EP70 | Andy Haddon | Bees, Bread and Belief | Local Heroes Podcast

<span;>This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit down with Andy Haddon - beekeeper, baker, accidental troublemaker, and the man Charlotte Crosby once crowned "the David Attenborough of the Stottie."

<span;>Andy's the founder of Big River Bakery in Shieldfield, but that's only where the story lands.

<span;>We start with bees - the waggle dance, the venom that kills cancer cells, and what twenty years of getting stung teaches you about altruism, resilience and the interconnected life.

<span;>From there it's a proper journey: a psychology degree, learning to fly at Cranfield to go and kill locusts, cold stores at minus 25, designing Marks & Spencer's Christmas hamper system, and a few empty years working for big companies for profit alone before a moment on a Shanghai high street sent this Geordie boy home.

<span;>What he built when he got here is something rarer than a bakery.

<span;>Andy talks about turning a pallet of leftover Spamalot tins into the seed money for a village climate group, growing the first wheat in Newcastle for 200 years, six or seven years without a wage, and why the bakery is really a business model in disguise - healthy, affordable food for all, with neurodiverse folk on the payroll and a cross-subsidy that keeps prices honest.

<span;>We get into shortening the supply chain, why you have to start where people are rather than preach rosemary sourdough at them, and the three times he very nearly didn't make it home.

<span;>And of course, the Stottie - going extinct until Andy brought it back, gave it a giant suit and appearance money, trademarked the Stottini, and turned the stale loaves into Stottie beer.

<span;>Plus a serious debate about whether you could strap two stotties to your palms and survive a fall.

<span;>Then the all-important food finish: top three stottie fillings, curry chips versus gravy, mushy peas on the fish, and a Greggs order that needs a time machine to answer.

<span;>#LocalHeroesPodcast #BigRiverBakery #Stottie #NorthEast #Shieldfield #NationalStottieWeek

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