As the founder and director of The Sussex Kitchen, Alex Jacobs is our number one supporter, taster, business brain and bread fanatic. He’s also a friend, and a pretty cool guy to kick back with after a long day at the kitchen.
Alex has been passionate about food since his childhood. He credits his gran for that: she taught him tons of wonderful recipes that he still uses to this day, and inspired him to continue learning more and more about cooking and baking -- so much so that he started buying almost every cook-book on the market, obsessively researched through cooking and baking websites, entertained his friends to constant dinner parties and tried thousands of recipes until he grew confident and knowledgeable.
That’s Alex in a nutshell - hard working, passionate and always striving to excel.
Determined to hone his craft, he worked as a chef in several London restaurants before starting The Sussex Kitchen in 2011. It began as a catering company before evolving into a small artisanal bakery, and as a one man show, before growing into a business that currently counts a multicultural team of 20 talented bakers and staff members.
Alex has always believed that community and family revolve around good food. Sitting together in the evening and breaking bread is where all the best conversations happen. That’s why his dream was to offer his customers an opportunity to not only buy bread and pastries but also high quality seasonal produce. Now that has become a reality, The Sussex Kitchen web-shop offers organic vegetables from local farmers, quality cheeses from his Italian buddies, eggs from down the road, biodynamic super products, top quality oils and vinegars, organic meat, jams, honey and so much more.
A few fun facts about him: he is a qualified acupuncturist, holds a degree in Arts & Sciences, enjoys pottery, archery and diving and his sourdough bread has won several world bread awards. We haven’t found anyone yet to dislike it.
Oh, and he’s great to work with (and no, we weren’t asked to say that. It’s just true).