Bellbowrie Bakery closes after 29 years, 1 million loaves

She has sold more than a million bread loaves, sausage rolls, sweet treats and survived the 2011 floods. But after 29 years, this loved local baker is turning off the oven for the last time.

Not many small businesses can say they have survived for 29 years and three generations in the same shopping centre, but Fran Alt has a lot to look back on.

The Bellbowrie Bakery owner has survived flood waters over her ceiling, a pandemic — and a customer with a snake wrapped around her neck.

But three generations of her family will say a final goodbye to their loyal westside customers on June 26.

Ms Alt said it was one of the hardest decisions of her life, but she decided that after selling more than a million pies, sausage rolls, loaves of bread and pastries that it was time to take off her flour-flecked apron and retire.

“We would have shut after the 2011 floods wiped us out. We had water over the roof,’’ she said.

The mess left at Bellbowrie Shopping Plaza after the 2011 flood. Picture: Bruce Long

“But with the help of the community we stripped the shop and got it going again.

“They gave us the courage to come back.’’

The 2011 floods devastated the suburb, prompting developer Consolidated Properties to build a new centre on higher ground. Coles will relocate there this month.

Ms Alt can, by now, claim to know just about everyone in the friendly semirural suburb.

If a customer didn’t have enough change, it was OK to pay what they owed the next time they came in.

She even gave the local school kids a lift home when she came back in the afternoons to shut up for the day.

Bellbowrie Shopping Centre. Picture: Renae Droop

“I got a huge fright one day when I gave a woman a lift. I thought she had a scarf around her neck, but it turned out to be a carpet python,’’ she said.

“I made her put it in her (large) handbag but I still dropped her and her child home.’’

When she started in the Bellbowrie shopping centre in 1992, at the other end of the centre, her children Liam and Natasha were teenagers.

They now work in the business, as does her granddaughter Jorge.

“Kids will come in whose parents I served when they were kids,’’ Ms Alt said.

“I’ve made birthdays cakes for two or three generations.

“All the other shops here are family-owned so we’re like a little community.’’

The work has been unrelenting, seven days a week with time only for one or two weeks’ holiday a year.

But despite looking forward to a well-earned retirement, Ms Alt said she would always miss her Bellbowrie family.