BIG READ: Hewitts Bakery continues to enjoy sweet taste of success 57 years on

Your motto is if it isn’t broken don’t fix it. How does that correlate with the business?

When my Mam and Dad, opened the business, the recipe book he had I still use. So the shortbread he got from Scotland, when he went over there to train. The shell buns, the apple tarts all come from that recipe book. Nothing has changed. I’m making the Christmas cakes the exact same way he made them. There’s no science to it as far as I’m concerned. He showed me and I grew up with him doing it.

That takes serious integrity. Is it difficult or is it worth it?

I don’t know any different. If I had to scrimp on quality, I just couldn’t do it. I’d feel I’d be betraying the brand Mam and Dad started .

He always said: “Just do what you do. Keep it simple, and do it right”. It’s a testimony to that, we still have customers coming in today who are second- generation. I had a girl I did a wedding cake for, which I don’t normally do, but she came in and said “my grandmother brought me here for every birthday cake, and I just want my wedding cake, to be the same as my birthday cake”. I thought that was kinda special. You know, you don’t get that everywhere.

What do you attribute the longevity to?

Quality and good service. One thing that’s important here is friendly staff. Pamela and Anne-Marie work behind the counter here at the minute, and I have Suzanne and Melissa working here with me out the back. Everyone that comes in that door is greeted with a smile, how are ya doing, and a chat. Whereas, so many other places, people are dragging their baggage with them, and they aren’t necessarily happy, it’s more important to me to have a happy environment, and hopefully that’s passed on to the customer with what they eat. They way you treat them, and the way you feed them.

A downside is I don’t think it’s too many people that would want to put the same level of work that’s needed for a scratch bakery. There’s an awful lot of work involved with a scratch bakery. There’s only a couple left: Hickey’s, ourselves and O’Gormans unfortunately went in the past year as well. The reps keep telling me, there’s less and less scratch bakeries in the country. Because there’s so much work involved. But I don’t mind anyway, I’ll keep baking away, cause I don’t know anything else. Unless I get a couple of really good horses!

What’s your view on the fact that Clonmel has become a town with a lot of big business, as opposed to small businesses?

Hopefully, there’s a plan in place to rejuvenate the centre of town. It’s a little bit disappointing to see everything move to the outskirts of town. Sometimes the centre of town has been forgotten. We can’t be negative and blame everyone and the plan to rejuvenate the town I hope happens sooner rather than later. We need to get people back living in the centre of the town too. There’s some shops that will never be shops again. It shouldn’t be so cost prohibitive for an owner to say, I can’t get the change of use permission because it costs so much. We have got to get life back into the centre of town.

From a business perspective, we should have two pairs of gardaí walking the streets every day and backed up by a car. That’s very simplistic, someone has to pay for it, but it makes a difference to everyone if they can see a garda walking the street, it gives them reassurance, both businesses, and customers.

What was it like reopening post-Covid?

Well, we never closed. So, whether someone told me or not, I was never going to close.

My parents went through the 80s high interest rates, loads of doom and gloom over that period, parallel with the good times, nobody was to tell me I was to close and let Lidl, Dunnes or Tescos sell bread. If they were an essential food place, so were we. We never closed a day.

Now, our staff, all went because they were fully entitled to feel safe and protect themselves. But during Covid, my wife stood there (behind the counter) and I stood here (in the kitchen) and we never once closed a day. I didn’t let Covid beat me. Me or my wife never got Covid would you believe. Dealing with the public everyday.

I wouldn’t know how to stay at home and do nothing, and I have a family to look after and everything else. The one thing about being self-employed is that if you don’t get up and do it yourself no one will hand it to you. With that, we did get good support from the Government. When the staff came back you know, the wage subsidy scheme was 100%. And then we made the choice, after Covid, not to reopen the tea room.

We are gone back exactly the way we were when my parents opened in 1966. I’m happier with this, and I’m happier that the customers can come in and see everything being baked, and the realness of it. Even Fergal Quinn, in Superquinn, tried this, and he ended up failing, a giant like him.

It is hard. But I’m here six days a week, I see my customers every day, I bake for them every day. But it’s also very important that I have two really good girls baking with me, Suzanne and Melissa. Anne-Marie and Pamela are a smile everyday, even sometimes they mightn’t want to smile, but they still do it. And that makes everyone happy you know?

What does a workday look like for you?

I’ll start here give or take 4.30 am and we would finish up around 1 o’clock. We’ll start producing everything into the cabinets and as the girls are selling that, we are re-making for the next day. Baked fresh, and out it goes. Somedays, it’s hard to predict, that’s one downside to the job that like today for instance, we did our usual sausage rolls, and I felt then, it was a cold day, we put on a few extra, and they were all sold before 12 noon.

One thing I hate is when someone comes in at 12.15 and you see this look on their face: Oh no, are they all gone? Everyone expects a shelf to be full all the time. You work around the day, and see what it brings you.

I truly admire the ethic and ethos here. I think it’s a huge factor in your continued success.

It’s the grounding I got from my parents. My Mam worked here six days a week, had five children, reared us all, she was on the County Council and was Mayor a few times. My Dad was working six days a week as well, back when I was young, we used do the Christmas cakes of a Sunday. He’d spend six weeks in a row doing them. And he still had time to look after all of us, and bring us off. He brought me show jumping all over the country when I was younger.

On top of being in here like. And I keep coming back to it, but I’d be nothing without these two (Suzanne and Melissa) and these two (Anne-Marie and Pamela). It’s a good team.