Coughlans Bakery: Menu, Cakes, Bread and Customer Favourites

Coughlans Bakery is a family-run artisan bakery brand founded in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1937. The business built its reputation on fresh bread, savoury pastries, custom cakes, and one of the largest vegan bakery ranges in the United Kingdom. At its peak, Coughlans operated 31 retail shops across South London, Surrey, Kent, and West Sussex, supported by a central bakery headquarters and two mobile catering units. The brand ceased retail trading in mid-2026 following financial difficulty, and its assets were subsequently acquired by Janes Bakery Limited, which is working to reopen a portion of the former sites. This article sets out the complete, factual record of Coughlans Bakery: its menu, its bread, its cakes, its customer favourites, its ownership history, and its current operating status.

What Is Coughlans Bakery?

Coughlans Bakery is a third-generation, family-owned British bakery chain founded in 1937 that produced fresh bread, cakes, pastries, and vegan baked goods across South East England, operating 31 shops before entering voluntary liquidation in June 2026.

The business was established by Jack Coughlan as a single bakery in Thornton Heath, a district in the London Borough of Croydon. Over nine decades, ownership passed from Jack Coughlan to his son Peter, and then to Peter’s son, Sean Coughlan, who became managing director. Sean’s sisters, Virginia and Jackie, held the roles of head of retail and company accountant respectively. The company described itself as an artisan bakery, meaning products were made by hand using traditional baking methods rather than industrial mass production. Coughlans supplied bread, cakes, sandwiches, hot savoury food, and confectionery to retail customers through its shop network and to corporate clients through a wholesale and events catering arm.

What Is the History of Coughlans Bakery?

Jack Coughlan founded the bakery in Thornton Heath in 1937. The current bakery headquarters was established at the same location in 1971. The business marked its 75th anniversary in 2013 and reached 87 years of continuous trading by 2024.

The bakery remained a single-site operation for its first decades before expanding into a multi-shop retail chain across South London and the neighbouring counties of Surrey, Kent, and West Sussex. In 2013, Sean Coughlan ended a number of large-scale wholesale supply contracts. He stated that wholesale clients wanted products made with lower-cost ingredients, which conflicted with the company’s focus on quality. That same year, the business reverted formally to trading under the name “Coughlans Bakery” to mark its 75-year history. By 2019, the company operated 22 retail stores, a bakery headquarters, and two mobile sites, with products baked fresh and delivered to shops twice daily. By November 2024, the shop count had grown to 31. Forty-one members of the Coughlan family were employed across the business at the time of its 2026 closure, reflecting its continued identity as a multi-generational family enterprise.

What Locations Did Coughlans Bakery Operate?

Coughlans Bakery operated 31 retail shops across four counties in South East England: South London, Surrey, Kent, and West Sussex, including branches in Thornton Heath, Reigate, Epsom, Godstone, South Croydon, and Crawley.

The Thornton Heath branch functioned as the company headquarters and original bakery site, located near the local hospital on the High Street. Other confirmed branch locations included Reigate, Epsom, Godstone, South Croydon, and a shop inside a shopping centre in Crawley, West Sussex, which was the newest branch opened before the 2024 investment announcement from comedian Romesh Ranganathan. Individual branches varied in format: some operated as full sit-in bakery cafés with seating areas, while others functioned primarily as takeaway counters. Two mobile catering units supplemented the fixed shop network, allowing the business to serve events and markets outside its permanent locations.

What Is on the Coughlans Bakery Menu?

The Coughlans Bakery menu combined fresh bread, hot savoury pastries, toasted sandwiches, sweet treats, hot drinks, and custom cakes, with a significant proportion of the range made entirely from vegan ingredients.

The core menu structure followed a typical British high-street bakery format, divided into savoury food, bread, sweet treats, and drinks. Savoury items included traditional pasties, steak bakes, sausage rolls, and hot sausage baguettes, alongside toasted sandwiches made to order. Coughlans also produced a defined vegan range that mirrored its standard savoury menu, including a vegan steak bake and a vegan sausage roll. Sweet treats included doughnuts, yum yums, and seasonal items such as mince pies. Hot drinks, including coffee and oat-milk-based lattes, were available across shop locations. A customer rating of 4.2 out of 5 was recorded for the Reigate branch on the Uber Eats delivery platform, with hot sausage baguettes and toasties among the most frequently ordered items at that location.

