How Bourke Street Bakery Grew from a Corner Store to a Sydney Institution

Paul Allam and David McGuinness bonded over a mutual appreciation for handmade food, which blossomed into a small corner store in Surry Hills in the winter of 2004. The bakers and chefs have since expanded not only in Surry Hills, but across the entire city from Potts Point to Neutral Bay. Now owners of ten stores throughout Sydney, David McGuinness tells us how the duo turned a small love into a Sydney institution.

How did the idea for Bourke Street Bakery come about and how did you pick your first store location at Surry Hills?

Paul and myself spent quite a lot of time searching for the ideal location to open a bakery before we settled on the Bourke Street location. When we saw the large windows that faced into the street we knew that we had to use them to display food items like bread and pastries and it really grew very organically from there. We would have customers taste test new menu items and really took their feedback on board when we first created our menu. 

What type of people are Bourke Street Bakery customers?

It’s a real mix of customers. We are appealing to everyone because we make quality handmade products at reasonable prices. We really focus on being a community hub where people can congregate and have a coffee, great pastry and good conversation.

What is the inspiration behind the food and aesthetic at Bourke Street Bakery?

We draw inspiration from our ethos of making everything ourselves by hand. We make everything we sell from honey from our bee hives to tomato sauce for our pies. Our design elements are about creating a rustic natural feel in our stores. We use elements like brass, zinc and wood to achieve this.

How did you select the particular suburbs you expanded the business to?

In the first few years of opening, growth was purely to meet the demand and popularity of Surry Hills, but over the last few years our location selection has been about opening bakeries in communities where we have recognised the need for a good local cafe selling quality food and coffee.

How do the customers in each suburb differ in your stores? Is the feel in each store different?

Each Bourke Street Bakery is based around the same core concepts, however they are all slightly different and tailored to the customer base in that location. Some of the bakeries have customers focusing on take away whilst others have customers sitting in to enjoy the food.

Our Barangaroo, Parramatta and North Sydney stores cater for people on the go whether it’s to grab a coffee or sausage roll. While our stores in Surry Hills, Alexandria and Marrickville are in big industrial buildings encouraging customers to eat in. But we really just go with the flow of our customers’ demands. We’re about to open our eleventh bakery in Newtown which will cater to people on the go again who want a coffee on the way to work and a loaf of bread on the way home. Our Kirrawee store’s customer base in The Shire varies from soccer mums to tradies, but all of our stores have a casual feel. We want every customer to feel like they’re walking into our living room.  

Lastly, what is your favorite pick food-wise at Bourke St Bakery?

That’s a tough question. Probably the ginger crème brûlée tart. The concept for the ginger recipe is something that I conceived a decade or more before making it the filling in our now iconic sweet and it is still exciting to see how many people enjoy it. But also as a baker I am very fond of our sourdough bread. There is nothing better than the smell of fresh bread in the morning.