Based on the 1932 Dodie Smith play Service, it depicts the desperate struggle of a London department store owner to save his business during the Great Depression.

[2] With his upscale department store steadily losing money, Gabriel Service, Sr. (Lewis Stone) is forced to discharge some of his employees, including an unenterprising but loyal and long-serving Tim Benton (Lionel Barrymore).

Neither his young adult children, Caroline (Elizabeth Allan) and Michael (Phillips Holmes), nor their stepmother Isobel (Benita Hume) take him very seriously at first, despite his repeated warnings over the past few months.

Meanwhile, Benton has started a very successful business in his own home, with his wife Lil (Doris Lloyd) baking delectable pastries and cakes and their offspring, Willie (Douglas Walton (actor)) and Elsie (Viva Tattersall), pitching in.

Michael Service tastes a pastry from Benton and orders 4 dozens/day for the store, Caroline wants to live on her earnings and be "very poor" to be on the level of Jeoffrey and finally the rain stops and a rainbow comes out.