St George locals have welcomed the news a new bakery will be opening its doors in the town, after St George FoodWorks announced they will be opening a new site in the coming months.

The town’s only bakery closed its doors in December 2024, with owners Trent and Elizabeth Challenger citing rising costs and increasingly stringent regulations as the reason they had decided to close the business.

St George FoodWorks co-owner Kim Webster told The Courier Mail the intervening months without a bakery has affected tourism numbers and locals alike.

” The closing of the bakery a week before Christmas in 2024 really left a hole in the community,” she said.

“It was really starting to impact the town, when the bakery closed it was affecting our business (FoodWorks) because people stopped coming to St George on the way because of the lack of services.

“Because we own FoodWorks we had done our best to source fresh bread and products from Bakery Roma who have been amazing and helped us service our town for the last  year and a bit.

“It was something the town really needed and we were waiting for someone to step in and do something but that didn’t come so we thought we’d better do something ourselves.”

After working hard behind the scenes for six months to get the new site open, Ms Webster said the huge effort had paid off.

“We are learning on the fly because it was certainly outside our wheelhouse,” she said.

“We have done a lot of research and council has been really helpful. There was real misconception that the bakery was closed by the council, which was not true. In fact they worked with them to stay open.

“At the time when they decided to close we inquired about purchasing the pre-existing one (bakery) but they weren’t in a position to want to sell, so we had to look at the alternatives. There has been a lot of planning behind the scenes, but we are now at the building stage.”