Retiring after 34 years
This baker proves her worth
No-one is sure when Cheryl McIver started work at Savages in Whanganui East. Savages part-owner Darryl Blythe remembers it was before he started, and that was 1986. Darryl and Cheryl had worked at Bell’s Cake Kitchen in Victoria Ave before that, not together as Darryl worked night shift and Cheryl had daytime hours.
This week Cheryl is retiring from the bakery, although Darryl thinks he’ll be able to entice her back to help out occasionally.
“She does a bit of everything,” he says. “She serves, she makes sandwiches, she does the lion’s share of sandwiches we make for Dempsey and Forrest, and she does banking, administration, accounts . . . she’s the matriarch of the business, really. She clips us around the ear. She does!”
Cheryl finished at The Cake Kitchen and went straight to Savages.
“There was nothing available at the time, but it must have been 12 months later when I came in for something and Pauline (Savage) said to me, ‘Are you still interested in a job?’ and I said ‘Yes’. Pauline wanted to pursue her career in painting, so that was my opportunity. I started then and there,” she says.
The work was nothing new. “I had the canteen at the YMCA before I went to Bells’ Cake Kitchen. My father and my husband were involved in the YMCA and we started a canteen there. I went from there to Bell’s Cake Kitchen and then to here. It’s been a blast!”
When Cheryl joined the business was owned by Ray Savage and his father, Les. “It was Ray who hired me.” When Darryl arrived at Savages he was just one of the workers until he bought into the business in 1988, coowning with Ray. Two years later he bought it out.
Wayne Thomson started as an apprentice and has been at Savages all his working life. He bought into the business in the late 1990s.
“He bought a half share off me and we’ve been in business ever since,” says Darryl. “It has never been sold externally: it’s always been to someone within the business.
“Wayne and I work well together — we haven’t had many punch-ups!”
Darryl says Cheryl is responsible for him being there. It was she who told him there could be a job going when Darryl, who had finished at Bell’s Cake Kitchen, was helping his brother lay vinyl and carpet.
“I came in to buy a pie and Cheryl said I should go and talk to Ray.” Darryl got the job and started the next day.
Now, after a long history together, Cheryl is retiring.
“Having said that, she’ll still be on the end of the phone,” says Darryl. “She’s still part of the family.”
She will be missed behind the counter of the Whanganui East shop, having served a couple of generations of local school children.
“Cheryl is an identity around the place, and that’s rare to find that these days, someone who’s been part of a business for so long, and we do consider her part of the business,” says Darryl.