The now deceased renowned American chef, cookbook author, and television personality, James Beard, is credited with the saying that “good bread is the most satisfying of all foods.” Twenty-nine-year-old Troy Sobers is a wholehearted subscriber to that view. Over the past seven years Troy’s involvement in the ‘bread business’ has provided for his livelihood, satisfied a passion and given him the means to prepare the groundwork for a good life for his three children – two daughters and a son. Nor, for that matter, is his continually growing clientele known to complain about the quality of service that he offers.
A young man of manifestly good humour and an evident passion for his work, Troy recently opened the most recent branch of the Sobers’ Bakery Establishment at Chateau Margot on the East Coast Demerara.
Two weeks ago the Stabroek Business happened by chance on the new outlet
sitting on its ‘lonesome’ on a quiet stretch of what persons familiar with that neck of the woods describe as the ‘line top,’ that section of the road that used to accommodate the now long-scrapped railway line.
We had stopped there because the more popular outlet in the Sobers’ Bakery Establishment ‘chain’ which sits just off the junction of the ‘Line top’ and the Ogle Airport Road had already ‘shut shop’ for the day… and one of the Stabroek News (SN) staffers needed bread.
Troy had greeted the SN ‘crew’ as though we were old friends. Once we had had a good view of the display case, decorated with a bewildering array of cakes and pastries, that was where our light-hearted conversation with the proprietor ended.
Modest purchases and generous expressions of satisfaction with the outlay of the establishment were followed by an interlude of banter with the accommodating proprietor. It was in the course of that discourse, mostly on the subject of local bakeries, that the arrangement for the Stabroek Business to interview the proprietor was agreed upon.
The Chateau Margot outlet opened its doors in June this year. Up to this time it remains a relatively modest ‘walk-in’ retail establishment. The establishment offers both white and whole wheat bread, tennis rolls, and up to fifteen types of pastries. ‘On the side,’ it also offers soft drinks, bottled water and of late, barbecue chicken.
After he had been retrenched from his job as a heavy-duty equipment operator with an international gold-mining company in 2017, Troy had turned to entrepreneurship. After being home for several months contemplating his next move he finally entered into an agreement with the Buxton-based Benjamin’s Bakery to ‘buy and sell’ the establishment’s bread and tennis rolls.
A sense of satisfaction with the returns was not long in coming. In fact he did well enough to establish four outlets at Ogle, Good Hope, Mon Repos and Better Hope, taking advantage of the fact that there were few bread vendors operating on that stretch of the ‘line top’.
Tennis rolls and bread, Sobers says, are “good sellers.” He endeavours never to have his outlets ‘run short’ of those items.
In 2020, Troy took another significant entrepreneurial leap. He established his own bakery at Vigilance on the East Coast Demerara. It was a less than elaborate start. It began with the two critical tools… a ‘box oven’ and a mixer. He recalls that his first day as a baker saw him ‘mix’ forty pounds of flour for pastries. It was, he says, “a stressful task” though he adds that “after a week I got the hang of it.”
It was his burning ambition to become a successful businessman that caused Sobers to ‘come around’ to the reality that he needed to know much more about the ‘commercial side’ of baking. He hired an experienced baker to get the job done and afterwards took to YouTube and Google to expand his own horizons on the business. There, he applied himself to learning all that he could about bread and pastry-making. Before he was entirely ready to ‘go it alone’, however, he was forced to ‘part company’ with his hired baker. That juncture marked the start of Troy’s real excursion into baking and these days he is under-studied by a female baker.
The opening of the establishment’s Chateau Margot operations saw the relocation of the nerve centre of the operations from Vigilance. Thereafter, it has been ‘full steam ahead’. The bakery works round the clock to ensure that there is never a shortage of fresh bread, tennis rolls and pastries. A day’s ‘turn out’ of bread and pastries is preceded by the mixing of around three hundred pounds of flour.
School snacks, Sobers says, are considerable earner. With schools currently closed for what is customarily described as ‘the August holidays’, patronage has ‘dropped off’. Understandably, Sobers is ‘counting down’ the remaining few days before the new academic year commences.
Over time, Sobers has acquired the equipment necessary for the establishment of a modern bakery. Understandably, high electricity rates is his biggest challenge. Acquisition of a generator is still on the company’s ‘to do’ list.
Nor has his establishment remained unaffected by price increases. Prices for flour and other ingredients associated with baking have risen between December last year and January 2022. This has compelled him to effect his first price hike since he began selling bread in 2017.
Consumers, he says, have an insatiable appetite for bread, tennis rolls and pastries. There are days when demand exceeds supply.
Expansion of the service, Troy says, is constrained by staffing challenges. Good help, he laments, is hard to find. “They work for a week or a month and you do not see them again, it is frustrating,” he says. Two of his locations are currently closed on account of staffing challenges. One of his primary current preoccupations is with having them re-opened at the earliest possible time.
As a child, careers in either baking or any other business pursuit were nowhere close to the top of the pile as far as his ambitions were concerned. He had grown up with a considerable admiration for men and women ‘in uniform’. He wanted to be a soldier. As it happened, he says, his particular choice of hair style ran counter to the regulations that attended ‘joining up’ the military. He began his working life as a porter. Afterwards, he secured training with the Mekdeci Mining Company (MMC) first, as a Machine Operator and subsequently afterwards as a Heavy-Duty Machine Operator. Thereafter he had secured work as a machine operator with one company or another, eventually ending up at Guyana Goldfields from where he was retrenched in 2017.
The 29-year-old businessman told the Stabroek Business that he had “few problems” transitioning from employee to employer. As a heavy-duty machine operator he had benefited from exposure to modest supervisory ‘positions’ and was able to take some of those experiences to his own business. Self-discipline and time management, he says, are among the ‘management skills’ he values most.
As if the challenges of his job are not enough, Troy is also preoccupied with the pursuits of a single parent, managing two shy but charming little girls and a son. He has, he says, grown accustomed to the routine of dividing the day between baking and parenting.
Delivery of products to the four currently operating locations begins at 6 am in order to allow for the start of trading at 7:00 am. Customers who cannot get access to bread for the morning meal or snacks for children’s lunch boxes are unlikely to be readily forgiving. In instances where, for one reason or another, the delivery driver is not ‘on the job,’ Troy must ‘step in,’ temporarily setting aside the domestic chores associated with readying his children for school.
Nor do the challenges deter him. Even now, he is focussed on the idea of expanding into other parts of the country, including the capital.
Sobers’ Homemade Bakery Establishment can be reached at 686-1367
