Rosie Ginday trained as a high-end pastry chef and worked in a Michelin starred restaurant before creating Miss Macaroon, a social enterprise combining premium quality food with opportunities for young people seeking a career.
Since opening its first retail store in Birmingham, Miss Macaroon has grown from producing 500 macaroons per day to over 7,000. It is the only patisserie in the world able to create macaroons matched to specific Pantone colours, enabling the firm to secure numerous corporate and wedding customers.
And thousands of discerning cake-lovers buy its gluten-free concoctions online and from its Colmore Row shop, or visit tasting events featuring Ginday’s macaroons which “harness art and science.”
Indulgence is, according to Ginday, a virtue at Miss Macaroon as the business reinvests all profits into training and employing long-term unemployed young people in retail and catering.
Its MacsMAD (Macaroons that Make A Difference) training courses enable people to build their confidence and skills to become work ready.
Each course, for small groups of trainees aged 18 to 35, involves learning from peer mentors who are MacsMAD graduates with jobs. Professional head chefs provide tours of their kitchens.
Trainees learn industry and workplace skills which they can practice in Miss Macaroon’s production kitchen or macaroon and prosecco bar. A bespoke and wide-ranging programme addresses personal barriers to employment, and there’s one-to-one mentoring throughout the course, during follow on work experience and as trainees go into employment for up to six months.
MacsMAD trainees leave the course with five-year plans, an up to date CV, extensive interview practice, industry contacts and help to apply for jobs.
Despite Rosie’s commercial success and extensive recognition for her social impact, when she needed to access capital to grow Miss Macaroon she was let down by traditional lenders.
But a business loan from BCRS Business Loans, a responsible finance provider, with match funding from Big Venture Challenge, enabled Rosie to fund Miss Macaroon’s expansion and facilitated the employment of four full time staff.
