Buying before they beat it: Crowds queue for cake shop set to close

Two cake connoisseurs from South Australia were among a throng of people prepared to queue for more than an hour at a much-loved Melbourne cake shop that’s due to close next week.

Sacha Wendt and Lucy Dalston flew from Adelaide on Thursday morning to attend an expo but first made a beeline for Beatrix Bakes in North Melbourne.

Lucy Dalston (left) and Sacha Wendt from South Australia came straight from the airport to queue at Beatrix Bakes in North Melbourne.Credit: Eddie Jim

Wendt, 39, from McLaren Vale, said she and Dalston, 38, loved chef Natalie Paull’s cookbook, also called Beatrix Bakes, and seized their last chance to visit Paull’s shop.

Wendt and Dalston bought seven cake slices between them, including both sour cream and angel food chocolate cakes and lamingtons.

They vowed to ration the cakes over their two-day Melbourne stay, but Wendt said the caramel slice had already lived up to expectations, with “amazing salted caramel, a thick biscuit base and crisp chocolate.”

The queue formed at Beatrix Bakes from 7.30am, despite the shop opening at 9am.

Gateau gourmands queued from 7.30am outside Beatrix Bakes.Credit: Eddie Jim

Goodies on offer included chocolate Bavarian cake, vanilla slice, carrot and pecan layer cake and chunky almond cookies.

But a stream of visitors went home empty-handed after the shop sold out at 11.30am.

Paull, who opened Beatrix Bakes in 2011, said she was moved by the recent daily queues, which she put down to the shop’s pending closure on August 6.

“It’s such a touching tribute,” she said. “You open a shop to do something nice that you like to do. To have everyone respond to it how they have has been an extra amount of joy in my life.”

Natalie Paull, owner of Beatrix Bakes.Credit: Caitlin Mills

Paull said she was closing to take a break – a “heartbreaking decision”, but it’s a very physical job and she’s tired.

She said dates for future pop-up openings, perhaps once a month, would be announced in the future and the business would still take online orders for whole cakes. Paull will also write a second book.

Customer Jess O’Donnell, 36, said she felt sad the shop was closing. “It’s an institution,” she said.

O’Donnell, visiting from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast but formerly of Melbourne, queued at 11am with her daughter Abby, 4, to buy some of the few goods left – four caramel slices.

Jess O’Donnell and daughter Abby, 4, bought some caramel slices.Credit: Carolyn Webb

She was considering returning on Friday, before driving to Mount Hotham, to buy some chocolate and sour cream cake.

“We love it,” O’Donnell said of the shop. “My kids were born at the Royal Women’s Hospital and all my [maternity] appointments were around the corner. This place got me through pregnancy cravings. You can’t get cakes like this in Queensland.”

Tori Davies, 29, of St Kilda, came with friends Jeannetta Evans, 27, from Sydney and Julio Ibanez, 27, from Wollongong, after the shop had sold out.

Davies said: “We follow the shop on Instagram and it just looked amazing.”

Davies had been keen on buying some Banoffee pie, made from bananas, cream and a caramel sauce on a biscuit base.

Evans said they would try again another day. Asked why the shop was popular, she said: “I think because it looks like [it’s] homemade.”

“It has that ‘grandma’s love’ touch to it,” she said. “It’s not fancy like in a French patisserie, but I feel like no matter what you got there, it would be really good.”

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