Bakery grows into a full cafe
‘‘The lines going out the door in the weekends showed we needed to have more room.’’ BABCO owner Alice Hocquard
A popular family run Palmerston North bakery is looking to serve up a few new flavours as it expands into a cafe.
Artisan bakery BABCO, owned by Alice and Jeremy Hocquard, was still relatively new but it’s already become wellknown for its cruffins – a cross between a croissant and a muffin.
Alice Hocquard said they’d always planned to grow their small shop into a cafe, in about five years, but the business had taken off much faster than expected.
‘‘The lines going out the door in the weekends showed we needed to have more room . . . and the space next door became available, so we thought let’s just jump in.’’
BABCO started as a project to build a wood-fired oven in the couple’s backyard, which morphed into the European-style bakery they opened last year.
The project inspired them to start the BABCO wood-fired pizza food truck a year and a half ago, which they used to raise the money needed to start their bakery in a small storefront in Albert St.
Hocquard’s brother-in-law Andrew Hocquard will join the team at the start of October.
He’s an accomplished chef
and has worked all around the world, including London where he worked with world-renowned Whanganui-born chef Peter Gordon – who is famously credited as ‘‘the godfather of fusion cuisine’’.
Hocquard said the chef was crafting a menu that would put a bit of a twist on the standard Kiwi cafe fare.
‘‘Palmerston North needs something a bit more fresh and exotic than the usual paninis and scones.’’
She said work on the cafe would be split into three stages, and the plan was to have stage one done by the end of the month when they’d start serving the new menu.
Stage one began this week, and was expected to take three weeks to complete. However, BABCO will only need to close completely for one day, when they knock down the wall between the two storefronts, Hocquard said.
The next two stages would happen in the background, including steps such as adding disabled bathrooms, refitting and expanding the kitchen, and the paperwork to become a fully licensed cafe.