Bam Bam and Paddock founders forced to reroute power in Chinderah, costing $100k

THE couple who brought you Bam Bam and Paddock were forced to dish out $100k just to get power to their newest bakehouse. But it will soon be worth it.

Cubby Bakehouse owner Ursula Watts at the Chinderah Bakehouse that’s cost them more than $100 grand. Picture Glenn Hampson

THE brains behind Paddock and Bam Bam now know that to earn a crust, you have to spend a lot of dough — $100,000 worth, to be precise.

While building their new project, Cubby Bakehouse at Chinderah, Ben and Ursula Watts spent eight months and $100,000 to install a power upgrade to a 100 year old building they fell in love with.

Cubby Bakehouse as it stands now. Picture Glenn Hampson

But that didn’t mean grabbing a few double adapters from Kmart, it meant installing new power poles, re-routing the electricity and even shutting down Chinderah’s power for a day.

“So over 100 years ago stood the original Chinderah Bakery,” Ms Watts said.

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“That’s some history and soul and you can feel it when you’re in the space.

“Turns out Chinderah in general is severely under powered so the power allocated on site just wasn’t sufficient for anything more than a standard home.

Cubby Bakehouse is currently still under construction, but isn’t far from being ready to roll. Picture Glenn Hampson

“We had to buy new power poles, new transformers and then shut down the power in Chinderah for the day to get cranes, cherry pickers and bulk electricians on site to erect new poles and transformers and run new power lines.

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“It has set us back eight months and we’re $100,000 deeper in debt just for the power costs.

“All for the love of the mighty baguette.”

Now, it’s finally almost over, with Ms Watts predicting Cubby will be open to the public in two months, after a month of testing.

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She said the focus at this site will be the aforementioned “mighty baguette”.

“The smell of freshly baked bread is not far, we’ll start testing baking in just over a month and from there once it’s perfect we’ll set an opening date,” she said.

“The baguette will be our nucleus from which we will build upon, like Paddock the sourdough was the hero, at Bam Bam it was the and still is the croissant and now.

“We have invested in an incredible French bakery system and we travelled to France to train with a Master Baker where Ben baked with him — the product is epic.

“We feel very proud to bring carbs to the Northern Rivers done in our unique style.”