What Savoury Items Did Coughlans Bakery Sell?

Coughlans Bakery’s savoury range included the Traditional Pasty, the Steak Bake, sausage rolls, hot sausage baguettes, toasted sandwiches, and a parallel vegan version of most items, including a vegan steak bake and vegan sausage roll.

The Traditional Pasty and Steak Bake were frequently ordered together, according to delivery platform data from the Reigate branch. In 2024, Coughlans launched a vegan bacon Wellington in partnership with the plant-based food brand THIS, positioning it as the UK’s first vegan bacon Wellington product. Coughlans also developed a vegan steak bake that was directly compared in a 2024 SurreyLive taste test against the Greggs vegan steak bake, a product from the larger UK bakery chain Greggs plc. Toasted sandwiches, referred to as toasties, were prepared fresh to order and formed a significant part of lunchtime trade across branches.

What Bread Does Coughlans Bakery Offer?

Coughlans Bakery produced fresh bread daily using flour milled less than 40 miles from its Thornton Heath headquarters, including soft and crusty loaves, sourdough, and currant buns, alongside gluten-free bread options at select branches.

Bread was central to the bakery’s identity as an artisan producer. The company sourced premium flour from a local mill and combined this with daily hand-baking to differentiate its bread from mass-produced supermarket alternatives. Confirmed bread products included standard soft and crusty sandwich loaves, sourdough loaves, and currant buns, the last of which received specific praise from customers at the Godstone branch. Gluten-free bread was available but was inconsistently stocked across the shop network, according to customer feedback collected from individual branches. Bread allergen information published by Coughlans confirmed the presence of wheat, gluten, yeast, milk, eggs, soya, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide, celery, peanuts, tree nuts, and mustard in its standard bread lines, reflecting shared production equipment across product types.

What Cakes Does Coughlans Bakery Make?

Coughlans Bakery produced custom-order cakes for personal celebrations alongside a standard retail cake range, including a dedicated “Heavenly Drippy Cake” range and seasonal cakes, most of which were available in vegan formulations.

Custom cake orders allowed customers to commission bespoke designs for birthdays, weddings, and other events, ordered directly through individual branches or the company website, with next-day collection available for the drippy cake range. The Heavenly Drippy Cake range referred to layered sponge cakes finished with a dripping icing or ganache effect running down the sides, a decorating style that became widely popular in UK bakeries during the 2020s. Cake decorating was one of the specific roles Sean Coughlan held earlier in his career before becoming managing director, and he retained oversight of new recipe development on a weekly basis. Given the bakery’s broader vegan strategy, a substantial share of its cake range was formulated without animal-derived ingredients, extending the company’s vegan positioning beyond its savoury pastry line into celebration cakes.

What Are the Most Popular Customer Favourites at Coughlans Bakery?

Customer reviews and delivery-platform order data identify hot sausage baguettes, the Traditional Pasty, the Steak Bake, sourdough bread, currant buns, vegan sausage rolls, yum yums, jam doughnuts, and custom celebration cakes as the most consistently praised Coughlans Bakery products.

Order data from the Uber Eats platform for the Reigate branch showed the Traditional Pasty and Steak Bake as commonly co-ordered items, with hot sausage baguettes ranked among the most popular individual products. At the Godstone branch, customer reviews specifically highlighted sourdough bread and currant buns as standout products, alongside praise for the branch’s vegan cake selection. At the Thornton Heath location, reviewers praised the vegan chicken salad box, oat-milk lattes, and vegan cheese pasty, describing the range of hot savoury food and vegan sweet treats as a differentiator compared with competing bakery chains. Seasonal mince pies received dedicated positive coverage in company-published customer feedback, and press coverage from The Sun newspaper in prior years described the bakery favourably in comparison with Greggs, the UK’s largest bakery chain by store count.

