Thinking of moving to England

[Blinger]

Oh hi guys,
Without sounding too formal, I am a twenty one year old Aussie who is about to finish his apprenticeship and fairly keen to explore more of the world! So for this reason I wanna move or at least live in London for a while (1 year +). The thing is, I'm a baker by trade (specialising in bread) and I have no idea where I would even start to look for a job over there. Are there any big chains (I just read about Greggs - are they good?).
I have limited knowledge about cakes and **** like that but am defs gonna expand that section.

• So yeah, quizzicle, what part of England/London would be a good place to move to?
• I know London is expensive, I fell in love with it when I went there 1 year ago. I've only been around the city (I stayed near Russell Square I think).
• I saw Sainsbury's and Tesco had fresh a bread section, is that baked in store or at a factory and delivered everyday?
• How easy would it be for a migrant to get a working visa over there?

Hmm, not sure what else I should ask or if you guys would even know the answer!
@bolt660 / @Martin - I know you did work as a "baker"...

[Cerys]

Most large shops, like tesco and sainsburys bake all of their bread etc in store. if you wanted to work in a proper bakery, greggs is the best place to look for.
They have shops up and down the country. Imo the food is really nice there :3
In greggs you could also start getting more experience of baking cakes and pizzas etc.

I'm not too sure about the best place to go, and the visa, sorry!

imo though, probably moving to the surrounding villages of london would be better as I think houses are cheaper there. Not too sure though

Good luck when you finally do move!!

[beth]

i wouldn't move over at the moment, unemployment is at a height and i don't think it'd be that easy to find work in the capital even with yr qualifications.

i mean, probably the best idea for you would be start yr own bakery somewhere. greggs isn't a "bakers" as such, the food is made in batch in factories and then the staff put it into the oven, it's just fast food really.

[Cerys]

probably the best idea for you would be start yr own bakery somewhere. greggs isn't a "bakers" as such, the food is made in batch in factories and then the staff put it into the oven, it's just fast food really.

Yeah, starting a bakery would be a good idea.

+ I'm not sure about down in London, but the greggs near me make all of their products from scratch in the bakery.

Obviously where you live, it might be different

[Robbie]

move to oldham with me

[Blinger]

Starting my own bakery is my goal in the end, but financially at under 25 and moving to an entirely new country? Extremely unlikely!

I said London because I enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city, I like the fact there are clubs and young people around..id be fine with living somewhere smaller but not where there are only 100 people in a town! Lol. Is unemployment low everywhere?

The Gregg's website did look a bit like a factory setting, what are the big chains over there? Here they are Brumbies and Bakers Delight! Do tesco and sainsbury's enploy fulltime bakers?

[Blinger]

move to oldham with me

Become a software engineer with you and we can start our own habbz?

[beth]

Starting my own bakery is my goal in the end, but financially at under 25 and moving to an entirely new country? Extremely unlikely!

I said London because I enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city, I like the fact there are clubs and young people around..id be fine with living somewhere smaller but not where there are only 100 people in a town! Lol. Is unemployment low everywhere?

The Gregg's website did look a bit like a factory setting, what are the big chains over there? Here they are Brumbies and Bakers Delight! Do tesco and sainsbury's enploy fulltime bakers?

i'm not really sure about baking but i did do food production GCSE at school, and i think the majority of the big supermarkets are all baked at factory level and reheated in store. greggs is definitely like that.

we don't really have any "big" baker brands, i suppose you have the big bread brand which is warburtons/hovis/kingsmill but they're all factory jobs too.

i think you'd be surprised at how easy it would be to start yr own bakery. whilst unemployment is high the british government are promoting entrepreneurship (hope i spelt that right) and there's so many different grants for someone to do these things. i know the job centre (the big uk centre for the unemployed) offers a £5000 no payback grant to help and there's all sorts of initiatives.

i think what might be best for you if you do come here (even though i'd recommend against it now and wait 4/5 years) is to get yrself enrolled upon a british vocational qualification in baking or something related and then you'd learn how to get straight into industry over here.

[Misawa]

Supermarkets throw frozen ingredients into an oven, the same as Greggs. Only proper bakers are the struggling independents.

[Jordy]

How on earth is he supposed to afford the rent and start-up to open a bakery in London? The deposit alone to begin renting a shop in London would be very expensive. It's a ridiculous idea not to mention tax incentives, benefits etc won't be available to non-UK Residents.

First of all I'd suggest you don't move to a town or city in the UK which is London or further South of it, typically everything in these regions is inflated so it's not an ideal place to begin. If I'm completely honest, things in the UK are generally cheaper the further North you go. There's plenty of great cities north of London. Birmingham and Manchester are both very large and other cities I'd consider are Cardiff, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh.

I'd look online to see how easy it would be to get a visa to work and live over here for a few years, that shouldn't be too difficult to do (I assume as a member of the Commonwealth it shouldn't be that difficult?). Then again you need to consider that a UK baker moving to Australia probably wouldn't be accepted as it's not a career there's much demand for in Australia I believe, it probably works the opposite way too, you'll be able to find online if the skills of a baker are something the UK requires.

My final suggestion would be to visit the UK and see the cities I've suggested and look into how feasible it is to get a job over here, obviously you can look at Greggs the bakery online and I'd also look at the "big five" supermarkets (Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury, Morrisons and Waitrose) and perhaps Pret a manger too. When you're in the UK you could find independent bakeries and see if they'd be interested in you working for them and build up some contacts (which you will definitely need).