Early Rise Baking Co is reaching 100 years of business, starting out in 1918 with Francis Oswald Stevenson’s small bakery in the country New South Wales town of Tooraweenah.

Francis delivered his baked goods on a horse and cart each day from his bakery to the homes of local residents. He built a solid business this way to support his wife and six children and made enough dough to move to Dubbo to supply his baked goods to a larger market.

Throughout the generations, the business relocated to several different sites across Dubbo. In 1990, Francis’s descendants Bill, Robert and John, and their wives purchased the Village Hot Bake in Dubbo. They gutted the building to make room for significant renovations and created the town’s first bakery café, Village Bakery Café, officially opening in 1998. Village Bakery Café became hugely popular and as demand grew for its product, the wholesale side of the business, Early Rise Baking Co, was born.

Nearly a century later, the Stevenson family forms an iconic part of the baking industry in central-west NSW, owning and operating Early Rise Baking Co based in Dubbo, as well as two retail sites.

They’re responsible for brands such as Village Premium Pies and the Village Lifestyle Range, Boundary Road Artisan Bread, Bloom and Today’s Tin Baked Bread, which can be purchased from selected supermarkets, service stations, cafes or convenience stores along the eastern seaboard.

Their two retail sites, Village Bakery Café in Dubbo and Village Bakehouse in Orange, are hugely popular with locals and tourists alike. Village Bakery Café is a traditional-style country bakery that offers award-winning pies, cakes and pastries, barista coffee, sandwiches and baguettes, a take-home range and breakfast served until 10.30 am.

Their latest site, Village Bakehouse, is a modern-style bakery with a rustic, trendy feel that focuses on quality, artisan produce. The bakehouse has a beautiful interior with whitewashed brick walls, exposed beams, and industrial style elements. Their sourdough is a popular item, made from a 23-year-old mother culture sourced from Southern France. The bakehouse also does lunch items such as their buttermilk chicken burger with creamy ranch slaw on a village milk bun. Another big hit is their delectable strawberry mille-feuille and jam-packed doughnuts.

Early Rise Baking Co, in the wholesale arm and the retail side, sources its ingredients from Australian farmers. The flour and canola oil they use in their baked goods are produced by farmers in the central-west, Parkes, Forbes, Trangie, Nyngan and Narromine. Its eggs are from the local township of Molong and the beef used in their pies is from the areas they distribute to.

The company has won more than 150 awards for its products, including the National Great Aussie Meat Pie Competition twice, That’s Life Inaugural Great Aussie Pie Contest and Dubbo’s Most Outstanding Business Award.

The company also aims to make sustainability a part of the way they do business, both internally and externally, by creating culture and awareness of sustainable sourcing, production, lean manufacturing, and distribution.

Being a fourth-generation baking business with successful retail and wholesale arms, Early Rise Baking Co, nearing 100 years of business, doesn’t seem to be slowing down.