Brisbane bakery removes hot cross from ‘Easter Time buns’

A bakery’s decision to remove the hot cross from its buns and labelled them “Easter Time buns” has been labelled “woke madness” by a former high profile retail chief executive.

The Easter Time buns for sale at a Brisbane bakery.

Sentinel Property Group executive Michael ‘The Professor’ Sherlock still has bakeries in his blood as the co-founder and former CEO of Brumby’s.

Despite having sold the bakery franchise business to Retail Food Group in 2007, Sherlock keeps his eagle eye on the industry particularly around Easter when bakeries are typically booming from the sale of hot cross buns on ‘bun Thursday’ – the day before Good Friday.

But Sherlock was aghast when he found Riser Bread, a local bakery in Brisbane’s inner west, had decided to remove the ‘hot cross’ from its buns and label them ‘Easter Time buns’.

“This is just another case of woke madness removing the name hot cross buns,” he says.

“This wouldn’t have happened in my time at Brumby’s. You can’t have Easter without hot cross buns. They’ve been synonymous with Easter celebrations since the 12th century in England.”

Sherlock, Sentinel’s chief experience officer, says the Group’s CEO Warren Ebert and the Sentinel staff celebrated their Easter morning tea at their Brisbane CBD office on Thursday with many hot cross buns.

Riser Bread co-owner Tom Cooney, speaking to Brisbane radio station 4BC, said he and the bakery’s two other co-owners weren’t “trying to make a huge stand” with the Easter Time buns.

“It’s not an attempt at reinvention,” he said.

“We thought, ‘let’s just do an Easter time bun that’s non-denominational’. None of us are Christian, feels a bit weird to put a cross on there.”