Ahmet Yaltirakli's German bakery in Sydney's QVB has proved a winner. Photo: Marco Del Grande
MAN cannot live on bread alone, but for this German-Turkish immigrant, it seems to be working just fine.
It's been almost seven years since Ahmet Yaltirakli opened the first outlet of his Luneburger German Bakery chain in the basement of Sydney's historic Queen Victoria Building. Since then, six more shops have been added across the city, luring commuters with the smell of soft Bavarian brezen (pretzels), seedy breads, ham and cheese rolls and continental pastries.
Four of the outlets are owned by Mr Yaltirakli; the others by a franchisee and his former wife. And the entrepreneur is eyeing a renewed push to break into the Melbourne market.
For the former goldsmith from Cologne, who came to Australia a decade ago after falling in love with the country on holidays, it was third time lucky.
He had earlier unsuccessfully tried to carve out an existence here as a jewellery wholesaler, then as a franchisee of the Dutch chocolate and ice-cream chain Australian Homemade, which failed to gain a following.
He says the market niche for a bakery chain selling denser, German-style bread seemed obvious as the flavour of loaves he bought at local bakeries and supermarkets had always left him ''deeply disappointed''.
''We also met other German expats, and asked them 'how's life in Australia'? And everyone said 'great - but there's no bread','' he recalls. Meanwhile, the rise of artisan bakers showed Australians were also willing to spend up on new bread varieties.
Still, the thought of opening a bakery would have been pretty far-fetched for the 49-year-old, who had never even made a birthday cake, had it not been for a friend back home who told him how he made ciabattas in his cafe. The friend sourced them from German wholesale bakers selling whole ranges of deep-frozen breads to commercial clients, to be baked on their premises.
''I thought there's no way it could be that easy,'' Mr Yaltirakli says. ''And the stuff was delicious.''
He got in touch with some of the bakers, tasted their goods and then spent a year working out the pricing, business expenses and logistics of importing containers of frozen dough products from the other end of the world to Australia.
He named the business after a Luneburger country loaf he saw in a product catalogue from one of his suppliers. Seeking a German-sounding name, ''I could hardly call it Yaltirakli's Bakery,'' he laughs. ''I'm not a Herr Meier or Herr Mueller.''
Today, a 40-foot container of bake-up pretzels, breads and pastries is delivered weekly from the ports of Hamburg and Rotterdam to his 630 square metre refrigerated warehouse in Mascot.
Mr Yaltirakli, who moved to Germany with his Turkish family when he was 11, says he knew he was on to a winner when he saw the turnover of his first day's trading in December 2005.
''We were really lucky to have started out at the right location, without even knowing it,'' he says. Still, the first year was hard, working from 6am past 8pm every day. ''I was so exhausted I would take naps on the freezer when things were quieter in mid-afternoon.''
And there have been glitches - with the produce at least seven weeks in shipping and transit, the entrepreneur recalls the occasional pretzel emergency when goods were held up in customs, quarantine or food safety. One time, he had to throw away some €15,000 ($A18,600) worth of dough when a container he was waiting for arrived past the use-by date.
Now firmly established, Mr Yaltirakli is working on growth plans such as opening more shops, or supplying hotels with his breakfast staples. A failed expansion to Melbourne 18 months ago, where he ran a shop with little foot traffic below a food court at Melbourne Central, hasn't muted his ambitions to try again, looking at locations such as Swanston or Elizabeth Street.
Another option was selling the Luneburger brand as a franchise. But recent talks with a local food company that saw potential to open 50 German bakery shops countrywide over five years have toppled over, the baker says.
''Everyone just wanted to have a piece of the pie - and the piece they wanted was much too big.''
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