The Bread & Butter Project – A Bakery with a Difference

The Bread & Butter Project is a bakery with a difference. Every slice of their delicious artisan bread helps provide training and employment for people seeking refuge and asylum in Australia.

Their participants come from all different backgrounds and have unique experiences. The bakery aims to create a supportive workplace that empowers trainee bakers and equips them for their new life here in Australia.

Working alongside professional bakers, the program provides full-time paid traineeships which include baking skills, work experience, TAFE accreditation, English as a Second Language tutoring and career counselling. At the end of the program, The Bread and Butter Project works with the participants to find a job.

Not only are the participants trained in baking skills they are also shown how to arrange their taxes and superannuation, read a roster, understand workplace requirements and communicate in the workplace, they’re also connected with people who have had similar experiences.

Participants range in age from their 20s to their 50s. The Bread and Butter Project gives everyone an opportunity to start a new career at any stage of life.

How It Started

In 2011, Paul Allam was inspired to set up The Bread & Butter Project following a trip with his wife, Jessica Grynberg, to Mae Sot on the Thai-Burmese border, where at the invitation of a local orphanage they taught a group of refugee women how to bake bread and helped establish a social business to support these women and the orphanage.

On returning home, Paul along with his partner at Bourke Street Bakery, David McGuinness, decided to use their baking expertise and community spirit to set up a social enterprise bakery to empower the least privileged in our community. Their vision was that Bourke Street Bakery would gift its time, baking and hospitality expertise to establish a wholesale bakery where 100% of the profits would go towards training and employment opportunities for refugees and asylum seekers in Sydney.

 

Changing Lives

Rania Shahoud, once feared for her life walking to the shops to buy bread to feed her family in war-torn Syria now she is baking bread after she and her family migrated to Australia in 2018.   A fun fact about Rania, her husband and her two sons are all civil engineers! In her spare time, she also loves to cook healthy meals for her family.  Read more about Rania here.

In July 2020, they are taking on 10 new trainees. They will undertake a 6 to 8-month traineeship to become qualified bakers.

100% of the profits are channelled into creating opportunity and alleviating poverty. Currently, bread and pastry sales fund 90% of their training and operation costs and donations fund the remaining 10%. They also rely on volunteers and pro bono assistance to help them to achieve their goals.

 

Bakery Products

Their Bakery Products include an organic sourdough rang. Bread is crafted in a variety of shapes including oval, batard and boule. They also bake brioche, pastries, and speciality loaves and rolls.

Where To Buy The Bread and Butter Project Bread in Lane Cove

Jack & Co Northwood stock a range of their bread (both sliced and unsliced loaves).  The Junction Coffee Co uses Bread and Butter Projects in their yummy sandwiches.  ITC can vouch for the bread – it’s good.

 

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