Birds Bakery is getting ready to reopen its doors in Mansfield tomorrow (3 October) after undergoing a full refurbishment to modernise the store and give it a fresh new look.

Located on West Gate, the family-run bakery will feature a new purpose-built hot serving counter running straight across the shop, which has been designed to showcase the bakery’s ‘food to go’ offering, as well as a new takeaway coffee machine.

The high street bakery, famous for its freshly-baked doughnuts and homemade sausage rolls, will reopen at 8am on Saturday, with the usual social distancing and face covering rules in place.

Pictured top are Richard Brown, store manager at Birds Bakery Mansfield, and regular customer Julie Tidewell.

Lesley Bird, chief operating officer at Birds Bakery, said: “We are really pleased to be welcoming customers back to our Mansfield store tomorrow, after temporarily closing for a short period this week to carry out the refit. We are committed to investing in our stores, with an emphasis on our takeaway food offering, as that is where we are currently seeing the demand.

“We have invested in £85,000 to refit our Mansfield store, to include new high-quality equipment and technology, including new TV screens and a hot serving counter, to help provide the best possible experience when visiting a Birds store.”

As one of Birds’ 60 branches, the Mansfield store will also be the first Birds Bakery store to pilot the reintroduction of cash, after coin payments were initially restricted at the start of lockdown, to help prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Lesley added: “We will be trialling the reintroduction of cash at a select number of stores, with Mansfield being the first branch to pilot the reintroduction. Although we will be accepting cash, contactless or card payment methods will still be our preferred method of payment.

Mike Holling, sales and marketing director at Birds Bakery, and Richard Brown, store manager.

“We have consulted with our staff on the reintroduction of cash, and it is imperative that we keep each one of our employees safe. At Birds, we take the safety of our staff and customers very seriously – and have therefore had very tight procedures in place during this pandemic.

“Like many other food outlets during COVID-19 we asked customers only to use debit cards and contactless payment because notes and coins are not clean – and this poses a risk to our staff who are handling that money. Our focus is to keep our frontline staff safe as well as our customers – the majority of whom are elderly and vulnerable.

“We would also like to make customers aware that cash transactions may take a little longer when in store, because of the hygiene process required.”

Following Mansfield, there will be a further eight shops trialling cash from Monday, 12th October, including both stores in Sutton (Sutton and Sutton Lakeside Point).

The bakery, which sells a number of popular items in its branches, including homemade sausage rolls, cakes, pork pies and bread, was founded in 1919 and employs more than 700 people.

Birds Bakery is now also offering a ring and reserve service as well as the home delivery service. Through the ring and reserve service, customers can call any store to place an order, pay over the phone and then collect the order when the time is convenient.