Bakers on the rise

Debbie Yong | The Business Times | Mon Aug 27 2012

Singapore, August 27, 2012

Just as we approach the crest of the speciality coffee and coffee fads in Singapore, another new wave is brewing.

This time, it’s the independent local baker and his hole-in-the-wall pastry shop. And the latest to join this foray is private dining chef Jeremy Cheok, who just this Tuesday unveiled his cosy take-away bakery, OKB.

Together with partners Deborah Ong and auditor-turned-baker Estelle Chey, Mr Cheok set up a permanent base for his four-year-old private dining outfit, Jam, in a three-storey Kampong Bahru shophouse two months ago.

But with increased overheads to manage, he decided to carve out a corner of their 800 sq ft of ground floor pastry kitchen as a retail bakery.

Though there’s a small communal table by the front door for those who want to gobble down their pastries fresh from the oven, running a full-fledged dine-in cafe was never on Mr Cheok’s blueprint.

First, he wanted to avoid the time-consuming business of recruiting and training wait staff and second, , “we don’t want to put a pretty girl in front of the counter just to sell our cakes.”

He elaborates: “This is an entirely chef-run outfit.

The ones making the products are the ones selling it.

If our customers have questions about what goes into our frosting or where our ingredients come from, we’re right here with the answers.”

Besides offering full disclosure, independent bakeries also have the flexibility to customise products to specific tastes.

Le Bon Vivant’s two fresh-faced young bakers Amanda Ang and Cordon Bleu-trained Joline Wan can attend to most requests with a day or two’s notice, such as changing the type of fruits and nuts used in their cakes.

Their small-time operations relative to more commercial bakery chains also means that they only need to produce limited batches of food each time.

Their pastries are entirely preservative-free as they are baked fresh every morning and usually sell out by the evening.

Nevermind that indie bakeries may not have seem to have all the pomp and grandeur of the big players, that’s just how they like it.

At All Good Things, a blink-and-you’ll-miss cake shop along Robertson Quay, recipes are deliberately simple and cakes are unadorned and rustic-looking “to let the honesty of the flavours shine through”, says owner Alison Tse, who has worked in the kitchens of London’s Ritz Hotel and Primrose bakery.

“Our baked goods have the restorative and comforting qualities of home baking.”

Likewise at neighbouring Swirls Bake Shop, where cupcakes are individually frosted by hand and kept fuss-free, so there’s none of that ornate but quite inedible sugar-overload that cupcakes are usually associated with.

Bite-sized versions are also available.

“People are more health conscious these days and want more control over what they are eating,” observes Ahmad Hidayat, a food consultant and spokesperson for SQ11. The month-old deli-cafe used to supply pastries from Greenwood confectionery Baker & Cook, but switched to producing their own to better cater to their customers’ requests for unsweetened and gluten-free alternatives. Working with commercial suppliers, he adds, often requires committing to a substantial minimum order, which may prove too hefty for small businesses like his, a mere 330 sq ft store.

For others, a retail shopfront is merely an extension of what they’ve already been doing.

The Fabulous Baker Boy is a week-old deli that takes over art gallery Viridian Art House’s former cafe space, and is the first brick-and-mortar venture for homebaker Juwanda Hassim.

Previously an ad agency creative director, theatre actor-singer and then group operations and marketing manager for the 1-Rochester Group, Mr Hassim has been churning out home-made cakes for friends since 2010, but decided to formalise his business with a physical shop when close friends told him about the available space earlier this year.

Besides providing the assurance of a fully licensed kitchen, a retail shopfront would also make it easier for customers to try his cakes by the slice and to pick up their orders from a central location with fixed opening hours, rather than at his home in Chip Bee Gardens.

“It’s always been a dream for me to have a shop, being in the food industry for so long,” he says.

A similar aspiration is being manifested at Smoulder, a take-away counter in China Square Food Centre on Telok Ayer Street.

The three-month-old shop peddles mini lava cakes in 10 different flavours, and is run by Cai Pei Da, 30, and two of his buddies from university.

The former Republic of Singapore Navy officer had been baking up the molten-centred treats since his Imperial College days but could only strike out on his own after his scholarship bond ended earlier this year.

As the mini-cakes are an entirely novel creation, he chose a food court stall in the business district as a “testing ground” rather than plunge in with a full cafe, but hopes to eventually expand, given the positive response so far.

Of the triggers for the sudden burst of independent bakeries, he speculates: “The government is promoting entrepreneurship in a big way now and the F&B industry has one of the lowest barriers to entry.

But the main attraction for indie bakers, he says, is the very “romantic” image of owning a cosy bakery of one’s own and - particularly for the Gen Y - the ability to “do something you're passionate about and be able to make a living out of it”.

“Many people say baking is an art, because you can keep the variables exactly the same but the product can vary greatly from one day to another,” he muses. “So it really depends on the amount of passion you put into it

debyong@sph.com.sg