First Look: Hector’s Bakery Is So Much More Than That

While it’s the brand’s first outpost not under the Hector’s Deli name, Hector’s Bakery has everything Melburnians know and love from its CBD, Richmond, Fitzroy and South Melbourne stores.

There are 12 sandwich presses, plenty of stainless steel, a coffee bar, counter seating, doughnuts, Dua Lipa-approved tuna melts and fresh salad sandwiches. But there’s also an open production kitchen and bakery space with a laminator, proofers, deck ovens, rack ovens and pretty much everything else pastry chefs and bakers dream of. “We really haven’t held back on spending the money to get some serious equipment in here,” co-founder Dom Wilton tells Broadsheet.

With the dollars put into the new Richmond space, Wilton says the team could have opened five or six more delis. But growth for growth’s sake is not what the brand is about. “We’re not just having a cookie-cutter business,” says Wilton. “We’re doing this to make sure that quality is amazing at all of our stores, something that notoriously gets more difficult with scale. Already at three stores and four stores, I’ll go and taste a batch of something or a recipe in one store and I’ll love it, and then I’ll go to the next store and be like, ‘That needs salt.’”

Hector’s Production Kitchen would be a more accurate name for the ambitious new space, directly opposite Richmond Station’s Stewart Street exit. The site centralises production of almost everything – from butchery to fermentation – for the existing stores. It’s the Hector’s answer to the question: How do you ensure quality across locations as you scale? An even more difficult task given the team’s focus on organic produce. “Now when we make a batch of something here, like fermented habaneros, the same taste goes out to all of our stores,” says Wilton.

“The idea for us is not can we be 20, 30, 40, 50, sites and get a big pay cheque at the end of it. The idea is, ‘let’s put something really meaningful out into the world’ that we don’t believe has been done.”

Wilton looks to American brand Blue Bottle Coffee and Danish company La Cabra for inspiration for what Hector’s could be in the future. His co-founder and life partner Vanessa Bossio, whose background is in luxury hotel operations management, has been instrumental in bringing the bakery arm to life, and Wilton also got advice from Fishbowl founders Nic Pestalozzi, Nathan Dalah and Casper Ettelson, who he says are “leading the way” for brands that want to scale without turning into old-school quick service restaurants (QSRs), a term typically associated with fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Subway and Pizza Hut.

But breaking the norms doesn’t apply when it comes to Hector’s menu. “We don't create flavour combinations. We take tried and tested classics and we try and elevate them … If it hasn't existed before, we don't really want to do it.” The goal of the bread and pastry team is not to create new items, but to constantly improve existing ones.

With head of pastry Aram Yun (ex-Bloomwood) and head baker Bertan Osman (ex-Rustica, ex-Natural Tucker Bakery) now on board, the team has worked to make a tight list of seven bakery items – including cinnamon buns, pain au chocolat, and cheese and peperonata buns – served in baby pink boxes and bags reminiscent of the packaging Californian doughnut shops are known for. Bread production has also been brought in-house, except for sourdough, which will still be sourced from Rustica due to the high volume needed.

For the coffee bar, beans are roasted at Criteria Coffee in Port Melbourne and the team has developed new drinks including a cherry cold brew with a “Starbucks-y” vanilla cold foam and a maraschino cherry on top. The coffee bar is also where you’ll find soft serve, which will be amped up with items made from wastage products such as a caramel sauce made using spent coffee grounds.

The team hasn’t skimped on the fit-out, which Wilton says is another way of signalling the quality and seriousness of the brand to guests. The heritage site has a Louis Poulsen pendant lamp, a wooden bench resembling a butcher’s block that was inspired by London restaurant St John, and marble flooring that Wilton says is a throwback to the “glamorous days of food halls” at department stores such as Harrods and David Jones. The open kitchens are very intentional.

“We are using the ingredients we say we’re using, and there’s technique to it,” Wilton says. “There are no walls between customers and what we’re doing – there’s nothing to hide behind.”

Hector’s Bakery
33 Stewart Street, Richmond
No phone

Hours:
Daily 7am–3pm

@hectors_deli