Blog

Thomas of Helmsley Archive

Vote For Us: Farm Shop & Deli Awards

Thomas of Helmsley Grand Opening

We’re very proud of all of stores in and around Yorkshire, but right now, we’re especially proud of our Helmsley deli, Thomas of Helmsley, as it’s been nominated in the Farm Shop & Deli Awards 2019! The Farm Shop & Deli Awards have been running for over five years now, with a goal of supporting and celebrating excellence within the independent, specialist retail market. Organised by William Reed and judged by an expert panel, these awards are looking for small businesses that have a high level of customer service, product knowledge, innovation and community involvement. We’re so proud to hear that our customers have recognised these factors in our Thomas of Helmsley deli so well that they’ve nominated us for this award, but now we need your help! If you agree with us that Thomas of Helmsley is the best in their category, you can vote for us here. Our success all depends on our customers sharing their opinions on…

Read More

Fabulous Fizz Friday at Thomas of Helmsley – 24th November

Fizz Friday at Thomas of Helmsley

The next in our series of tasting events in the run up to Christmas at Thomas of Helmsley is our fantastic and fabulous Fizz Friday, held on Friday 24th November from 6.30pm. If you’ve been following along or are a local resident of Helmsley who loves their good food, you’ll know that we’ve already run a couple of these sampling days – read more about our local cheese sampling back in October here and our Super Sausage Saturday here. Between 6.30pm and 8pm, customers are welcome to visit our newly relaunched Thomas of Helmsley store to sample some Festive Fizz, including prosecco, gin and mixers. Alongside these will be a few firm Thomas the Baker favourites including our award-winning sweet mince pies (if you’re not from Yorkshire, no fear! You can buy these online here) and a selection of complementary cheese and crackers. The selection of new drinks that will be available to taste at our Festive Fizz evening include…

Read More

Minster FM features Thomas of Helmsley Sausages

Thinking about visiting Thomas of Helmsley this weekend for our Super Sausage Saturday but haven’t yet made up your mind? If the sound of our tasty selection of sausages including the Yorkshire Bratwurst, Mango, Lime & Ginger Pork sausage and Yorkshire Special haven’t tempted you enough yet, let us persuade you even further: our Thomas of Helmsley sausages and the makers have been featured by Minster FM: Starring our very own celebrity chef, Stephanie Moon, alongside our in house deli butcher, Grant Baildon, our deli chef, Trevor, and the good people of Helmsley, you’ll find out how our sausages are made, the high quality of the ingredients that goes into them, what makes a proper sausage and how to cook one. Our Helmsley customers were only too happy to give them a taste while Minster FM were filming, but you can give them a go yourself to see if they really are as good as we say (they are, we…

Read More

Super Sausage Saturday at Thomas of Helmsley – 4th November

Thomas of Helmsley sausage sampling

A couple of weeks ago, we hosted the first of our series of sampling events at Thomas of Helmsley: the Big Cheese. And today we’re announcing the next link in our chain of events: Super Sausage Saturday! To mark UK Sausage Week, which runs from the 30th October to 5th November, as well as to celebrate the relaunch of Thomas of Helmsley and to keep our customers well fed with traditional fare around Bonfire Night, we’ll be offering samples and tastings of our sizzling sausage range on Saturday 4th November at our newly refurbished Thomas of Helmsley deli. This banging range has been developed for Thomas the Baker to be sold in Thomas of Helmsley by local celebrity chef, Stephanie Moon, and our in house deli head butcher, Michael Foster. The new range of sausages includes a super tasty Yorkshire Bratwurst; a Mango, Lime and Ginger Pork Sausage; and the ‘Yorkshire Special’ – made using Henderson’s Relish, breadcrumbs from our craft bakery’s own freshly…

