Ben Eyres and Sarah Tabak, founders of Beabea’s Bakery
A new wave of skill is transforming Auckland’s Westmere stores. It started last year with the Ragtag restaurant, then in September with the Stracci pasta delicatessen and now some other well-known place will reopen under new management.
Ben Eyres and Sarah Tabak took over 160 Garnet Road, what was once Westmere Bakery. Its founders hung up their aprons last August after 32 years at the helm of one of Auckland’s old-fashioned bakeries.
Eyres previously led pastry production at Daily Bread, where he worked for four years. Tabak describes herself as “a kind of hospo lifer”: she finished her science degree with graduate studies in oenology (the study of wine) and then worked in winemaking. She started at Daily Bread making deliveries during lockdown and then joined baking. “He’s a gun, one of the toughest people who run,” Eyres says.
Romance blossomed: “I discovered Ben and discovered baking,” Tabak says, and now the pair have to pool their talents for this new venture.
Beabea’s, named after Tabak’s great-aunt, will open its doors in mid-November.
It will be a classic “but elevated” New Zealand bakery, says Eyres. They’ll sell pies, sourdough and pies, and expand into sandwiches, but for now they need to start small.
Eyres wanted to have his own stall and really liked the place in Westmere, so he eagerly sought it out when it became available. The lease ended and the previous owner, Nang Ly, was fit to retire, the couple said.
When you visit Broadsheet, Beabea’s is still in the structure phase; However, the spacious interior features white tiles covering nearly every inch of the walls and ceiling, showing some wear and tear on the character over the years (the structure dates back to the 1930s). And the couple says it once too (former yachtsman and fishmonger).
Military blue tiles draw square patterns on the walls, and the space is filled with gadgets that Eyres and Tabak have amassed over the years, which is clever planning—it takes a lot of gadgets to run an advertising bakery.
They bought two pastry lamination generators from Trade Me and picked them up at Fairlie in the South Island. Eyres also bought a 3-story furnace from Fairlie Bakehouse 3 years ago, which had to be installed through the window on Garnet Road. Some pieces were also left through from previous tenants, adding a muffin divider and a jumbo blender.
The couple needs other people to come in to feel like they’re in the middle of a working kitchen. “My cousin is preparing a lovely big totara bench for us, which will be the centerpiece of the space,” Tabak says.
Eyres will prepare delicacies here and Tabak will help and run the room. They’ll be serving coffee at Atomic. Everything will be takeout at first, and soon there will be tables.
Tabak’s great-aunt, after whom the bakery is named, had a pivotal culinary influence on her: an inherited cookbook is Tabak’s most prized possession. “There may be some features on the menu,” he says. The logo even of the great aunt Beabea’s letter in the two curly capital B’s.
Eyres and Tabak intend to continue their predecessor’s legacy as a network bakery, and judging by the number of people poking their heads into the unfinished store, it turns out that the network is excited to welcome them.
Beabea’s Bakery will open in mid-November on Garnet Road, Westmere, Auckland.
@beabeas. bakery