A Bakery, the Algorithm – Unexpected Social Media

For someone who spends a great deal of time thinking about the internet, I am sometimes accused of being rather suspicious of it.  If you sit through one of my classes, though, you’d know really, I am driven by encouraging people to get the best out of it.

As a criminologist, I have written extensively about the way search engines, social media platforms, and online archives can become repositories of judgement. Through my work on digital rehabilitation, I have explored what happens when a person’s worst day becomes permanently searchable. As a Jew, I am acutely aware that social media is not always the best friend of our community either. Algorithms reward outrage more readily than nuance, and antisemitism has found fertile ground online.

It is therefore easy to become cynical.

Easy to focus on what the internet gets wrong.

Easy to forget that the same tools capable of amplifying hatred can also amplify creativity, entrepreneurship, and community.

Recently, however, I found myself reflecting on a rather unlikely example of social media being used extraordinarily well.

The setting was Gateshead in the North East of England.

For those unfamiliar with it, Gateshead is home to one of the largest Charedi Jewish communities in Europe. It is a community more commonly associated with yeshivot and scholarship than with influencer culture. If somebody had asked me ten years ago where I expected to find a social-media-driven food phenomenon, Gateshead would not have been near the top of the list.

And yet that is precisely what appears to have happened.

At the centre of the story is Savour – https://savourbakecafe.com/

What began as a bakery and patisserie has become something of a local phenomenon. The products themselves are genuinely impressive. Beautifully presented pastries, cakes, desserts, and speciality items are crafted with a level of artistry that seems perfectly designed for the visual world of Instagram.

But the quality of the food is only part of the story.

Savour appears to have understood something fundamental about modern communication: people increasingly discover places through stories rather than advertisements.

Daily reels and social media posts showcase new creations, seasonal products, behind-the-scenes preparation, and the simple pleasure of food made well. Customers do not merely see what is available. They anticipate it. They discuss it. They share it. They arrive before products sell out.

Social media, in this context, becomes more than marketing.

It becomes community building.

The result has been remarkable. Savour has built a substantial following and received recognition not only for its baking but also for its success in the digital sphere.

What interests me even more, however, is what happened next.

Success rarely remains isolated.

Alongside Savour has emerged Omnivour (https://omnivour.com/) extending the local offering into the increasingly popular brunch market. More recently, Relish (www.relishdeli.co.uk)  has brought a distinctly New York flavour to Gateshead. Describing itself as an authentic New York-style deli, Relish draws inspiration from the great Jewish delicatessens of New York, offering generous sandwiches, deli favourites, and takeaway food familiar to anyone who has wandered through Manhattan looking for lunch. The owners speak openly about bringing the atmosphere and food culture of the New York deli experience to the North East of England.

Taken together, these businesses suggest something larger than individual commercial success.

They represent the emergence of a confident local food culture.

And remarkably, social media has been one of the primary engines driving it.

This fascinates me because it runs counter to so much of the current conversation surrounding technology.

We increasingly talk about social media as though it were inherently harmful or inherently beneficial.

Judaism tends to resist that kind of binary thinking.

A knife can prepare food or cause injury.

Money can build a hospital or fund corruption.

Speech can heal or destroy.

The ethical question is rarely the existence of the tool.

The question is how the tool is used.

Social media is no different.

The same platforms that spread misinformation can spread entrepreneurship.

The same networks that amplify hostility can amplify creativity.

The same technology that exposes people to judgement can also introduce them to opportunity.

In my own work, I often argue that the internet should not merely be a repository of a person’s past. It should also be a place where new narratives can be built.

That is, in many ways, the central idea behind digital rehabilitation.

Yet the principle extends far beyond criminal justice.

It applies equally to communities.

To businesses.

To culture.

To identity.

The internet can preserve.

But it can also create.

There is also something quietly Jewish about this story.

For centuries, Jewish communities built networks through communication. Ideas travelled from town to town, from yeshiva to yeshiva, through letters, books, newspapers, journals, and personal connections.

The medium changes.

The principle remains.

Today, a photograph posted from a bakery in Gateshead can reach people hundreds of miles away within seconds.

A reel showcasing a pastry can inspire a journey.

A local business can become a destination.

The mechanism is modern.

The underlying idea is ancient.

What strikes me most is that this story emerges from a community not generally associated with digital culture.

Yet perhaps that is exactly the lesson.

Technology does not belong exclusively to one ideology, one generation, or one worldview.

It belongs to those willing to use it purposefully.

In a world where social media often feels exhausting, divisive, and hostile, it is worth occasionally pausing to notice the exceptions.

The bakery that became a destination.

The brunch café that followed.

The New York-style deli in Gateshead.

The community that embraced a modern tool without abandoning its identity.

For all the attention paid to what social media gets wrong, perhaps we should spend a little more time looking at what it gets right.

Because every now and then, amidst the outrage and noise, somebody posts a photograph of a pastry.

And an entire ecosystem begins to rise.