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Max Tobias, Managing Director of The Dusty Knuckle Bakery, smiling for the camera
Podcast / Career Conversations
Podcast / Career Conversations

The baker turning young people’s lives around

Max Tobias is co-founder of The Dusty Knuckle, a social enterprise bakery in London.

“It’s not for the faint-heart,” he tells Elisa Roche in this episode of the Career Conversations podcast series.

Max says the jobs is “very demanding” and really is a 24/7 endeavour: “People need their daily bread.”

It’s fair to say Max has been slogging his guts out along with his two best friends to set up a community bakery that helps young people with difficult backgrounds to get back their confidence and learn new skills.

Max now has a cookbook on sale, but he’s very clear about how hard it has been to reach the stage he has.

So, with all that hard work, is he a millionaire? “I haven’t made any millions yet, and neither have my business partners.”

Listen to the full episode to find out how the bakery came into being, and why they decided to call it The Dusty Knuckle.

Max Tobias, Managing Director, The Dusty Knuckle Bakery

Max Tobias is the Managing Director of The Dusty Knuckle Bakery. Prior to co-founding TDK, Max worked for ten years in the field of youth intervention, covering fields such as conflict mediation, youth violence, gang prevention and challenging behaviour management. He holds an MSc in Child Development.

The Dusty Knuckle: Seriously Good Bread, Knockout Sandwiches and Everything In Between is his first book, published by Quadrille in April 2022.

Dusty Knuckle founders – ran a bakery from a shipping container that they won in a competition(!) through to stocking the likes of Fortnums and Ottolenghi with their bread.

Their whole ethos came from wanting to help young people navigating dangerous lifestyles, and the bakery was their solution – The Dusty Knuckle helps young people to find meaningful employment.

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