Bakers Delight still a family business at heart

Roger and Lesley Gillespie have lived in the same house in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn for 30 years.

Bakers Delight co-founder Roger Gillespie has handed the reins to his children, including daughter Elise. Picture: Aaron Francis

Roger and Lesley Gillespie have lived in the same house in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn for 30 years.

The home, with its swimming pool and the backyard trampoline they gave to their now adult children in 1990, is right behind Roger’s rowing club, where every Tuesday and Thursday the former Scotch College student still hits the water, as he has done for many of his 71 years.

The Gillespies might be the founders of the Bakers Delight bakery franchise business, whose global operations turn over more than $700m annually, but they don’t feel wealthy.

“We don’t have a desire to have corporate jets and big yachts. We are more into philanthropy,” Roger Gillespie says.

“I don’t feel a need to crystallise our wealth. Every time you pick up a newspaper there is a new unicorn. And that is sad. Because the unicorns usually don’t make any money. And what would we do with the money? We would probably blow it!”

After 37 years running the business, Roger and Lesley quietly handed over the reins of Bakers Delight in early 2017 to their daughter Elise and her husband David Christie.

Their son Aaron runs Bakers Delight’s North American and Canadian businesses.

The company celebrated 40 years in business last year, reporting a tidy profit according to the accounts of Bakers Delight Holdings, the entity that lodges accounts with the corporate regulator. Roger Gillespie says it only represents a fraction of the group’s operations.

A net profit in 2020 of $10.9m was struck on revenue of just over $90m, and $11.9m of special dividends were paid, up from $9.9m a year earlier. The accounts noted the operating results were ahead of 2019, driven by strong demand during the COVID pandemic as the group’s Australian bakeries were able to continue trading and only a handful closed.

But it was tougher in the New Zealand operations, which were hit by a seven-week lockdown.

“We have an impressive footprint of bakeries in Australia, and we hope to be able to replicate that in the US and Canadian markets,” says Elise Gillespie.

“We are working towards our American footprint being similar to Australia, which could see us having more than 1000 stores.”

The Canadian operations, where the firm trades under the Cob’s Bread brand, enjoyed 20 per cent sales growth across its 130 stores during 2020.

“There is huge opportunity for growth in Canada,” she says.

During COVID Bakers Delight’s push towards online ordering, its use of food delivery platforms and click-and-collect systems accelerated.

“In our first 40 years we’ve seen the majority of our growth in traditional bakeries, but I believe the future will see us expanding in different channels to keep up with the changing lifestyle of the customer. Whether it’s delivery, smaller kiosks or a more sophisticated online presence, the business is evolving,” she says.

Roger Gillespie says he still spends at least a day a week on company business. His wife also remains involved.

His daughter, who has two children, says she will never forget a key piece of advice from her parents.

“I remember mum and dad said to me many years ago when I was in Canada that, ‘the bakery will never be as good as you are running it. You can’t do it all yourself. If you don’t accept that, we would still only have one bakery’.”

She says the personalities and perspectives of her parents, who are fiercely competitive, are different and complementary.

“Mum with her background as a scientist and science teacher, she really gets into the detail to look toward the solution. That can be incredibly valuable and at times incredibly annoying.

“Mum is also really focused on the people. She could talk all day about the young talent coming through the network; she gets a great deal of pride from that. That is a critical success factor for our business,” she says.

“Dad is more high level and gets you to think more strategically and bigger picture. But he can dive into the micro when he wants to.”

She says she never felt pressured to go into the business but when she and David returned to Australia in 2012 after living in Canada, they took up executive positions at Bakers Delight.

It was David’s first experience of living in Australia. He was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in South Africa.

The family knocked back takeover offers in March 2014 and late 2016.

“Then in 2017 when we officially took over, for the next year or so we were all just figuring it out a bit. We knew we had to step up and mum and dad were cognisant they needed to step back.

“We had to have the formal aspects to keep that division so we had the rope to run the business, but we wanted mum and dad there as mentors and advisers given their amazing history,” Elise says.

“We now have the Bakers Delight board and a separate family council. As a family we can all get a bit narrow potentially in our focus. So having the business board gives us different perspective and provides more objective feedback. We have avoided any major mistakes or any major family meltdowns.”

For years the Gillespie family council was chaired by the late former KPMG global chairman Michael Andrew, who acted as the bridge between the old and younger generations. His death in 2019 rocked the family.

The council is now chaired by former EY partner and now Medibank director Gerard Dalbosco.

“He is providing the same role as Michael but in a different way because he is a different person,” Roger Gillespie says.

Bakers Delight is now owned by three Gillespie family trusts after the family bought back a 20 per cent stake in the business held by external shareholders several years ago.

Elise says the key to its ongoing success is communication.

“It is not going to be rainbows and skittles all the way through. When two generations are finding their feet, there is going to be some tension that bubbles along the way. It is about taking about it and not letting it blow up into something massive,” she says.