Bliss Bakery, Hamilton’s only 100% gluten-free bakery, is opening its first retail location at Queenwood Village in Chartwell.
Bliss Bakery’s products have previously been available online for click and delivery, or at the Tamahere Market, but their three-month pop-up store will give customers, and gluten-conscious locals, a chance to experience their products like never before.
Founder of Bliss Bakery, Kate Baird, is a long-time coeliac who knows the hassle of finding gluten-free goodies.
“The feedback back we have received has been overwhelmingly positive. All our baking is hand made. You need to see, to smell and most importantly to taste! Static images don’t do them justice,” expressed Baird.
“Bliss can be defined as ‘joy of heaven’ and that’s what our food does, it will lift your spirit. I like to build a customer relationship and hear people’s stories.”
According to Coeliac New Zealand, it is currently estimated that between 60,000 to 70,000 New Zealanders have coeliac disease (1 in 70), however, up to 80 percent of those are unaware they have the condition.
Baird was diagnosed with coeliac disease in 2009 and is acutely aware of the frustration and difficulty in finding different kinds of food to enjoy. It was that motivation that drove her to opening Bliss Bakery.
“Being coeliac, I have first-hand experience of what it is like to have a reaction from eating gluten, as well as the relief of knowing what the answer is.”
Bliss Bakery uses only gluten-free ingredients and all products are prepared and stored in a certified gluten-free kitchen removing the risk of cross-contamination.
“We aren’t a mass-produced bakery like supermarkets. Everything is artisan, from buying and blending the flours through to what comes out of the oven and put on the shelves. Everything is made by hand.”
The pop-up store will offer a wide variety of products from sweets, savouries, bread, cakes and slices, together with other specialist items that are either difficult to source or are hard to make.
“We make sweet and savoury, and everything in between, food you'll never even know is gluten-free,” says Kate.
Bliss Bakery opens in the Queenwood Village shops this week, following the opening weekend, the pop-up store will open for three months from Thursday through Saturday until Christmas.
