Ten years of getting up early
Pan Buns started in 2016 with one person, a borrowed steamer and forty buns on a folding table. It is bigger now, in the way a family gets bigger rather than the way a company does. Nobody has bought us and there is no second branch.
The sign above the door is still the one we painted in 2017.
How it went
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2016
A folding table
Ana borrowed a steamer, made forty buns on a Saturday morning because a neighbour said she should, and sold out by half past ten. She did it again the next week, and the week after that, and by the autumn there was a queue before she had finished setting up.
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2017
A door of our own
A small unit came free in Ashgrove with one deck oven already in it. We opened three days a week, which was all we could bake for, and put a hand painted sign above the door because a printed one cost more than the flour that month.
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2018
Peter, and the bread
People kept asking whether we had a loaf, and saying no every day got wearing. Ana asked her brother, who had been baking at home for years and hated his job. He started with two tins a day and now the breads take up most of a wall.
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2019
The first crate
A cafe round the corner asked whether we could do two dozen buns on a Thursday. We said yes without really knowing how, delivered them on a bike, and that one crate is the reason the wholesale side of things exists at all.
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2020
The hatch
The counter shut for a stretch and we sold bread through a window in the door, one household at a time. It was not a good year and we are not going to pretend it was. Enough regulars kept coming that we were still here at the end of it.
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2021
A second cabinet, and sourdough
A proving cabinet went in, which meant we could hold dough overnight properly instead of stacking bowls near the radiator. The sourdough started that spring and took about eight months to become a loaf we were happy to sell.
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2022
The first classes
We cleared the upstairs room, put in three benches, and ran a steamed bun class for six people who mostly knew us from the queue. It sold out in a day, which surprised us, and there have been classes most weekends since.
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2023
Josie, full time
Ana's daughter had been helping at weekends since she was fourteen. She finished college and came in properly, took over the classes and the sweet side of the counter, and took over most of the writing in the notes, which until then had been whoever had a spare half hour.
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2026
Where it is now
Five cafes on the delivery round, classes most weekends, two bakers who start at four, and still one counter that sells out most days. We have been asked several times about a second shop. We have said no every time, so far.
Three of us, and two bakers who start at four
There is no head office and no founder story worth putting on a wall. If you come in on a Tuesday, one of these three will serve you.
Ana
Started the whole thing on a folding table and still mixes the enriched dough herself most mornings. She is the one who will tell you honestly that the beef buns are gone and are not coming back today.
Peter
Ana's brother. Came in to make two tin loaves a day in 2018 and now runs everything with a crust on it, plus the three delivery mornings. He is out of the door by five and back before we open.
Josie
Ana's daughter, helping at weekends from fourteen and full time since 2023. She runs all four classes, makes the pandan slice that nobody else is allowed to touch, and writes most of the notes.
The bits that have not changed
We bake what we can sell in a day and we would rather run out than throw away. That is why the counter looks thin by two o'clock and why the menu page tells you what goes first, so you can plan around us.
Everything is made here. The fillings, the custard, the ham, the starter. We buy flour, butter, meat and vegetables, and we do not buy anything that arrives already a bun.
We have turned down a supermarket listing, a stall at an event we could not staff, and a second unit two miles away. None of those were brave decisions. We simply could not have made the buns and done them as well.
Ten years in, the recipes have changed a great deal and the plan has not changed at all.
In a normal week
- OpenSix days, closed Mondays
- Baking startsFour in the morning, every day we open
- Delivered toFive cafes, three mornings a week
- ClassesMost weekends, six or eight people
- CountersOne, and it is staying that way