Easter 2023: Bakers ‘battling’ for hot cross bun supplies

Bakeries have been hit with rising supply costs and labour shortages ahead of this year's hot cross bun production. Photo / Supplied

Local bakeries have been “pumping out the buns” this Easter even with costs of essentials like flour, eggs and butter leaping over the last year.

Bakers from around the country said the squeeze on bakeries to give customers high-quality hot cross buns has been bigger than ever with rising costs in supply, labour, equipment and utilities.

Eggs, butter, flour

Auckland’s Daily Bread bakery won the Great New Zealand Hot Cross Bun Competition for the last two years.

Operating manager Kieran Evans said flour supply has been relatively smooth but the team was “fighting for eggs”.

He said a small farm supplying organic pastured eggs had totally run out of supply.

“A lot of the new suppliers aren’t taking on any more businesses because they’re already overloaded”.

Copenhagen Bakery co-owner Donna Thomsen said costs for “almost everything have gone up” for the Christchurch bakery.

“Every week, we are getting emails from suppliers about another price increase. That has been an ongoing issue since probably the end of last year,” Thomsen said.

She said supplier costs clashed with other expenses like labelling and website costs.

“It’s time and labour to have to change prices all the time. Being a small family-run business, we can’t just do it overnight,” she said.

“We have taken the brunt of the price increases. It has been difficult to keep ahead of it.”

Thomsen said most bakery products needed butter, flour and eggs to make, but getting high-quality ingredients had been an issue.

Sourdough experts Daily Bread craft slowly fermented sourdough buns. Photo / Supplied

“We could have one supplier from Canterbury with good quality flour, but now we’ve had to swap and change quite a bit depending on where the stock levels are,” she said.

“This is going to be the time where businesses will be possibly cost-cutting in their supplies or raw material.”

She said the Copenhagen team was changing up recipes to deal with limited supply.

“It’ll be surprising to see how many businesses now just won’t be able to afford butter or eggs.”

Family-owned and operated Nada Bakery in Wellington’s northern suburbs made 1200 packs of six hot cross buns for the week leading up to Easter, totalling 7200 individual buns.

Chief executive Michael Gray said getting hold of any commodity had been challenging.

“Eggs are definitely still in shortage and hard to get. Flour is in relatively good supply, but the price has gone up a heck of a lot,” he said.

Gray found flour prices increased about 35 per cent year on year.

Daily Bread operating manager Kieran Evans said the company has been "fighting" for supplies ahead of Easter this year. Photo / Michael Craig

Labour costs

Thomsen said the costs to recruit staff were significant for small bakeries like Copenhagen.

“It’s never really been this bad before. Now we are really looking into being more efficient with our structure,” she said.

Nada Bakery has also seen increasing labour costs, especially with recent changes to wage policy.

“With adjustments to the minimum wage coming through ... it does put a lot more pressure on businesses to make sure their costs are correct and to pass it on to the consumer,” chief executive Gray said.

Auckland’s Daily Bread bakers said staffing issues hit the business almost as hard as supply shortages.

“There are staff around, but the main issue is having skilled staff and that affects all areas,” Evans said.

“We’ve got lots of people that are willing to work, but a lot of them need a lot of training,” he said.

“In the baking department, it’s always hard to find a skilled baker or pastry chef that doesn’t require training over a few months.”

He said with hot cross bun production in full force, the team was “scrambling to find some extra people to help out”.

Nada Bakery CEO Michael Gray said the family business starts hot cross bun production in February and manages to keep up with special requests from customers. Photo / Supplied

Baking an award-winning bun

Despite the ongoing pressure on local bakeries to bring Kiwis high-quality hot cross buns, the businesses start production early on.

Evans said Daily Bread started work on the product about two months before Easter, when requests from customers begin.

He said the senior pastry team dedicated countless hours to adjusting flavours and tasting different creations long before production started.

Nada Bakery usually started hot cross bun production even earlier, in February, with customer requests coming in at the start of the year.

“You see some supermarkets have them out on Boxing Day which I think is a little bit early,” Gray said.

He said the team kept hot cross bun production going after Easter with special orders and popup sales.

Meanwhile, Canterbury’s Copenhagen Bakery started production in mid-January with a batch taking about nine hours to make.

Thomsen said the team sold 8000 buns the day before Easter last year.

“We’re selling on average around probably 2000 buns a day coming up to Easter week and then between 4000 and 8000 each day on Easter week,” she said.

Bakers started at about midnight, every night, working to midday, Thomsen said.

Copenhagen Bakery co-owner Donna Thomsen said the team are "still pumping out the buns" this year. Photo / Supplied

Retail prices

Thomsen said shoppers were paying an extra 20 cents extra this year for half a dozen hot cross buns at $15 a pack.

“That’s nothing compared to the cost that we’ve had to absorb from this time last year,” she said.

“For the workmanship and the craft that goes into it and the quality of the product, we’ve got to be realistic,” Thomsen said.

She said the team “aren’t too worried” about rising costs.

“We’re still pumping out buns.”

Thomsen added: “When I look back, I think this is the hardest it’s ever been for us as a small business.”

Daily Bread’s six-packs cost $22.

Nada Bakery prices their half-dozen packs at $16.50.

“I think the main thing is that consumers need to understand that the high quality,” Gray said.

“Some people may think that bakeries are charging a lot and they compare them to say that of a generic supermarket ... then you’ve got some bakeries that are really taking pride in what they’re doing,” he said.

“Adding that little bit of extra fruit, lots of spices and quality ingredients - that does cost.”