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The Battle of the Happy's!May 17 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Brumby's and Baker's Delight - stores which will keep you from emaciation, but at what cost? :) The Clash of the Happy's: Brumby’s vs Baker’s Delight For the uninitiated, let me give you a brief run-down. Brumby’s and Baker’s Delights are stores which sell cheap gourmet bread products for a country which, erm, loves it’s bread along with its value for the (always flagging) dollar. In fact, Brumby’s and Baker’s Delight have the stranglehold on the cheap gourmet bread market, because there is, in fact, no other stores which sell only these foods (except for bakeries, and let’s face it, they’re not nearly as swanky). For this reason Brumby’s and Baker’s Delights – at least in Brisbane – are everywhere. They are omnipresent. They provide the cheapest bread you can buy, and are regularly frequented by not only Brisbanites but foreigners who are travelling on a shoe-string budget and need a cheap meal. All sounds simple and pleasant, you think? Ahhh – but it’s not, my friend! There’s a lot more to these places than meets the eye, as the recollections of the traumatic experiences of myself and friends will tell. Find below everything you need to know about the highly-charged, always interesting and often alarming nature of purchasing food at Baker’s Delight and Brumby’s. STORE SET-UP Simple things first. They are little stores, usually. They’d span about – perhaps – three metres long in most cases. There are usually no tables outside the store, though I noticed they’ve recently added a piece of disgustingly ugly patio furniture to the delightful grey cement outside our Arana Hills Brumby’s. You’d think they’d make bigger stores considering the high percentage of customers they draw in, who usually have to queue or jostle each other to get served. Though I have noticed that they just built a particularly large one (do we really need TWO in the same suburb?) at Arana Hills but, like a cat who drives its family crazy with it’s constant clawing of the furniture and then ignores the expensive clawing post it’s loving owner buys it, no one seems to go there. LOCATIONS Everywhere, as I’ve always mentioned. They are slowly taking over my world and may continue to do so until Brisbane gets something foreign and massive like, say, Starbucks. FOOD Ahh, the food! This is one of the reasons these places are so popular – it’s cheap, it’s (usually) fresh, and the range of gourmet bread is more expansive than that of, say, your average bakery. From different types of bread with different grains and different styles of cutting it to loaves filled with vegetables and different types of cheeses, they seem to have it all, or at least, a very large portion of what most people consider ‘all’. Both Baker’s Delight and Brumby’s serve similar sort of stuff. They both have mini pizza’s and garlic breads and cheese and chive loafs and all that jazz. The best part, of course, is how cheap these things are – usually around the two dollar (Australian) mark for a decent sized roll or slice or pizza. It’s usually quite yummy and a meal in itself. This is the reason why, in my bumming-around poor university student days – as opposed to my current bumming-around poor post-university days - I and other students relied on Brumby’s and Baker’s Delight for many a meal. Though, note that I say USUALLY fresh... if I’d written this review yesterday, I would not have included the “usually”, but for an experience I had in a Baker’s Delight store yesterday afternoon. The vegetarian pizza slices are my favourite thing from this store, because they usually have heaps of olives and mushrooms along with a fair helping of capsicum, spinach and cheese. I ordered one without thinking. She handed me my pizza in the usual brown paper bag and after walking a small distance I noticed with some disdain the unusually high amount of fat which had marked the bag. Hmmm. I stopped on the side of the road, pulled the pizza out and... Oh my God. I swear the covering of cheese was about two centimetres thick. I saw my darling little mushroom and olives swallowed by its fatty all-consuming hardness, gasping for sweet, life-saving air. Geez. I ripped the layer of cheese off and held it in my hand. It was heavy. It was like slimy, not-properly-hardened cement. It was ... about half a block of sweaty, old cheese. The bread underneath had long since given up the struggle to breathe and was mushy and wet. It broke in my hands and fell in little chunks to the pavement. