Eight years after opening the first Hector’s Deli store in Richmond, co-founder Dom Wilton and the team are readying an ambitious new project in the same suburb. Hector’s Bakery, the biggest operation in size – and cost – the business has undertaken, is due to open in early March on Stewart Street, opposite Richmond Station.

The 350-square-meter venue will produce the bread for all Hector’s Deli stores and add an entirely new retail arm to the Hector’s empire. “It’s a big thing to bite off, but we’re obsessed with quality of everything, and we feel the need to separate ourselves from other sandwich shops that are doing a similar thing to what we’re doing,” co-founder Dom Wilton tells Broadsheet.

The bakery will make and sell Turkish bread, a rye loaf and a 2.0 version of the Hector’s steamed potato bun, currently used for the fried chicken and fried mushroom sandwiches. Doughnuts will stay a staple of all Hector’s Deli locations, but new products including morning buns, laminated pastries and a fermented habanero and cheese scroll will be exclusive to the bakery (though you’ll be able to buy all the usual Hector’s Deli sandwiches at the new bakery, too). The space will also be used to ferment produce for use at Hector’s Deli stores, show off the house-roasted coffee and occasionally function as an event space after hours.

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Unlike the design of the delis, which Wilton says represents the lunchtime hustle and bustle of cities like New York and Chicago, Hector’s Bakery will have a more relaxed, Nordic-inspired fit-out. The team has worked with Pattern Studio to ensure Hector’s Bakery has its own feel and, in keeping with the brand’s focus on transparency, the bakery space will be completely open, so visitors can see pastry being laminated and bread being proofed. “It’s somewhere you can take time to kind of sit in and enjoy, rather than the normal Hector’s Deli, which is pretty in-and-out.”

While Melbourne has become overrun with sandwich shops, Wilton insists deli fatigue isn’t why the team has decided to open Hector’s Bakery, rather than another sandwich shop.

“Wanting to scale up a food business – and also being super fearful of what that might mean for quality and consistency – is what has made this idea come to life,” he says. “The challenge for us as a business is to grow in numbers of stores and to make sure that we’re not just putting something out into the world that already exists.”

Hector’s Bakery is expected to open at 33 Stewart Street, Richmond in early March.