BERNADETTE CROWE'S BAKERY IN SIXMILEBRIDGE
Monday 20 June 2011
The happenings of the past couple of years have meant that most people are looking at life in a very different way than heretofore. The positive spinoff is perhaps that, whilst we may have come down to earth with a bang, a lot of the superficial crap, which has gone on throughout the boom years, has been done away with. People are not now afraid to negotiate prices, or to say that they are feeling the pinch, they are not as aggressive, dismissive or pushy. They are looking into their souls, into a more meaningful way of life, becoming more creative and innovative, and this in itself is no bad thing. They have, to use the famous John Major quote, gone ‘back to basics’ becoming incredibly innovative when it comes to creating new sources of income and running their businesses.
Bernadette Crowe has a neighbourhood Grocery Store in Sixmilebridge, near Bunratty, Co. Clare, and a second shop at their Service Station outside the town. It is well and truly a Convenience Stores as they are open 7 days a week, from early ‘til late, selling a wide variety of foods, wines, fuels and other necessities of life, providing a great service to their community. Bernadette has seven children, now grown, but what has made the difference with her business has been something she learned at her mother’s knee – the art of baking! “We had a little grocery shop and about 25 years ago, when we had 3 children, we moved to this bigger premises in the town. There was a definite demand in Sixmilebridge and the shop got busier and doubled in size. However, I could see that none of the cakes I bought in were as nice as those I could make myself. I always had a flair for baking - big apple tarts, brown wholemeal bread - that’s what we were reared on as a lot of people are – soups and stews, bacon and all that. When the children were small, I had a little space at the back of the shop and I made the tarts by hand and cooked them in the oven which, due to lack of space, was actually in the shop and people would say ‘oh my God the smell of baking’. It was very basic simple stuff, tarts, cream cakes, and brown bread. We then made a small bakery upstairs for our two shops but it just got busier so we built a bigger bakery now at the back of the shop, and sisters Helen Fahy and Margaret Quigley came on board to help. In the past three years we have been joined also by Marcella Fialova from Czechoslovakia who adds a different dimension.” They now have a lovely repertoire of gorgeous home baked cakes, with nothing but the best ingredients, including carrot cake, ginger cake, Madeira, cherry, porter cake - from Margaret’s mother’s recipe – and many more. I watched as the ladies piled tons of rhubarb, picked locally that morning, and apples, into tarts – there was no weighing here – it was pile ‘em high and cover them over and into the oven! People travel from all over Limerick and Clare for Bernadette’s gorgeous cakes and breads – and indeed visitors come for breads to take back to the U.S. Six months ago she also bought a new ‘proofer’ for the Bakery which allows them produce their own gorgeous rolls fresh out of the oven. There is nothing like the smell of freshly baked bread – gorgeous browns some with bran, onion bread, Spotted Dick, cheese and onion, wholemeal loaf, yeast bread…..
Bernadette went on to explain how much the Bakery has meant to the business in these times. “The Universal Social charge really hit people hard. We are a small local shop and people are very price conscious at the moment, they only have so much money. They would come into the shop and if we didn’t have the price the same as the big multiples ……. Two years, or even twelve months, ago it wouldn’t have mattered but I had a lot of work to do in the shop with my suppliers to make sure I could compete on some levels, and I managed to do that, but the one thing that has sustained us is our bakery. They can’t get it anywhere else, the flavor, the taste, so they come in for our brown bread, or cigarettes, and will inevitably buy our home baked ham and will go out the door with five or six things. The bakery and deli has brought people in for our homemade produce - we even sell an awful lot of jam because of our scones, which are beautiful. Our milk sales are as good as before the recession but people are back to buying basics – they have got rid of the sundried tomatoes.” Bernadette and her team cook their own turkeys, hams, chickens, and make their own lovely deli produce from potato salad to tuna to pasta and all of the rest. This is so much better than the mass produced stuff bought in by so many places. She employs 30 people between the two shops, some of whom have been with her for 25 years, and people like her need all the help and encouragement they can get and not be weighed down with bureaucracy and regulations applicable to big Corporations.
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ON 19TH JUNE 2011.