Welcome back to Piper’s long running podcast, How I Grew My Brand. We are delighted to start series seven with our host, Mary Nightingale, speaking to Tom Molnar, CEO and co-founder of Gail’s, the craft bakery and coffee shop brand that set out to bring better bread to the British high street.
As always, Mary explores the growth challenges founders face as they move through the 7,17,70 inflection points. For Tom, those moments are unmistakable. His “17” came as Gail’s grappled with the complexity of scaling, while holding onto the craft that made the product special. At the “70” stage and beyond, Tom talks about the need for stronger systems, clearer processes and a broader leadership team to support 4,000 people and more than 180 sites without losing the ethos at the heart of the brand.
Tom’s “seven” moment came much earlier, in the middle of the night at the bakery, when a top chef asked him to double an order of long fermentation sourdough. The bakers refused, worried it would damage the mother dough that underpins every loaf. That clash between customer demand and craft was the point at which he realised he had to listen harder to the people closest to the product, and that his role as founder was as much about learning as leading.
Throughout the episode, Tom talks about growing through personal and business challenges: from watching his entrepreneurial father face near‑bankruptcy more than once, to his own journey from Cargill and McKinsey to building a modern British bakery that not only serves millions but also drives conversations about better food, farming and community. The thread that runs through is resilience – riding out the dips, accepting complexity when it matters to the product, and protecting what Gail’s stands for, even if it means stopping growth until they’ve figured out how to do it right.
Not just a brand name, Gail Mejia opened her first bakery in London’s Hampstead High Street in 2005. When Tom met Gail not long after, she had built a bakery rooted in care for ingredients and the people who made the food. He bought into her ethos of better food and eventually took on the business she had created, and with her blessing, her name. Today, Gail’s stated purpose is “to feed people better and play a part in improving the food system in the UK”. Tom describes how this has evolved from celebrating bread to working directly with farmers and their miller, co-farming grains that are right for the soil first, then figuring out how to mill and bake them. Rather than telling farmers what to grow, the conversation starts with what’s best for the land and local communities.
For us, it’s a powerful example of the mindset needed to become a brand legend: a strong purpose, a better and different product rooted in craft, and a culture able to scale from 7 to 17 to 70 without losing what makes the brand special. It also requires leaders who bring in operators and investors with the right skills and values, people who support the mission rather than reshape it. Tom talks openly about selecting investors who respect that the business is run by bakers, not financiers, and about his responsibility to hand on Gail’s in better shape, just as Gail did when she told him, “Don’t mess it up”.
It’s a conversation about resilience, pace and staying true to what makes you better and different, told through the lens of one of the UK’s best known bakery brands. Enjoy the listen. We loved recording it.