Mont Albert: Bread Street owner David Winter calls for small business support

As we move to a cashless society, most people now enjoy the convenience of paying for things by EFTPOS. But at a Mont Albert bakery, one stipulation of paying by card has led to customers abusing staff and walking out.

David Winter says his 18-year-old bakery won’t survive with customers’ attitudes.

A Mont Albert baker is pleading for customers to give some support and consideration to small businesses or resign to a future filled with supermarket bread.

For 18 years David Winter has been running successful bakery Bread Street, but in the past 18 months the independent business has been suffering from the use of EFTPOS and customers’ attitudes to it.

“The drop in our business has been massive,” he said.

“We’re not at crisis point yet, but we’re heading there.”

David Winter has been running the bakery in Mont Albert Village for 18 years.

Mr Winter said because it cost about $5000 a year to offer EFTPOS facilities, he had been imposing a minimum spend of $10 for card payments to encourage people to buy a little more.

But he said the minimum spend requirement had led to his staff being abused and a downturn in business.

“We’ve lost too many customers,” he said. “They abuse my staff and walk out the door.

“Customers have been abusive, which is very unusual for Mont Albert.”

He said shoppers asked him to instead add a 50c surcharge to their purchase — which usually averaged $8 — but he refused to break Australian Competition and Consumer Commission laws.

Mr Winter doesn’t see his bakery surviving in 10 years’ time.

“That’s illegal, we can’t do it.”

Mr Winter said it was not sustainable for his staff to try to work out the 1.3 per cent transaction fee the banks charged him to add to each card purchase, so he has just had to withdraw the spend requirement and cop the EFTPOS cost to keep customers coming.

The baker, who runs one of the last remaining independent bakeries in the area, said customers’ preferencing supermarkets in attempts to save a few cents would bring about the end of strip shops.

He said increasingly people were saying to him, “I’ll just get my bread from the supermarket then”.

Mr Winter says his bread is the best in Melbourne.

To which he responds, “That’s fine, but understand in five years time you will only have supermarket bread.”

Mr Winter said his products were still reasonably priced — with a loaf of bread costing $4.60 and a bread roll costing 90c — and the quality was incomparable to supermarkets.

“We’ve still got what we think is the best bread in Melbourne,” he said.

He said customers needed to make a conscious lifestyle decision about their purchases or lose the option of the quality and charm of small business.

“I don’t see Bread Street here in 10 years,” he said.

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Mr Winter has had to significantly change his business to stay financial, cutting back staff and working a lot more himself.

Also a member of the Rotary Club of Mont Albert, he has been a big supporter of schools and sporting groups through his business over the years.

But he’s recently had to cut back to only sporting groups.

“We can’t afford it anymore — we’re in survival mode.”

Mr Winter said he desperately hoped strip shops would survive.

“Without support and understanding from our communities, they won’t.”