Chris Gair does not lack ambition. This, after all, is the man who invented the Christmas buttery.
And went head to head with Jimmy White in an Elgin snooker hall.
But after a lifetime of amazing stories from a whirlwind career in hospitality, the Forres man has made another step into the unknown.
Last week, Chris expanded the home bakery he started from his house in lockdown, called Bakes You Knead, into its first premises at the Horizon business centre.
It means that as well as having a bigger kitchen to bake in, Chris is the proud owner of a cafe, which serves the business centre in Forres’ Enterprise Park.
It is a natural next step for Chris, who has extensive experience in both the front and back of restaurants during a career that has taken him far and wide.
“All the jobs that I’ve done, all the experience that I’ve gathered over the years, is built into Bakes You Knead,” the 55-year-old says.
The Horizon building cafe opened last Monday and has already been a roaring success.
But the main reason for Chris’s relocation is the roomy kitchen that comes with the cafe that is the new home for Bakes You Knead’s online bakery.
Here, Chris will continue to expand the business he launched in November 2020 after the pandemic closed the hospitality industry.
The origins of the Christmas buttery
Like all good things, Bakes You Knead started with a buttery.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” Chris says. “So I started making butteries for my friends and family and then just went from there.”
Soon, Chris was making pies and sausage rolls. He quickly moved to making cakes and other confections and sending them all over the UK to people that found him through his Facebook page.
Butteries, however, remain a speciality
An Aberdonian woman who had relocated to Surry in the south of England orders 12 of them from Chris every month.
And then there is the Christmas buttery.
“It was just mincemeat and butteries,” says Chris with a laugh, adding that the festive rowies sold well.
“I only did them just this past Christmas. I just thought okay, I’ve got a jar of mincemeat, here’s what we’re going to do with it. And I hate mincemeat.”
Missing out on the Salisbury novichok poisonings
Chris’s journey to the Christmas buttery started when he took his first job after leaving school in Elgin in 1984. He was an apprentice baker with Simmers and learned the art of buttery making first-hand.
In 1989, he got his first taste of hospitality at The Thunderton pub in Elgin, and two years later started working for local whisky specialists Gordon & Macphail.
Later he joined the Littlejohns restaurant chain and in 2000 moved to Salisbury to head up the outlet in the cathedral city.
He recalls the time fondly, and is happy that his time there preceded the restaurant’s fame as the one at the centre of the 2018 novichok poisonings.
After a few more moves, Chris relocated to Canada in 2014, where he spent six months working as a chef at an outdoor kitchen overlooking Lake Ontario.
The day Chris played Jimmy White at snooker
Now firmly settled in Forres, Chris plans to continue building the reputation of Bakes You Knead.
He is also looking forward to brining more people into the Horizon cafe.
“I want to get the coffee going, and have people sitting on their backside, because I’ve got the restaurant experience as well,” Chris says.
As for his Jimmy White story, that has nothing to do with his hospitality career.
Instead, it’s down to his love of snooker, and a memorable night when he won the chance to play two frames against one of the greatest players the game has seen.
“Elgin townhall, 1992,” recalls Chris, who says Jimmy was in town for an exhibition match with Willie Thorne.
“I think [Jimmy] was world number two at the time, so at the height of his powers.”
And did he win?
“Of course not,” says Chris with a smile.
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