Read More

The Big Cheese: Local Cheese Sampling at Thomas of Helmsley

Thomas of Helmsley Grand Opening - cheese counter

Don’t worry if you missed out on the Grand Opening of Thomas of Helmsley, because as we mentioned in our last blog post, we’re starting a series of tasting events in the run up to Christmas in store where everyone is welcome to come and try our tasty goods. These tasting events start this weekend with… You guessed it – local cheese sampling! On Saturday 14th October from 10.30am onwards, Thomas of Helmsley will play host to Ian Barlow from award-winning cheesemakers Carron Lodge to guide customers through a selection of fantastic local cheeses. There will be firm favourites such as Yorkshire Blues and Wensleydales, as well as some new and exciting flavours to try out. Some of you might have had the chance to try a few at our Grand Opening at the end of September, but you don’t want to miss this opportunity to try even more! The cheese will be served up alongside some complimentary chutneys from…

Read More

Reveal: Thomas of Helmsley Grand Opening

Thomas of Helmsley Grand Opening

At the end of September, we announced that Thomas of Helmsley had reopened following our extensive renovations. And last weekend, we celebrated that opening in style with a Grand Opening event at the store! At 9.30am, we were ready and raring to go to welcome the public to visit the newly renovated Thomas of Helmsley – to see the new entrance, the amazing new signage, the wonderful cheese counter, the delighful deli, the brand new bakery area and, of course, the ever iconic Helmsley butcher’s counter. And did we ever open in style: we were very lucky to be visited by the astounding David Hinde, a Yorkshire town crier, well-known for his appearance in the Dad’s Army movie as well as renowned locally for having the loudest voice. His bell and booming voice called in the crowds throughout the day and we hugely appreciated his work – he definitely made for some good photos for the tourists too! We also…

Read More

Thomas of Helmsley Grand Opening: 30th September

Thomas of Helmsley relaunch

It’s the news you’ve all been waiting for: Thomas of Helmsley, our Helmsley based butchers and delicatessen, has reopened following a short period of closure while we entirely refurbished the store. We acquired this historic property in Helmsley a few years ago, and the time had come for it to get an update. The store had for many years been known to the town as Nicholson’s – a family run butchers – and we didn’t want it to ever lose that history or image, so the refurbishment had to remain complimentary to the roots of this iconic piece of Helmsley’s history. We’ve been teasing you with updates on the final finishing touches going into the store over on our Twitter, but we wanted to explain a little bit more about what’s gone into it as well as announcing the official Grand Opening of Thomas of Helmsley on Saturday 30th September. There was some work back in 2016 on the outbuildings of…

Read More

Christmas Hampers & Gift Boxes

We always have an especially busy run in the weeks before Christmas here at Thomas the Baker, and this year has been no different to usual. Alongside our old favourite Christmas products that fly off the shelves like the Mince Pies, Tipsy Imps and Truffles, this year we’ve added a few new hampers packed full with yummy Thomas the Baker festive goodies to our range. The Hampers range from the smallest which is priced at a very reasonable £16.50 up to a large one stuffed with every Christmas taste you can imagine at £75, with a few sizes in between. They are available to buy in our online store where you can get them delivered to your home for only £7 (no matter how many you order to that address, the delivery cost will always be £7!); you can pop into one of our stores and order one directly from there; or you can visit our own Helmsley Delicatessen and Butchers,…

Read More

Thomas of Helmsley

  You might have noticed over in our sidebar a bit of a reference to our sister shop, Thomas of Helmsley. While our shops are all primarily bakers, this one branches out a little bit, so I’m here today to tell you a bit more about it. Based in Helmsley, this shop has gone through a few changes over the years. When I was little, I knew it as the butchers, Nicholson’s, run by one of my best friend’s family. See that man in the top photo there? That’s my friend’s dad, Ben Nicholson, and one of the original butchers from Nicholson’s all those years ago. In the intervening time he was a minister and a postman, before turning back to butchery – you can see a pretty interesting photo of him combining his interests at the Gazette and Herald! We’ve had the shop for a few years now, and have slowly been adding more and more quality products, both of…

Read More