Say it with cake: the story of that Stansted resignation letter
A Cambridgeshire man who loves to bake shot to fame this week when he spectacularly resigned from his 9-5 job via the medium of a giant sponge. In his first interview, he talks to us about his love of cake, and why he took the plunge.
Say it with cake
On April 15, Chris Holmes, aka ‘Mr Cake’ of Sawston, Cambridgeshire, was inspired by the birth of his five-week-old son Ben to quit his daytime job at Stansted Airport’s Border Agency, where he’d been working for four years. But this wasn’t just any old resignation letter… because Chris said it in cake.
On top of a spiced carrot and orange buttercream passion cake (“I thought it was appropriate to bake something with ‘passion’ in it!” he told me), Chris carefully piped this message in black icing:
Today is my 31st birthday, and having recently become a father I now realise how precious life is and how important it is to spend my time doing something that makes me, and other people, happy.
For that reason I hereby give notice of my resignation, in order that I may devote my time and energy to my family, and to my cake business which has grown steadily over the past few years.
I wish the organisation and my colleagues the best for the future and I remind you that, if you enjoy this cake, you can order more at www.mrcake.co.uk.
All for Ben
The day after he resigned, Chris, who set up the Mr Cake business in July 2010 from his kitchen at home, granted his first interview to lovefood. “I’d been planning my special letter of resignation for six months, and it was all very secretive," he told me. "Not even my wife Emma knew that I would say it with cake!”
He added: “I wanted to resign in as pleasant a way as possible. It was a bit tricky, because I work at an airport and the cake had to go through the x-ray machine. But it was worth it in the end, because everyone was very happy to eat a resignation, rather than read it.”
Why quit a steady job for a life of self-employment with a new baby on the scene? “Well, the decision was actually made easier by the fact that Ben came along,” said Chris. “I felt a duty to live in a way that he can look up to one day – I want him to spend his life doing something he loves, too. Plus I’d done some calculations, and knew that I could scrape by on my own.”
Chris has always loved food and took a job as a kitchen porter as soon as he left college. “I worked my way up to become a commis chef and was eventually cooking in some intense teams, such as with the Petrus chefs in London. But the hours proved too much and I didn’t last long. For me, it’s just unthinkable to be both a high-flying chef and a family man.”
Hence why Chris decided to take a job at the Border Agency, and run a cake business on the side instead. “My colleagues at the Border Agency have been calling me ‘Mr Cake’ for ages,” said Chris. “The set-up was ideal for me, because I could indulge in my hobby and have a normal life at the same time.”
When it went viral
Chris posted the resignation cake on his Facebook page early Monday evening, waking up the next day to find that it had gone viral. The photo has now been viewed over a million times on Reddit, and Chris says his phone won’t stop ringing: “It’s properly mental! I had no idea that this would happen, but I really appreciate all the lovely comments.”
The huge press coverage Chris has received will surely boost his Mr Cake orders. “That’s great if it does,” said Chris. “But although I’d love my own dedicated baking kitchen instead of working from home, I don’t want to scale up the business indefinitely. I get such satisfaction from making everything by myself, so there are no plans for Mr Cake to be anything but a one-man-machine just yet.”
You can follow Mr Cake on Twitter, check out his website here, and marvel over all his fabulous celebratory cakes on his Facebook page (birthday cakes start from £45). Our favourite bake has to be the ‘random panda’ wedding cake (pictured above left), complete with canoeing panda bears, a trickling stream running across three layers of cake, and even a baby panda playing with Lego.
He’s not the only one…
It takes courage to quit the real world and pursue your dreams. One other baker who knows a bit about that is Edd Kimber, aka The Boy Who Bakes, who won the first series of Great British Bake Off back in 2010.
Edd had been working in the litigation department at a national bank for four years when he entered Bake Off. “The people there were great, but I really hated that job,” he told me. “I knew that I should be spending my life baking – not sending bailiffs round to people’s houses.”
He added: “I was desperate to get out of that job, so just two days after we finished filming the Bake Off, I wrote my resignation letter. It was the best letter I’ve ever written, and I was ecstatic to hand it in.
“The next month was like living in a bubble. I’d finally made a decision for me, and it felt great. My parents brought me up to believe that making a living doing something you love is much better than making millions in a job you hate, and that’s what I’ve done.”
As for his words of wisdom, Edd’s a great believer in chasing dreams. “If there’s something you really want to do, then just do it. Especially if it will make you happy. You’ll regret it if you don’t…”
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