The internet makes big claims. Business courses encourage you to establish yourself as THE expert. But to us it feels like an inauthentic approach, there is no one expert.
So we want to be honest with you: We’re not the first gluten free, dairy free bakery with refined sugar free and vegan options. We established in 2009 and were running from 2010. We are older than some of the other “first” gluten free, dairy free bakeries with refined sugar free and vegan options in the UK. That’s cool. Claiming that place might seem essential for a young company; because as the internet will advise you – you have to be THE expert!
This means involved, name-dropping, super-businessy origin stories. But the reality of business is more fat controller than Thomas the tank engine. It is unglamourous, requires a lot of research, a lot of wandering around warehouses not knowing exactly where you are, meeting potential partners (sometimes this can be as bad as online dating) and, in the case of food, some time in the kitchen. Markets are exhilarating and exhausting with some people who have no interest in buying from you using the opportunity instead to practice their best Alan Sugar impressions. And while I am sorry to say this, the aspiring Lord Sugar’s have all come up lacking.
Welcoming you home
We didn’t get into business to sell you the idea of a super slick, all-singing, all-dancing gluten-free, dairy-free bakery. We set up Nine Tea Cups to welcome you home to your own body through food, support and fitness should you wish. When we were diagnosed as having numerous intolerances, our lives felt closed and our relationships with our bodies changed. We became somewhat separated from ourselves.
Between that and the media’s push to fulfill whatever kind of human they told you to be, that gap felt bigger.
When we tried the mainstream free-from offerings that were around, we struggled because we couldn’t eat most of the fillers in them. Cue much stomach rumbling whenever we left the house and forgot to pack a snack – this happened a lot in the early days. (Just to be clear; we’re not hating on any free-from offerings, they are an important part of many people’s diets. But what works for one person may not work for another). We knew we weren’t the only people in the world who struggled with various food stuffs, including the things that were in the foods that were supposed to be safe for us.
This increased that gap, we had to learn new approaches to “be” in the world. We wanted to be reunited with our former selves, and much of our work has led us to the conclusion that that can’t happen. Because today is not yesterday. And that carob cookie is not the chocolate chip cookie that you adored before you could no longer tolerate chocolate. Who you or I were 10, 20 or even 1 year ago, are not the same people. Our tastes change, our bodies change, and our minds change.
Nine Tea Cups is here to support you in your journey in the process of coming home to yourself. Because every story matters.
With that, let me tell you about the gluten-free shops that we used to attend. In those days they were referred to as “specialist”, “health” or “ethnic” food shops. Some of which have been around since the 1970s. Matta’s in Liverpool, for example, or the wonderful Daily Bread Co-Operative in Northampton, or the brilliant Northants school food markets run by mums – including ours – as fundraisers. Our table featured fat-free, sugar-free, egg-free cakes, wheat-free breads (at the time gluten wasn’t common parlance), and foods from our kitchen. The cakes were so popular that mum would end up scrawling the recipe on a piece of paper and handing it out with each cake sale. To this day her friends still talk about the markets and still enjoy her cakes.
Our creations are influenced by our clients and the many wonderful teachers we have met along the way. We’re not the first and that is ok. Buying into life as a marathon and a race is to ignore the diversity of humanity, if it works for you then great but we are all different and that is why we have such a rich tapestry of human experience.
We are part of something bigger, the human capacity to create, to share and to inspire.
What the paleo diet has taught us is that gluten is a fairly recent introduction into the human diet, what life experience will also have taught us all is that even people who can eat gluten do eat gluten-free and dairy-free meals with some regularity; rice and a curry, roast meat and vegetables, omelettes. . .the list goes on.
Every time any of us claim our place as “first”, we unwittingly erase the people who came before us.
We’re not the first, that would be impossible. Every single gluten-free bakery that is around today originated in a home kitchen, we know of a woman in Ireland who sold “wheat free” bread from her home back in the 1940s. Every time any of us claim our place as “first”, we unwittingly erase the people who came before us. The truth is that without them, we wouldn’t be here.
In business we’re often told to squash the competition, we don’t want to do that. There is room for everyone, and every one has different tastes. We are all here because of the people who came before us. If you let go of the idea that competition is equal to worth then you will see the rich landscape of creativity, inspiration and magic that we all share. If you would like to know more about our origin story, click here or visit us on instagram
