Trish Sullivan’s team of bakers can churn out 1,000 pies a day from the Wakefield Bakery and after 14 years at the heart of the village, she’s ready to hand her recipes over to a new owner.
It was only going to be a four-month stint when she says she became a silent partner with her baker son, Steven, initially helping him establish the business before she returned to the Kapiti Coast.
Fourteen years later, she is still in the bakery and the business has grown to 25 fulltime employees that operate a 24/7 business and has affectionately become known as the Wakey Bakey.
“It was a six-person business back then and three of them were schoolgirls. I was serving at the counter and making filled rolls.
The first thing Steven did was put out blueberry Danish and then croissants, and it just grew and grew from there.”
As the business rapidly grew, she stayed.
“When it became obvious I wasn’t going to return home, I bought the cheapest home I could find – because I’d put my money into the business.
“It was built in 1880 and the inside walls were the outside walls and the power lines and telephone lines were stapled to the inside walls. It was freezing, man.”
It was a full-on time and when her son decided to step out of the business and take a break, she bought him out and carried on, relying heavily on her bakers because
“I’m no baker”.
While locals and people passing through the village stop for its food and, in particular, its steak and cheese pies, Trish says it is her staff and the village that make the business a success.
Over the years she has employed several members from local families and proudly watched school students go on to succeed in their own careers.
“I’ve just built on the village concept – it takes a whole village to raise a bakery.”
As the business grew, so did the hours, leading to more shifts and more employees to make 95 per cent of the product in the shop by hand, every day.
“We were a six o’clock opening back in the day and then I saw all these Goldpine vans driving past in the morning – all those bums on seats with appetites. So, I approached them to see what time they wanted me to open.
“We had people knocking at the door at quarter to six as well. Now we’re open at five and they’re still knocking at 4.45,” Trish recalls.
She expanded the bakery into the former video store and put out tables for customers to sit and eat because she “got sick of seeing people eating pies in cars”.
Over the years, the Wakey Bakey has had the top steak and cheese pie nationally and more recently the best pie and sausage roll in the region.
It has also made it to a New Zealand coffee table book on pie stops in New Zealand.
The past five years have been tough though.
First there was the Pigeon Valley fire where the bakery was not allowed to feed the people fighting the fire and had to dump thousands of dollars of food in the bin.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic, where she eventually managed to keep the bakery operating by reclassifying it from a café to a takeaway and thereby retain all her staff. The business missed the tourists going through the town though.
The cost-of-living crisis followed and even though it has been financially tough for the past few years, she says she has tried to keep her prices down to help locals who have supported the business all the way.
“I feel I’ve earned my retirement. I don’t have to sell – I’m looking for that person who is about people. Because I’m not just selling a bakery; I’m selling a team with a massive reputation.”
What is her own pick of pies in the bakery? The lambs fry and bacon is her long-time favourite.
