An 89-year-old family bakery has become the latest high-street casualty of Britain’s mounting cost crisis, closing its doors for good and taking with it one of the more unlikely celebrity business partnerships of recent years.
Coughlans Bakery, which ran a chain of shops across Kent, Surrey, West Sussex and south London, ceased trading on Tuesday after slipping into voluntary liquidation. The comedian Romesh Ranganathan, who became a co-owner in 2024 and once billed the tie-up as “the partnership of the century”, said he was “gutted” by the collapse.
The Crawley-born presenter, known for his deadpan stage style, reposted a video from managing director Sean Coughlan to his 1.4 million followers with the caption: “Gutted isn’t the word.” Ranganathan, who is vegan, had first thrown his weight behind the business because of its range of plant-based products.
For Coughlan, whose family firm first opened its ovens in 1937, the arithmetic simply stopped adding up. He laid much of the blame on the government’s decision to lift employers’ National Insurance contributions in April last year, a move that raised the headline rate to 15 per cent and lowered the threshold at which employers start paying, alongside a business-rates bill he said had “absolutely smashed local business”. The change, set out in the National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Act 2025, has landed hardest on labour-intensive trades such as retail and hospitality, where wage bills dominate the cost base.
Those pressures were then compounded by a spike in fuel prices following the recent conflict in the Middle East, which Coughlan estimated had cost the company an extra £20,000 a week. The summer heatwaves that pushed the South East towards 35C proved, in his words, the “nail in the coffin”. With shoppers staying at home, weekly takings roughly halved while the outgoings, he noted, “remained exactly the same”.
Coughlan was unsparing about the human cost, and generous towards his celebrity backer. “I feel like we’ve absolutely let him down,” he said. “Everything he’s done, it’s been from the heart.” Ranganathan, he added, had been “amazing”.
The affection was mutual among customers. When the comedian appeared behind the counter of the Dorking High Street branch last year, a large queue quickly formed down the pavement. Josie Smith, who works near the Crawley shop, told BBC Radio Sussex she was “really sad” to see it go. “It brings a lot of people together. It is a massive shame.” Her colleague Kaitlin Stinton praised staff who were “dedicated to their jobs, always making you happy”.
Coughlan said the firm had chosen the orderly route of voluntary liquidation specifically so that it could still pay suppliers and employees, a decision that speaks to a proprietor trying to do right by his people even as the shutters came down. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said.
Coughlans is far from alone. Industry data shows three pubs, bars and restaurants now shutting every day as tax and cost rises bite, while the £28bn National Insurance shock has run well ahead of Treasury forecasts. Trade press, too, has tracked the toll, with The Caterer among those charting a wave of closures across food and drink. With high-street closures set to surge as the business-rates burden grows, the loss of a beloved 89-year-old baker is unlikely to be the last story of its kind this year.
