I get called out in the middle of the night. I’m still very much hands-on.”

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Born in Leeds, Miss Perry grew up in Cornwall but moved back to Yorkshire in 2001 – purely by chance.

“It was literally a pin in a map situation”, she said.

“One night, after a few too many drinks, me and a few friends decided we wanted to live in a city. We put a pin in a map and it fell halfway between Leeds and Sheffield.

“We thought about Leeds, but decided to go and live in Sheffield.”

Despite being a trained pastry chef she began working for an agency, and later for BT.

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“It wasn’t long before I realised my heart wasn’t really in it. I started baking at home and taking the cupcakes into the office for people at work.

“It was a bit of stress relief for me to bake at home and there was no masterplan. But after a month or so, I stopped taking the cupcakes into work and people started ordering them instead, which was a strange experience.

“I’d sell a lot around Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and that sort of thing. It was then that I decided to take the plunge. There were only two or three other cupcake companies in the whole of England,” she said.

“Fancie was really a forerunner in the craze. The Victoria Sponge was probably the first one that I perfected, but a lot of the most popular flavours and designs we have now were ones that I started out with.”

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Amanda’s first cupcake shop, the original Fancie tearoom, opened in Sheffield’s trendy Sharrowvale Road in April 2009.

Almost three years on, every one of the eight or so tables is taken at every hour of the day, and a constant stream of passers-by pop in to buy boxes of treats to take away.

Less than a year later, Amanda opened her second Fancie outlet in the Winter Garden in Sheffield city centre. In November 2010 came a stall at Meadowhall and then, last month, two new stalls were opened at shopping centres in Doncaster and Barnsley.

“The council approached me about opening in the Winter Garden, which was very nice”, Miss Perry said.

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“It was very exciting, as it’s in the city centre and it’s a very prestigious location.

Over the last three years, Fancie has grown from a one-woman enterprise to a business employing more than 30 “Fancie Ambassadors” serving in the shops, 10 bakers, seven managers and three delivery drivers.

“We’ve got a really low turnover of staff”, she said. “It’s a really great place to work. All of our staff have input into the direction the business takes, because they’re our eyes and ears on the floor.

“I remember my brother once saying to me, ‘one day you’re going to have shops all over the place’, but I honestly never thought it was going to get this big.

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“The nice thing is that there’s been so much support in Sheffield. We’ve got really loyal customers, who aren’t afraid to give us feedback.”

The secret of the business, she said, is listening to customer feedback and using the best possible ingredients.

“We’re just about to sell our millionth cupcake – it absolutely blew my mind when I worked that out.”