A bread-maker has come up with a novel way of raising dough for his new business. Richard McComb talks to Tom Baker.

The city of a thousand trades has never seen a business structuring plan like it.

Investors in a new artisan bakery and cookery school in Birmingham will earn interest payments not in cash, but in loaves of bread.

That’s not the only unusual thing about the project. The other is the location – Brum’s newest ecole de cuisine will be in Stirchley.

The suburb, known for its commuter thoroughfare, Pershore Road, and myriad take-aways might not be the obvious choice for a gastronomic venture, but then Tom Baker – forager, pasta chef, food preserver and, naturally, baker – is not your average food entrepreneur.

Tom, aged 29, one of the driving forces behind the initiative, gave up his NHS dietician job to set up a local food-based social enterprise.

LOAF was formed two years ago, during which time Tom has set up cookery classes from his terrace home and established a popular Friday bakery round, churning out sourdough from his wood-fired mud oven.

He continues to be a key player in local food projects such as Stirchley Community Market, which was launched last year and has become a permanent neighbourhood fixture, centred on the car park of a working men’s club with 30 stalls. (They move inside for the winter.)

Tom’s next step, however, is potentially his most exciting, and daring, yet. By Christmas, he and his three fellow LOAF directors hope to have opened Stirchley Village Store and Bakery.

The cosy complex, on Pershore Road, will house a cookery school, fronted by Tom, as well as a bakery and a store selling wholefoods and cupboard staples, like rice and pasta.

If it works, it could become a model for sustainable suburban food sales, catering to shoppers with a social conscience and those who have long since tired of the corporate might of the supermarkets.

Tom says: “I think it has the potential to become a food centre. There seems to be a lot of energy around Stirchley.”

His idea has become a reality thanks to an innovative partnership with Leicestershire-based brewer and property owner Everards. The company is keen to back local food and drink producers, such as bakers and chocolate makers, in its pubs and properties as part of Project Artisan.

It also wants to back artisan enterprises, such as LOAF, through new partnerships in unconventional commercial settings.

Tom explains how LOAF’s directors had been looking for a unit in Stirchley for nine months when they were contacted by Everards with an offer that was too good to refuse: if the brewer acquired a property in central Stirchley and paid to refurbished it, would LOAF be interested as moving in as tenant?

Tom and his team were overjoyed. Under the arrangement, they will pay rent to Everards, at a favourable rate, and will need to raise £20,000 to fit out the cookery school and bakery, including ovens and equipment. Hence the bread bonds.

As part of a community bond issue, LOAF is seeking 20 backers who will each purchase £1,000 worth of bonds. The money will be paid back after three years and bond holders will receive a fortnightly loaf of sourdough, in lieu of interest payments, during the 36-month contract. Investors get a money-back guarantee – and a regular loaf of some of the finest bread in Birmingham.

The wholefood shop, in a former billiard and pool shop, will be run by South Birmingham Food Co-op. The group will get the unit rent-free in return for selling the bread from Tom’s bakery.