Does Coughlans Bakery Offer Vegan Options?

Coughlans Bakery offered one of the largest vegan product ranges of any independent UK bakery chain, spanning bread, pastries, cakes, and hot food, a strategy driven directly by managing director Sean Coughlan from the mid-2010s onward.

Sean Coughlan stated that his personal interest in reducing animal product consumption, motivated in part by considerations for his own young family, led him to expand the company’s vegan range significantly beyond typical industry norms. The company’s vegan range included savoury pastries such as the vegan steak bake and vegan sausage roll, a vegan bacon Wellington developed with the brand THIS in 2024, vegan sandwich fillings including a vegan chicken salad box, and multiple vegan cake options. This positioning distinguished Coughlans from larger national bakery chains, whose vegan ranges were typically smaller relative to their overall product lists. Trade press coverage in British Baker magazine confirmed that veganism was a deliberate strategic direction set by Sean Coughlan rather than an incidental feature of the menu.

Who Owns Coughlans Bakery?

Coughlans Bakery was owned by the Coughlan family for 87 years, led by third-generation managing director Sean Coughlan, until comedian and broadcaster Romesh Ranganathan purchased a minority stake in the business in November 2024, becoming its first non-family board member.

Ranganathan, born in Crawley, West Sussex, in 1978, is a British stand-up comedian, actor, and television presenter. He announced his investment in Coughlans Bakery on 28 November 2024 via a video posted to his Instagram account, which had more than 1.1 million followers at the time. The investment was made for an undisclosed sum and was announced at the company’s newest shop, located in Crawley. Sean Coughlan described the arrangement as the first time in the business’s 87-year history that a non-family member joined its board. Ranganathan’s involvement did not alter day-to-day operational control, which remained with Sean Coughlan and his sisters, Virginia and Jackie.

What Happened to Coughlans Bakery in 2026?

Coughlans Bakery ceased trading on 30 June 2026 and entered voluntary liquidation, closing all 31 of its shops after citing rising employer National Insurance Contributions, wage increases, fuel costs, and two heatwaves that reduced store revenue by approximately 50 per cent.

Sean Coughlan announced the closure in a video posted to Instagram, describing it as a decision taken to protect the company’s ability to pay staff and suppliers. He stated that increases to employer National Insurance Contributions introduced in April 2026, combined with wage increases, fuel costs linked to global conflict, and higher business rates, added approximately £20,000 in extra costs per week over the two months preceding closure. Two heatwaves during this period were identified as a decisive factor, with store revenue falling by around 50 per cent during the hottest periods, as consumers reduced footfall and demand for hot bakery food declined. Coughlan noted that March 2026 had been a strong trading month for the business shortly before the closure, indicating the collapse followed a rapid deterioration in trading conditions rather than a prolonged decline. The closure resulted in job losses for 170 employees, and Ranganathan, the company’s minority investor, was reported as devastated by the outcome.
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What Is the Future of Coughlans Bakery Under Janes Bakery?

Gloucestershire-based Janes Bakery Limited acquired Coughlans Bakery after its liquidation, for an undisclosed sum, with plans to reopen as many as 25 of the 31 former Coughlans shop locations under the Janes Bakery name.

The acquisition was completed after Coughlans’ full closure and confirmed that up to 25 former Coughlans sites could return to trading, though Janes Bakery had not confirmed specific reopening locations or dates at the time of the announcement. Former Coughlans staff, including some of the 170 employees who lost their jobs during the liquidation, were invited to reapply for positions with the new owner. The remaining former Coughlans locations, outside the 25 identified as potential reopenings, faced continued uncertainty regarding their future use. The acquisition preserved a route back into trading for a business that had operated across South East England for close to 90 years, though the Coughlans brand name and family ownership structure did not continue under the new arrangement. Anyone seeking current, branch-specific information on reopened locations should consult Janes Bakery’s official channels directly, since site-by-site status continues to change following the acquisition.