Brand Tas

Nurul Mohd Noor and Corey Newton met in Malaysia, got married, and decided to start their lives together in Tasmania. They needed jobs - but not just any jobs. They wanted to do something meaningful.

There were bakeries in Tasmania, of course, but they wanted to start something different: a 100 per cent sourdough bakery made with entirely local ingredients. “Unfortunately, many larger businesses – in the interest of maximising profits – look further afield for their ingredients,” says Corey.

Their product was delicious. Their philosophy was wonderful. Their business model was tricky. “The banks would not look at us and we had no income. We ate rough, we had two toddlers, we chopped wood in the backyard to keep warm in winter. No equipment, nothing! When I recount the story of how the business started, people cry.”

Nurul and Corey didn’t give up. But when Philadelphia Bakers came to life, it scaled quickly. The solution was to pull back and focus purely on the Farm Gate Market, which gave them access to regular customers and a work-life balance they couldn’t find in commercial baking. At their ‘best’ they had been working eighteen hour days, seven days per week.

“When we’re not baking we hope to be working the land, harvesting our veggies, fruits and animals for our sustenance, fishing for trout in a stream or river somewhere, or walking a trail, reading a book, and drinking many a coffee. The beauty left in this world is rapidly fading, too fast to spend life locked away in a cubical at a screen, or working all the waking hours in a day.”