After training in Bakery and Confectionery together at Wrexham, the two school friends decided to set up in business from a shop in Llanrwst in 1989. “We had both been working for local bakeries and opened our shop only eleven days after giving up our jobs and after doing all the painting and tiling ourselves,” says Rhian Owen.

Within six months they had taken on another member of staff and, in 1991, they renovated and converted farm buildings outside the town to accommodate the increasing production side of the business. “At first, with so few of us, we were rattling around in the building, but, by 2006 we were employing about sixteen staff, and, having converted more and more of the building and added a portacabin, we were still bursting at the seams!” Rhian explains.

In the meantime, in 2002 the two had decided to close the shop, which was being increasingly pushed towards the lunchtime trade and facing changes in shopping habits, to concentrate further on developing their wholesale bakery business. Realising they needed to expand, the Rhians had a state-of-the-art 5,000 square foot bakery unit designed and built with the help of a Welsh Assembly Government Processing and Marketing Grant on Parc Tŷ Gwyn, Llanrwst, to where they moved the business in 2006. “We invited our college lecturers and previous bosses to the opening and it was lovely to be able to show them what we’ve achieved since then,” added Rhian.

Now employing twenty-one people, they have been able to devote more time to developing their product range and to increasingly using local and regional products in their recipes. Their Quiche Eryri combines Llanrwst-grown leeks with Snowdonia Cheese whilst the region’s toffee-vodka liqueur is incorporated into their Toffoc Crunch cheesecake. Delivery vans displaying their characteristic sepia-tone branding of little boy in chef’s hat can often be seen throughout North and Mid Wales whilst the Siwgr a Sbeis stand at various food festivals throughout the country is always manned by the Rhians, often with the help of their children who are obviously budding entrepreneurs themselves!