The rising costs of a bakery
GRABBING a pie from Nucifora’s Bakery after junior cricket on the weekend was this little heathen’s version of going to church.
The proud red brick building on Toogood Rd, just opposite the Big Tomato supermarket, was an oasis among the fairly slim gastronomical pickings of Woree.
We had the Northerner Steakhouse down the road, cheap seasoned chips at the Your Place or Mine restaurant and a smattering of options (including Macca’s) at Southside, but none held a flame to our ritual excursions to Nucifora’s.
One feature set the bakery apart from the rest, but inexplicably I have not seen it replicated anywhere else in Cairns. It had a drive-through. You could get loaves, coffee rolls, pastries and pies just by driving in and rolling down your window.
The Big Tomato is now an IGA, the Northerner Steakhouse is The Burger Barn, Your Place or Mine is a physiotherapy clinic and the redbrick bakery has become a bluewalled pathology lab attached to the Calanna medical centre.
Somewhere along the line, that great tradition of ripping into the bakery at least once a week fell to the wayside, trumped by the convenience of supermarket giants — even if the bread, pies and pastries are comparatively crap.
It took a conversation last week with Brown & Co Bakery owners Garry and Debra Brown for me to even realise something had changed.
Bakers all over the country have found themselves up against the wall as a long-running drought forces grain prices through the roof — up about 70 per cent on this time last year, or more than $200 extra per tonne for bagged flour.
They have held out for as long as they could but have no choice but to increase their own prices or go broke. These guys are troopers. Garry told me about the turbulent life of their Westcourt bakery, going back to 2000 when they bought into the Brumby’s franchise.
They were forced out for a year and a half while the former Westcourt Plaza was transformed into DFO Cairns, then returned for 13 years under the Brumby’s banner.
Eventually the costs became too much to handle after the multinational Retail Food Group took over Brumby’s.
It culminated in a now infamous email from Brumby’s managing director Deane Priest in 2012 suggesting stores put up prices and “let the carbon tax take the blame”, prompting an investigation by the ACCC and Ms Priest’s resignation.
The Browns say they ended up “being killed by the franchise fees”, lost their home and went bankrupt — only to finally return in the exact same shop, this time as an independent business. How’s that for tenacity? Now with skyrocketing flour costs and the growing reach of supermarket giants, bakers all over Australia need a helping hand.
The Australian lamb industry has been impressively savvy in its summer advertisements, with “lambassador” Sam Kekovich spearheading a publicity crusade people actively seek out to watch every year.
Drought-stricken farmers have the Buy-a-Bale campaign — a drop in the ocean for what they need, but at least it is something.
Those downstream businesses also feeling the effects of the drought need a boost as well. The question is, who would pay? “Some sort of national campaign would be fantastic,” Mr Brown said.
“But we’ve barely got any money to advertise our own bakery.”
There is the Baking Association of Australia but it does not command anywhere near the budget of Meat and Livestock Australia, which is behind the lamb ads. It probably isn’t going to happen. Hopefully this little spiel can be a rallying cry for gluten lovers across Cairns to take the extra five minutes and spend an extra dollar to get a top notch feed from small operators who put their heart and soul into their product.
And for someone to open another drive-through bakery.
BAKERS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY HAVE FOUND THEMSELVES UP AGAINST THE WALL AS A LONG-RUNNING DROUGHT FORCES GRAIN PRICES THROUGH THE ROOF