The Bread Roll Shop: The happiest bakery

There’s a little bakery in Ormond that’s doing big things. Two generations of Whitty family are mixing together old-school values with new technology and creating a buzz that’s worth paying attention to.

The Bread Roll Shop, a small bakery about 20 minutes from Melbourne city, is a bakery with a difference. You see, this bakery doesn’t sell bread.

“I copped a lot of flak when I first mentioned it to people in the industry,” says owner Tony Whitty of his decision not to make bread.

“People thought it was hilarious so I said, look, we’ll just start with rolls and increase as we need or want to, and that’s basically what we’ve done.”

Tony opened the bakery seven years ago with his wife Jo-Anne, his son Andrew, and daughter-in-law Kim. Tony wanted to keep the bakery simple with only basic products. Since opening they’ve continued to introduce new lines including more rolls, pastries, doughnuts and pies.

For Tony, who’s worked as a technical rep, a teacher, and a baker in many bakeries, the success of a bakery is based on three things: product quality, service, and cleanliness.

“Just from being in and out of bakeries constantly, I reckon those are the things you’ve really got to home in on. If you get those three right it’s a good start.”

The service doesn’t go unnoticed by customers who describe The Bread Roll Shop as “The happiest bakery” with “good old friendly service”. A look on the bakery’s Facebook page reveals many similar comments.

Tony’s son Andrew says it’s his parents’ country roots that account for the service.

“The rapport Mum and Dad have with the customers, it’s on another level. We sort of brought a bit of the country to the city.”

Andrew describes his time at the bakery so far as a sort of business apprenticeship and it’s his work taking the bakery online that’s creating a buzz lately.

“We identified a while ago that social media is a really important thing nowadays. We were a bit scared—a bit scared of bad reviews and you don’t know what can go online—but someone told us that the upside is better than the downside.”

Andrew describes himself as a social media junkie and spends time checking out what other bakeries are doing online.

“Some bakeries have clearly got customers who are pumped; they’re talking about it online, they’re watching their products. We were like, this is too good to not get involved in.”

Andrew realised he needed products that would look good on social media, and this led to the bakery’s introduction of a cupcake range.

“What we realised, after a little bit of time, is that social media works both ways: you advertise through social media but social media demands that you give it back something.”

Cupcakes ticked many boxes: not only are they colourful and attractive for social media, they also provide limitless options in the kitchen.

“It’s essentially one product so we can get all that colour onto social media and all that excitement without having to do too many skills, because we’re a relatively small bakery.

“It’s exciting for customers but it’s exciting for us as tradespeople to be able to have a bit of variety in our life as well.”

Andrew has played around with different ideas online including a freebie post, where the bakery invited social media followers to like The Bread Roll Shop’s Facebook page to get a free product.

“We got a big response,” Andrew says.

“We got a huge amount of likes but the corresponding people who actually took up the offer was only a small percentage of those likes.”

Andrew says he feels increasingly comfortable taking risks on social media.

“If there’s a day when it goes a bit crazy and we do have to deal with that then so be it. At this stage, it’s worth the risk.”

He says the team is about to “go a bit bonkers with the cupcake range” and hopes to have 10 to 20 flavours available. The team then hopes to apply the same process to doughnuts and pies.

“To be able to have a bit of creativity is crazy refreshing,” Andrew says.

“So it’s cupcakes, doughnuts and then pie flavours. They’re the three on the horizon and we’re going to go as hard as we can with those.”

Another product The Bread Roll Shop has picked up along the way is coffee, which Andrew says is a huge part of the business—one that paid off thanks to a persistent coffee supplier.

“Lance from Ottimo Coffee would come in and be like, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to do coffee?’ and we were like, ‘We’re fine.’ This happened for about two years and eventually we caved.”

Andrew and Jo-Anne underwent extensive training under Lance on the art of coffee making.

“Lance wanted to make sure that if we were serving his coffee we were serving it right so for six months, every Wednesday night, we’d jump in the car at about nine o’clock after we finished work and he would teach us for a couple of hours. So we went from being total newbies to being really confident with coffee. It’s become a huge part of the business.”

So, will this bakery ever make bread?

“Never say never,” says Andrew

“We’re predominately pies and doughnuts and those sorts of things… but never say never.”