Selasi Gbormittah - Following my passion from banking to baking

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders

Celebrity baker Selasi Gbormittah is preparing to combine the culinary skills he learned in Ghana with the business expertise he was taught in Nottingham… to open his own bakery.

He tells the Nottingham Business School Business Leaders’ Podcast he wants his Selasi Bakery to be up and running, in London, in the next two years.

The corporate banker – who attracted thousands of fans as he won through to the semi-final of series seven of TV’s the Great British Bake Off – reveals: “During my childhood I always wanted to own a restaurant. Now I know it is achievable.

“I want to have the Selasi Bakery. In London first – but we might expand to Nottingham.

“I’ve been in touch with a lot of real estate agents. [It’ll be open] within the next 18 to 24 months.”

Selasi tells Honorary Visiting Professor Mike Sassi that his original decision – as a teenager, born and brought up in Ghana – to study business rather than baking at university was tough.

“I literally sat there for hours looking at both pamphlets [from Nottingham Trent University and a West London culinary school] debating which one would be best for me.

“In the end I decided to go down the business and economics route, which brought me to Nottingham Trent.”

But while he was studying at NTU’s Nottingham Business School, Selasi also developed the baking skills he learned watching his mother, in the kitchen at home in Ghana.

He forged new friendships making pizzas and fairy cakes he shared with fellow students.

“One of the things we used to do in the university halls of residence was bake loads,” he says.

“I was a student. I was skint! That was when my love for baking kicked in.”

Selasi graduated from NTU in 2008.

He was enjoying a successful banking career with Deutsche Bank when, eight years later, he was selected from 20,000 applicants to appear on TV as one of the 12 Bake Off contestants,

But, as he tells episode 20 of the NBS podcast, baking was still on his mind.

And now – after securing commercial partnerships with food and drink companies following his Bake-Off success – he has made the decision to set up in business.

He adds: “When I was growing up in Ghana I was surrounded by food and cooking. My uncles and aunties were always saying: You should open a restaurant!

“Ghana is very entrepreneurial. Everywhere you go, everyone seems to have a business. There is always a drive to succeed and do well.

“There is also a great desire to give something back to the community – and for me that is baking!”