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled. I stared at the cheese chunk in my hand. It was about the size of a square ice-cream container lid. What to do with it? I was going to visit my friend and play Mario Kart, and he has a flatmate I don’t like whose sexist and obnoxious nature could probably do to be harmed by a fiendish little cheese-in-the-bed rendezvous. But if he found out it was me, he could confiscate the Nintendo 64. Hmmm. - There was only one thing. I flung the cheese (spinning, spinning quickly; turning like a square frizbee) into a nearby metal bin. It rebounded off the wall to the bottom of the barrel, making two hard, clear clunking sounds. I believe it did not break in its fall. CUSTOMER SERVICE Alright. Now to be honest this really is the basis of my review, because I’m having real difficulty getting over the customer service in these places. As Ned Flanders on the Simpsons would say, “cut down a tree and call me stumped” – or something like that, because I’m sure the people who work in Brumby’s and Baker’s Delight are in fact not people at all. They must be robots created especially for the most spritely, liveliest, warmest customer service conceivable. Or perhaps the proprietors ship in people from some happy planet outside our universe. Either way, the ecstatic friendliness with which the staff greet their customers is eerie and dates a long way back, to the dawn of the cheap gourmet bread industry. It was about six or seven years ago when my friend Julie, having moved out of home quite early and hence grocery-shopped more than the rest of my friends put together, alerted me to the existence of the new Brumby’s store which had opened up at the local supermarket, Brookside. After a brief interlude where she mentioned the cheapness and freshness of the bread, her face took on a confounded tone so severe I could see she was having trouble putting the words together, and since she has always been quite well-spoken I could see that something extraordinary troubled her. “Yes?” I prompted. “Well....” she began, and then in overwhelmed and highly expressive tones conveyed the excitable and charged nature of her Brumby’s experience. She had walked up to the counter to purchase a simple loaf of bread when one of the counter girls had positively lunged at her. Julie looked at the woman who was grinningly enthusiastic to the point which suggested someone on drugs. "How are you?!!??" The girl screamed. “And would you like that sliced?” she continued, lending a passion to those words no one had ever managed before. Being a calm and mild-mannered clever type of girl, this sudden burst of manic happiness not only surprised Julie, but alarmed her. It was shocking, unusual – extreme to the point that it must have been ‘put on’. The girl fired a few more unnecessary questions Julie’s way with violent enthusiasm – about Julie’s day, how her shopping had been going, and general semi-intrusive chitchat which might have been fine had it been expressed in a less heartfelt way. Feeling overwhelmed, Julie quickly paid for her bread and backed away slowly. I had to see this for myself. Walking to the counter I watched from afar the employees (normally about three or so in this particular store, despite it’s small size, because they’re always very busy) interact with the customers. There DID seem to be an unusual amount of chirpiness going on, but only on one side of the counter. The customers seemed unfazed – most of them looked bored and absent-mindedly discontented as they handed over their money, but this should be seen as being indicative of the usual Brookside clientele rather than a sign of Brumby’s customer service. I ordered a mini-pizza type thing. The girl was friendly to me, but not excessively so. I expected fireworks. Feeling vaguely disappointed, I turned slowly away. I supposed that coming across a friendly counter girl was a rarity in itself – certainly, I had been served by a robot. Though Electric Girl must not have been rostered on that day. Unfortunately – and if you’re the sort of person who likes a happy ending, turn away now – I was never to meet the Electric Girl. She’s served my mother and a few of my friends since the initial Julie incident, but perhaps I don’t shop at Brookside as often as I should. Some say that if the sky is blue and your heart is light and the air is just right, travel to Brumby’s, Brookside, and with a little luck you may still find Electric Girl, wowing and alarming people from her elevated counter throne. As for Baker’s Delight – the staff here seem also to be friendlier than usual counter staff. They’re always grinning, even when you just know their day has been bloody boring and probably littered with crowds of nasty customers. It must be something they put in the bread. Then again, if it is, I haven’t felt the affects yet. I haven’t met any Baker’s Delight manics yet, but my search continues. I won’t give up. Well – that seems to have covered it. What’s my final verdict? Visit Baker’s Delight/Brumby’s by all means. Experience it for yourself. But for God’s Sake – tread carefully. Be wary of wired-looking employees and suspiciously thick cheese, because it could scar your thirst for gourmet bread for life. It’s only been twenty four hours since the ‘Frisbee Incident’, but the prospect of cheese now makes me feel sick.  |
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