It’s been a big year for one of our long-time wholesale partners, Daily Bread. In the midst of building the new Daily Bread production bakery in New Lynn, Josh and Tom took a moment to reflect, looking back on how it all began and ahead to what’s coming up next.
Q: Let’s start at the beginning. How did Daily Bread come to be?
Tom: Daily Bread grew out of Orphans Kitchen. I developed an intolerance to wheat and started teaching myself how to bake, becoming fascinated with sourdough through books like Tartine and by following West Coast bakeries in the US. A trip to San Francisco and LA in 2016 really cemented it, seeing places like Gjusta showed me how much craft and technique could live in something as simple as bread. I remember walking into Gjusta and thinking, “Wow, this is so incredible.” It was basically a huge shed down a back street, but everything about it just worked.
At the same time, Josh and I were three years into Orphans and starting to question the long-term sustainability of restaurant life. We were opening for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and doing everything ourselves. We were only in our early 30s and asking, “What’s the end game in hospo?”
That curiosity led me to baking overnight at Bread & Butter, where I’d turned up at the back door at 10.30 pm with baskets of dough. Their head baker, Pat, let me in and showed me how to use the ovens. He was fascinated with this kawakawa and kumara loaf that I made, and he hadn't really tasted anything like it. We shared a beer, and I told Josh the next day, “F***, we’ve got to do a bakery with this guy, he’s a 22nd‑generation baker.”
Josh: We only had one restaurant with a small number of seats, and we were already maxed out. When Tom came back, talking about Pat and the possibility of doing a bakery, it felt like a new direction that could actually have an endgame.
Q: Is the rumour that Pat has a one-hundred-year-old sourdough starter true?
Josh: More like five hundred or six hundred years old, depending on who you ask, and absolutely impossible to verify. But Pat’s family has been baking for 22 generations and still runs the family bakery.
Tom: Yeah, five‑fifty. It’s BC, haha. His great-great-grandfather was baking baguettes for Napoleon Bonaparte, so while the starter’s age is debatable, the baking lineage definitely isn’t.
Q: Sounds like a field trip is in order. When you opened the first Daily Bread in early 2018, what was the vision then? Has it evolved?
Josh: The vision hasn’t really changed. It was always about baking the best bread and pastries we possibly could. We were baking around 60 loaves back then, and now we’re baking closer to 2,000. But we still believe we’re only as good as our last loaf.
Tom: We wanted something that could scale without losing quality. Restaurants are hard to grow without compromising, but by removing some of the service element and focusing on being a true deli, we gave ourselves room to grow. Putting Josh and Pat together was kind of like pouring vinegar on baking soda. Things just started multiplying.
Q: Did you ever see yourself opening ten Daily Bread stores? Would you have done it again if you could go back?
Tom: We never truly understood how much demand there would be. If we’d known, we might’ve done things differently, probably built the factory sooner and opened fewer stores first. But we needed those stores to justify the scale.
Josh: It’s always felt like jumping one hurdle at a time. Growth was necessary to support our families and to build out things like marketing and operations. Sometimes it felt like we grew too quickly and experienced real growing pains, but now it’s about catching up and refocusing on what we do best, making really good sourdough and pastries.
Q: You’ve been serving Coffee Supreme since day one. What made you choose us as a coffee partner?
Josh: There have been opportunities to look elsewhere over the years, but we always come back to the level of support and partnership. That care runs from what’s in the cup right through to the people we work with.
Tom: It comes down to relationships. We’ve always felt incredibly well looked after by Coffee Supreme. The quality’s amazing, but it’s really the level of service and support that sticks with us. There have been moments we’ve been offered other opportunities, but we always come back to that. I remember before opening Orphans, we were down at Good One on Douglas Street in 2012, Al Keating was there, sipping coffee in the loading bay. We were throwing around names, and he suggested, “Why not call it Hashtag?” (laughs). But it’s moments like that, throwing out all these ideas, really invested from the start.
Josh: Al’s a legend. And it feels full circle now that he’s part of the Daily Bread team as our retail manager.
Q: What kind of role does coffee play in the Daily Bread experience overall?
Josh: Coffee is an equaliser. It’s less about what’s in the cup and more about what happens around it. Everyone gathers over coffee. It’s ceremonial.
Tom: Just like food and wine, coffee and baking enhance each other. The smell, the taste, it amplifies the experience of our bread and pastries. Our bread without coffee would be pretty boring, wouldn’t it? You’ve got to have the two together.
Q: With a bespoke blend, Daily Roast, what were you looking for in that first conversation with Coffee Supreme?
Josh: Look, you can't please everybody, but f*** we tried. We wanted to create a real crowd-pleasing, not too pointy. Medium roast, with stonefruit sweetness, and really clean.
Tom: I've always been a big believer in time and place. And I think having our own roast that's specific to this time and place, being like in Daily Bread, you know, experiencing the smells and the pastries and everything, we really wanted to kind of complement that through the coffee. When people come, they've got that specific kind of flavour that when they leave, they know they can only get that here at Daily Bread and something that is also in line with the way we bake.
Baking and coffee roasting are these old-world techniques. Both processes constantly seek to improve. The roast and the next bake are a continuous pursuit.
Q: Daily Bread feels like part of the neighbourhood. How do you include the community in what you do?
Josh: We employ the neighbourhood. And our stores wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful without them. We also focus on just creating something approachable that everyone can access. They're like daily staples.
Tom: It feels really, really important in any community to have spots like these where you can go every day and see people in the neighbourhood. These places aren’t as prevalent as they used to be. You know, we used to have the butchers, the fishmongers, the post office and the bank. That doesn't happen as much anymore. We wouldn’t be here without the local community. It’s symbiotic.
Q: What does the near future look like for Daily Bread?
Josh: For me, I remember back in the days of our first place, Orphans Kitchen, I really admired Al Brown’s Depot, and that's still hanging around. We want to be around like that, too. We want to be a beloved nationwide sourdough company. And Vogels, we’re coming for you (laughs).
Q: Last question, what’s your go-to order?
Josh: A long Black, white loaf sandwiches for the kids, and sourdough for toast.
Tom: Kūmara Sourdough, Smoked Kahawai sammy, and a long black with cream.
Thanks for your time. We can't wait to see what you get up to next at Daily Bread.
Keep up to date with Daily Bread:
@dailybreadnz
dailybread.co.nz
