Rosie Ginday is founder and managing director of community interest company Miss Macaroon, the only patisserie in the world that can Pantone colour match macaroons.
Inspiration for the business came from Ginday’s first job. Waiting on tables in her home city of Coventry, she’d find herself chatting to homeless people as she waited to be picked up at the end of her shift. “I got to know a couple of people and one young guy’s story really resonated with me,” she says. “He went to uni, and his mum passed away in a house fire. He fell to pieces and suffered with mental health problems and I thought: ‘If that was me, I’d feel exactly the same way.’ ”
She trained in professional cookery at University College Birmingham before taking a job at Michelin-starred Purnell’s in Birmingham City Centre. Here, the technical skill level of the people crafting desserts was amazing. It was later on while working at the Hyatt Regency Hotel that she came up with the granular detail for Miss Macaroon.
Miss Macaroon works with organisations such as the Department For Work And Pensions, prison probation programmes, care leavers’ services and women’s refuges to recruit trainees. Interested people attend a taster day and can then self-refer to the full course. Not all trainees go on to work in food – though some do – but the emphasis is on getting people into employment, whatever that looks like. Tours of local kitchens build networks, mentoring from graduates of the programme enhance aspirations, and everyone leaves the course with interview practice, an up-to-date CV, a five year plan and help applying for jobs for up to six months.
Her work saw Ginday invited to the Royal Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and hosted HRH the Countess of Wessex at Miss Macaroon to meet the MacsMAD trainees and graduates.
Rosie is also passionate about leadership diversity and inclusion, gaining a place on the WMCA’s Leadership commision and Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Birmingham’s WE LEAD Centre. She has won many awards including the EY Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year 2016, English Woman of the Year 2018 and ABCC Outstanding Business Woman of the Year 2018.
On hearing of her New Year’s honour MBE nomination she said “I couldn’t believe it, I was in complete shock for about two days. I feel really humbled to have been chosen for our work at Miss Macaroon helping long term unemployed young people into work. It will be a huge boost to our work, youth unemployment figures stubbornly high in the city and there is a continual need to upskill and build the confidence of our young people.”