Baked goods business in Corby opens new afternoon tea room

A Corby company that makes handmade artisan sausage rolls, afternoon tea, platters and buffets, have opened their very own tea room.

Pinkys Pastries opened their afternoon tea room to the public within the grounds of Blackthorn Wood in Cottingham last week (Thursday, September 28).

The business is open primarily as an afternoon tea destination but as of Monday (October 9), they will be accepting walk-in orders.

They have two slots for afternoon tea: 12pm-2pm and 2.30pm-4.30pm. Booking is available both online and over the phone and they’ll be offering a different menu each month.

The business was originally started 3 years ago by husband and wife Rob and Natalia Pinkerton, who ran it from their home in Corby.

It all began one summer, when they were enjoying an afternoon in the garden hosting a family BBQ.

They had whipped up some homemade sausage rolls for the event, and they were an instant hit with the whole family.

With the success of the sausage rolls within the family, they started making more and testing new flavours and asking friends and family alike to be their testers.

With a few careful tweaks, their base recipe was perfected and soon after this, they had a logo, and began selling their sausage rolls across Corby, and it wasn’t long before they began to include bakes, pastries, platters, and buffets.

From there, the business has grown and grown, amounting to the afternoon tea room they have now.

Rob said: “The business outgrew the space we had at home, it couldn’t grow anymore than what we were churning out. We were turning away buffets left right and centre, just because we didn’t have the capacity. This was an ideal opportunity and space for us.”

Rob and Natalia have taken the opportunity as a chance to have more family time as well - which is important to them and their business ethos.

Rob said: “The whole ethos is the family. We don’t open Sundays, and that’s a family reason not a religious reason.

“We decided to start our own business so that we could have that work life balance that you’re not always afforded in a retail job.

“With how quick we’d grown just the two of us, we completely lost that. But now that we’re employing people it’s great.

“It’s quite a proud feeling that you can employ someone to sustain their family and likewise with all the work we’ve had done, we’ve used all local businesses to do it and that’s been really important.”

They’ll still be doing everything they’ve always done but now it will all be based out of the tea room in Cottingham.

As of Monday (October 9) they will be doing a ‘cake of the day’ and they will also be selling hot breakfast rolls between 8-11am for the early morning golfers.

To find out more information visit their website or Facebook page.