Inside the Family Bakery That’s Been Going Strong for 125 Years

Few food businesses inspire as much nostalgia as the local bakery. For generations of Victorians, it’s been where sausage rolls, meat pies and vanilla slices become family traditions rather than just afternoon snacks. Ferguson Plarre has been part of that ritual for 125 years. But in a food landscape driven by ever-changing trends, how does a family bakery stay relevant for more than a century? For Steve Plarre, CEO and fourth-generation custodian of the family business, the answer starts with knowing exactly what people keep coming back for. 

“We are the everyday affordable: great sausage roll, great pie, great vanilla slice – the kind of stuff you grew up with as a kid,” he says. “The classic Australian bakery is fresh and affordable, and if you go to any country town, you know one of the best-traded food businesses will be the bakery. There’s a quality pie, a proper custard tart and great coffee – there’s something for everyone.”

Steve and his brother Mike are the fourth generation of Plarres to work in the family business, which started in 1901 with German migrant Otto Plarre. But before Otto made it to Melbourne, he travelled from his small German hometown to Greiz, where he began an apprenticeship with the city's leading pastrycook, Herr Orlamtinder. It was here that 14-year-old Otto was guided by a simple motto: “Quality, variety and good service” – values the family still upholds today.

“After completing his apprenticeship and working in bakeries across Germany, Otto then travelled to Paris, then he and three baker mates decided they wanted to come to Australia,” Steve says. “They jumped on a boat, went all the way to Melbourne and then, a couple of years later, opened Plarre’s Cakes in Puckle Street, Moonee Ponds.”

These days, Ferguson Plarre, a name that comes from Plarre’s merger with Coburg’s Ferguson family in 1980, trades on a certain nostalgia, serving familiar, comforting bakes that seem etched in the suburban Australian psyche. While the classics remain, the bakery continues to make them with quality ingredients and bake them fresh daily in Melbourne. Otto Plarre, though, wasn’t afraid to break new ground initially, serving what’s thought to be Melbourne’s first documented chocolate eclair in 1919 and introducing European pastries to a city that has long since become intimately familiar with them.

"He was learning in the 1800s, when eclairs were having their moment in Europe,” Steve says. “He introduced European baking traditions that were new to Australia. His vanilla slice would have been an elegant French mille-feuille; nowadays most Aussies just call it a snot block. Either way, it remains one of our signature products and a best seller.”

There are more than 80 Ferguson Plarre locations to date and Steve, as the custodian of the 125-year-old bakery, has the responsibility of keeping them and the business alive. For him, the future of the bakery is all about the balance between staying relevant in a landscape dominated by Instagram-worthy baking trends and celebrating the “super important” 125-year history of the business.

“It’s a fine line between being nostalgic and cool in that way, and being old-fashioned and not relevant anymore,” he says. “We’re always trying to do the whole ‘Hey, we’ve been around forever, you should love us like your favourite cheeky nan’ and have permission to be a bit cheesy and cool, but not be so old-fashioned that people just don’t want to hang out with us anymore.”

Steve’s young daughters are currently on work experience with the brand and, while there’s no internal pressure, the door is always open for them to become the fifth generation of Plarres to keep the rest of us well fed. If they do choose to follow the century-old family tradition, Steve says they’ll be inheriting a brand that has no intention of moving away from doing the things it’s always done well.

That philosophy also shapes the bakery’s 125th anniversary celebrations. From August 17 to September 6, Ferguson Plarre’s Retro Collection brings back five customer-voted favourites from its archives including the Boston bun, Jaffa cake, peppermint cake, caramel slice and mushroom tart.

“It’s the products we’ve made forever that we’re quite famous for,” he says. “This is a real hat tip to me talking about classic Australian bakehouses – it is a large sausage roll, a meat pie, our famous ‘Tiddly Oggie’ pasty, a vanilla slice, a chocolate eclair and great coffee.”

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Ferguson Plarre.