IT WAS NINETEEN EIGHTY-ONE and at 15 years of age James Nagel decided the classroom wasn’t for him and happily took up a position with a local Barossa Bakery. Four years later he was joined by his new wife Angie and together they spent the next few years learning their craft, honing their baking and business skills in anticipation of opening their own business. This dream became a reality in 1990 with the ‘birth’ of their business Sunrise Bakery whilst also welcoming their twins Paul and Melissa the same year. Two years later their second son Cameron was welcomed into the world completing their family.
“Looking back I’m not sure how we did it”
says Angie, “three children under 2.5 years of age and a new business”! “We must have been crazy but I guess we had youth, motivation and energy” on our side in those days. These first few years were incredibly busy, demanding long hours and total commitment. “Fortunately we lived in the house attached to the bakery back then hence James would work through the day whilst I looked after the children and I would work nights so James could look after the children or we would have them in the bakery with us when we were both out there”, explains Angie as “initially we could only afford to employ one baker so had to do the bulk of the workload ourselves”. The 90’s saw the business grow and expand into new markets, more outlets, wholesaling, catering and supplying and supporting local sporting and charity clubs. This increased business equated to employing more staff and slowly automating the very manual and heavy aspects of the bakery production process. Today we have four outlets located at Angaston, Truro, Gawler and Lyndoch with a staff of 48. All the baking is done from our Angaston bakehouse and delivered fresh daily to the other three outlets as well as a number of wholesale customers. Our bakery retail outlets have evolved with the ever-changing customer expectations embracing café style meals, vegan, vegetarian and gluten free options as well as all the traditional bakery favourites.
We are extremely fortunate to have an amazing team
behind us of committed and professional work colleagues whom we also consider good friends.
