Baked goods for sale at McBrides Bakery ( Tiffany Goodwein/ CHAT NEWS)

By Tiffany Goodwein

bakeries seeing success

Sweet treats savoring sweet success amid pandemic

Jul 19, 2020 | 12:13 PM

MEDICINE HAT- On a bright Saturday morning cheers and radiating claps rang through downtown Medicine Hat as the owners of Redcliff Bakery cut the ribbon and marked the grand opening of their second location.

The expansion, somewhat of an anomaly, as businesses across the board have been reporting an unprecedented downturn due to COVID-19.

“During the pandemic we actually had great community support from all of Redcliff and Medicine Hat, and so we just saw the people coming out to support us and decided that now would be a great time to expand to Medicine Hat,” Melissa Graber, owner of Redcliff Bakery said.

People lined the bakery’s hall, some even waiting outside, to get their hands on a sweet treat Saturday, a sign that sugary treats have been savoring in sweet success since the pandemic.

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Ask anyone and favorites will enter the conversation, from cookies, to donuts, to pastries.

“ Mostly muffins, healthy muffins and stuff like that, I’m not so much a donut person,” said one man, outside Redcliff Bakery.

“I probably put on a few pounds myself,” said another man who noted donuts are his preferred baked good, while his young son enjoys cookies.

At McBride’s Bakery on Dunmore, the owners are also relishing in an uptick in demand for baked goods, with owner Brendan Hillson calling the support ‘pretty fantastic’.

“The first few weeks of COVID-19 people were showing up and saying, they got laid off, they got laid off, their hours got cut, that story was just repeated, over and over again and we got lucky here. We didn’t have to reduce our hours, we didn’t have to cut any of our staff, and our customers kept coming,” Hillson said,

Business went up by 20 per cent during the pandemic, with buying habits taking a noticeable shift as the weeks went on.

“ First there was the panic buying so we had a really busy first two weeks and then it just went quiet for a week or two, I guess everyone was fully stocked up and we didn’t know what was going on there, was the business going to come back or not and it did. Then for a while in probably late April there was a tendency for people to really want delivery or curbside pick up, they didn’t want to come into the store and so we had to figure out technologically how are we going to send invoices to people so they can put them on their cell phone and then we had to partner with a delivery company,” Hillson said.

The month of May saw noticeable interest in sourdough bread at the Bakery, and the interest in home deliveries dropped.

The morning box of donuts before work also declined with more people staying at home.

“I think some of it was just the changing memes that was going on with the internet and then some of it was probably just an earnest desire to avoid the grocery store,” Hillson said.

The unsuspected rise in sales comes after highs and lows in bakery sales with Hillson seeing the peak of bakery sales in 2014 .

“You could pretty much chart that as an oil price chart. If you look at an oil price chart, 2014 was the best year and since then our sales have just kind of gone down, down, down year after year, and then last autumn, September 2019 , it just bottomed out,” Hillson said, adding right before the pandemic the months of January and February were also slow in comparison.

So as the pandemic drags on, and unprecedented situations arise, the neighborhood bakeries, where people can drool over its sugary goodness, remain. Treats on hand, ready to serve.