YOUNG weekend workers are helping to transform the way a North Yorkshire bakery business operates.

Nathan Church, aged 19, has swapped his four-hour shift for a 40-hours-a week assistant manager position at Thomas the Baker.

Helping to run the King’s Square branch of the bakery in York, Mr Church is one of a dozen under-25s that started as Saturday staff while still at school, but who are now carving a career for themselves at the family-run firm.

Mr Church, who had ambitions to be a lawyer, chose a completely different career path when he began working at the award-winning bakery in 2011 because, he says, "the great staff and working conditions made him feel part of a family".

Like his colleague Lauren Martin, 17, who started her Saturday job at Thomas’s in 2014, after swapping a childcare course for the lure of a trainee assistant manager position at the King’s Square branch, Mr Church and the rest of the young recruits are changing the face of the business for good.

Company chairman John Thomas, who started the business in his garage in the 1980s before expanding to 34 shops across Yorkshire, said: "We’ve always recognised the importance of having the next generation coming through the business and we regard them as the potential managers and leaders.

"We’ve developed a management system to bring people on and it’s been an incredible source of recruitment. We’ve grown our business on the development of Saturday staff."