100-year-old Derry bakery to serve up new jobs as it puts £250,000 “in the oven”

A Derry company which celebrated its 100th anniversary this year is investing £250,000 in its future. Work should start before Christmas on a major expansion to McDaid’s Bakery at Skeoge that will create around five new jobs and take the firm’s workforce to around 50. The construction work will cap a memorable year for the family business which first opened in 1916. The bakery was started by Jim McDaid in a shed off Ferguson’s Lane and the date is proudly displayed in the livery of the company’s vans. Nowadays, the business is run by Jim’s grandson Paul who says it would be unrecognisable from the bakery his grandfather started. “God knows what my grandfather would’ve made of all this,” he said. Paul is the third generation of the family to run the business. He took over from his late father, Raymond, whose presence can still be felt at the firm. Paul points to a 70-year-old Hobart mixer which is still kept at the factory like a sacred relic. “My father bought his first mixer in the 40s – a Hobart exactly like that one – when they started selling off equipment from the American base. It was the first piece of electrical equipment they used in the bakery. Up till then they’d done everything by hand.” The equipment hasn’t been the only thing to change. The range of food products made at the bakery is set to widen. “The expansion will allow us to introduce new food lines,” Paul says. “We’ll be focusing on a number of new products, aimed at the growing savoury and gourmet snack markets. You have to try and keep up with changing trends and tastes in the food sector. Nowadays convenience foods are incredibly popular. So we work hard to satisfy that demand. McDaid’s Bakery has been through two World Wars, a Rising, the Great Depression, the recent recession, the Troubles, and a serious fire. “That was 20 years ago when we were in Great James Street. It nearly wiped us out,” he said. The business survived, moved from the city centre to Skeoge, and was reincarnated as U-Bake, although the name-change was lost on its customer base. “We started U-Bake 18 years ago,” Paul explained, “but to Derry people we’ll always be known as McDaid’s.” Paul joined his father full-time in 1976; his late brother, Dessie, was already working there. “Dessie was more into the baking side of things. I concentrated on distribution and sales.” Since then the firm has gone from strength to strength. The job of steering the business through the next 100 years should eventually fall to the next generation. “Our customers have been incredibly loyal to us – local people, local shops who’ve bought our products for 100 years. As long as we keep to the same formula – good quality products, good customer service and reasonable prices – we should be here to stay,” said Paul. Photo shows Paul McDaid and his son John.