Founded by a young husband and wife, Frederick and Alice Coopland, Cooplands began trading as a small pork butcher and pie maker on Market Street, Scarborough. Their bestselling pork pies and savouries start to make a name for the Coopland family.

Frederick Coopland passes away at only 47, leaving his wife Alice in charge of the business and their four children. In 1915 a disastrous fire destroys the shop on Market Street leaving. Alice and her children with only the clothes they are wearing. She opens a new shop on Newborough, Scarborough, which remains company HQ for the next 45 years.

Alice Coopland passes away and her only son, Frederick Coopland (known as ‘Mickey’) and his wife Ellen (known as ‘Nicky’) take over the business.

In 1942, Frederick (Mickey) Coopland dies and his wife Ellen takes charge of the business.
After the war their son, Freddie, returns from the Navy and inherits the business, aged 17. Freddie trains in baking and confectionery and moves the company into bakery products.

Huge development on the Newborough site. The updated premises sees the town’s first self-service supermarket on the ground floor, with a restaurant above and a bakery on the second. During the 1960s, a further 11 shops, 2 cafés and state of the art bakery open.

Cooplands current managing director, Paul Coopland, joins the family business in 1984. The company begins to grow again and quickly doubles to 10 shops. Plans are drawn up to find a new site to build a larger bakery.

In 1985 Cooplands celebrated their centenary. Paul Coopland, joins the business. The company begins to grow again and doubles in size. The new, modern bakery completes in 1991 at Eastfield, Scarborough. 8 years later, 10 more shops open which necessitates a 20,000 sq. ft. extension to the new bakery.

In 2001, we gain the National Training Award for excellent training services for staff. Four years later, we establish an NVQ training centre and expand further by acquiring Hull-based bakery Skeltons and all 37 of their shops.

We continue to recognise the importance of high quality training and set up our own bakery college and take on 16 apprentices. The business grows rapidly as it acquires Woodhead’s bakery in Scarborough, Ainsley’s in Leeds and Peters Cathedral Bakers in the North East. This brings the total number of shops to over 155, supplied to from 3 bakeries.

We get an investment from BGF of £8.5m. This was used to accelerate the rollout of Cooplands shops, expand the sandwich van service and develop production facilities. As part of the changes Belinda Youngs is appointed as CEO in 2019.

During the pandemic we remain committed to serving communities by keeping as many shops open as possible. We launched an online service for essential food parcels, used our delivery drivers and vans to deliver to people’s doors and delivered over 1,200 food parcels to the most vulnerable and shielding.

In 2021 Cooplands Bakery was acquired by The EG Group, which was founded in 2001 by the Issa Family. The Cooplands heritage remains an important part of the next chapter of development for the business. The planned investment that EG will make into the business will allow Cooplands to grow & develop.

We now employ over 2000 people and are the second-largest bakery chain in the UK.