Ingredients for growth doesn't change the ethos at Bretzel Bakery
“We’ve recruited almost everyone from inside the business. I learned very quickly that moving up was really all about recognising talent, seeing who is shining and who has the ability to step up. It’s brilliant to be able to pull people along with you like that,” Dymphna O’Brien, managing director at Bretzel Bakery, explains as she thinks back over the company’s growth journey.
Founded in Portobello in 1870, Bretzel really grew legs in 2000 when it was bought by William Despard, an engineer with a passion for real bread and a dedication to sourdough.
With a keen eye on the future, Despard knew expansion and growth was the necessary next step for the bakery.
This was when O’Brien joined the team. She had spent much of her life working at the now-defunct Cross Guns Bakery factory — first as a teenager, learning alongside her father who was the managing director, before transitioning to payroll, then financial controller.
That it was a large-scale bakery served her well when she was approached to join Despard at Bretzel Bakery.
“Initially he wanted someone to put in an accounts system and work on payroll, but then gradually we realised that the original Bretzel location at Lennox Street was really bursting at the seams. We knew we wanted to grow, and as the bakery did, so did my role,” O’Brien says.
“I’ve kind of been involved in everything. I started in finance, then I ended up in operations, then I went to general manager in 2018, all the time while training people up.
“I became managing director in 2022 and I was very aware that when you’re in a smaller business like this, the roles are very different to a bigger one.
“So even though I might not be the one that’s baking the bread, I need to understand and appreciate what’s going on there. As I moved up, I had to have the awareness that I was part of a team and fill those roles for us all to grow.”
And grow it certainly has. In 2013, Bretzel Bakery opened its central Dublin hub in Harold’s Cross.
While the team had been supplying other businesses from the Lennox Street shop, O’Brien pinpoints this as the point at which interest in food provenance and coffee culture really started to grow rapidly throughout Ireland.
Bretzel couldn’t keep up with the demand for its baked goods from the small shop alone.
“Business would come looking for us. We didn’t have a sales team or anything, we would just get constant calls looking for us to supply different places with bread and we just didn’t have the space to produce enough. So we moved into a new bakery,” O’Brien says.
Lennox Street remained open as the brand’s retail hub, while Harold’s Cross functioned as a high-volume production kitchen from which Bretzel could continue to supply the Dublin area.
Taking on larger clients like Gather + Gather, a hospitality company that provides catering for workplaces and universities, the new location oversaw breads and pastries. Bretzel was continuing to grow organically by about 20 per cent year on year.
“We thought we would have no problem being here for a long time, but we quickly started to run out of space again. At this stage our sandwich sourdough was so popular, it was the one product going to every food service place, every sandwich maker — we were everywhere,” O’Brien explains.
“We started to think that we needed somewhere outside of Dublin as well. Even just for logistics, we needed to not be stuck in the city centre. We started to look around the M50 and we found Kilcullen.”
While it required a lot of adjustments, the Bretzel team took over a site at Link Business Park in Kilcullen, Co. Kildare, in 2018.
It was much bigger and, crucially, had already been a food business, so there was ample freezer space. This latter point allowed Bretzel Bakery to further expand their sales as they gained listings with wholesalers.
“I did the Food Academy [programme] with Musgrave in2018 and most people were trying to get their products on shelves as retail items.
“But we really wanted to secure distribution with Musgrave for our sourdough and multi-seed bread so that we could supply outside Dublin. In 2019 we got our foot in the door and the product listed, but then Covid hit. That was a bit of a catastrophe as we had to shut down temporarily,” O’Brien says.
As many of their restaurant orders were disappearing overnight, Bretzel had to pivot to more retail offerings to grow throughout the pandemic.
Via Musgrave, their breads went into SuperValu. Once wholesale orders began to return as restaurants opened, the expansion plan was back on.
Bretzel Bakery supplied Musgrave, Sysco and Conaty Catering with their multi-seed and sourdough breads, which were frozen and then distributed throughout Ireland.
When asked why they didn’t handle the expanded delivery themselves — Bretzel currently has a fleet of six delivery vans that zoom products around Dublin — O’Brien says the company is very open to integrating processes that improve efficiency and operating as a large business, but in reality they’re a small team.
“We have about 65 employees, but we’re very lean on the admin side. We can’t compromise on our bakers, they’re so key and it’s a craft. So they’re the most important part of our business because it’s a labour-intensive process.
“Staff labour is the most costly part of the business, but that’s because they’re key to our products being the best that they can be,” O’Brien says.
“Logistics is probably the next biggest expense. So when we look at delivery drivers in the city centre, it’s very dense and they can get a lot of drops in. But if we had our delivery drivers going to somewhere like Cork, it could be 30 kilometres between each delivery.
“So realistically, partnering up with different people to manage delivery, like through Musgrave and Sysco, really benefits us. It’s better for us and it helps us facilitate smaller businesses farther afield too, so it’s better for customers.”
As we settle into 2026, Bretzel Bakery has a big year ahead. Arbutus Breads in Cork, formerly owned by Declan Ryan, was sold to the company late last year.
O’Brien says this is part of a strategy that will see Bretzel replicate its business in other locations throughout Ireland.
While still holding its Arbutus name, the Cork outpost is now firmly part of the Bretzel family, but more similar to where the business was about a decade ago.
“Arbutus is a great business and is really built into the fabric of Cork, but there are so many similarities there with where Bretzel was when I joined.
“There are some teething problems, but we’re going to breathe new life into it and get the growth going again,” explains O’Brien, who hopes that similar takeovers might be coming down the line over the next few years.
This acquisition also became a catalyst for the Bretzel Bakery brand to take stock of the growth it’s had, with O’Brien revealing that new branding will soon be rolling out across retail packaging. You’ll see the new blue colour scheme and slick design in stores this spring.
With former owner William Despard retiring at the end of 2025, the company’s former minor shareholders have taken a majority stake in the business and intend, along with O’Brien and the wider team, to continue the growth strategy.
Bretzel Bakery managing director Dymphna O’Brien
“We’ve reinvested so much into the business as well as availing of any government supports that have been available, so we’re really focused on always improving and moving forward,” O’Brien says.
“We have fabulous products, but when I started we turned over €1.2m a year.
“Last year our turnover was €6.5m. We’ve had incredible growth and I think that’s really due to the brilliant team we’ve nurtured pulling together and working hard. They’re what I’m most proud of.”
Photo: Bretzel Bakery managing director Dymphna O’Brien, operational manager Wieslaw Drabik, and sales representative Patricia Lopez
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