A chat with Anna, owner with her husband Artam, of Broken Clock Cafe.
Broken Clock Cafe is the first artisan patisserie in Glasgow and it is located in 10, Park Road.
Open 7 days from 10am until 6pm
Find them here https://www.brokenclockcafe.co.uk/
Broken Clock Cafe opened in 2019 in the west end of Glasgow building quickly a name for them.
What they were doing at that time was something extremely innovative and unique for the sweet scene in town. It still is. A kind of patisserie you could see only in high-end or Michelin star restaurants.
It was kind of a shock also for customers that saw them in front of new things to discover and new terms to learn like ganache, meringue roulade, ruby chocolate and name of ingredients that were new to the common food scene.
Instagrammable is not giving justice to the beauty of their cakes, I prefer calling them edible sweet pieces of art. Shape, colour and flavours are combined to give you a complete experience of taste. It seems almost a shame taking the fork to get a bit of it. Not heavy but delicate and balanced, you don't want to see the end of it. Maybe, for this reason, better to take a picture.
Anna's story did not follow the usual path you expect when seeing her creations.
She does not have any cookery school qualifications, she did not go to any pastry school.
I was really surprised by this. So when she told me my reaction was a Glaswegian "what"?
"Yes, I finished school, went to study political science with economics at the University, did an internship
in the ministry of economics in Estonia. I have even been offered a job after but I did not accept it as I considered it too much static. So went to work in logistics for 9 years. I've worked with brands like Hermes, Salvatore Ferragamo, Burberry and that was a job of responsibility.
After this I started to build a really innovative start-up with other people but this did not work out for me, in the direction I wanted to go.
I was at a point when I had to listen to this constant feeling: something has to change and it is when Artam showed up!"
I thought you guys met here!
"I know him since we were children in Estonia- we used to live in the same neighborhood. He moved to Glasgow with his family when he was 13 years old. It was funny as we found each other years later and in one of those "old social media" before Facebook. Years later we met and he started to speak again. It was a kind of modern fairytale. He came to visit me in Estonia, we took things seriously and after some months we decided that what we wanted was not a distance relationship.
I had everything there but I wanted a big change. I said- let's try- I sold everything and moved to Glasgow. At that time I was still working remotely for my old company, I then sold my company's share, I have found a job in logistics here. Everything went smoothly.
The idea of having our own business was in the air but it was more like one of those conversations over dreams. After 4 months I left my job and that was the moment where things became reality.
I sold my apartment in Estonia and we had some funds on the side for the cafe.
So, you were not a pastry chef and your background was not coming from the industry. How the concept of Broken Clock was born? Where did you find the inspiration?
I had the start-up way to do things still fresh in my mind. If something is not available, try to make it and if it is nice for you try to sell it. We studied the market in Glasgow and we noticed that no one was doing the kind of patisserie we had in mind. This was the time when Instagram had lots of big chefs showing how they were doing things. I said to myself: I want to learn how they do it. In a year I want to be there.
I love a challenge.
Then I was doing the cakes at home. I got so many things in the house that we did not have almost room left. I was doing a lot of research, with a lot of combinations and expensive ingredients.
It took me six months of hard work and experiments to start seeing results I was happy about. I posted on Instagram with my personal profile and I noticed people were interested and they wanted to buy my cakes. This was not the plan as I did not feel ready yet but it turned out it was extraordinary.
And it started from there.
Yes. We opened in 2019 and after one year Covid arrived.
After 2 weeks we were closed we checked if we could stay open for takeaway and it was a green light. We started doing the pre-orders and it went wild. On the first day we were sold out in 15 minutes. I made an excel file but I soon realized this was not the way to manage the quantities we were dealing with. So for the week after I was ready with the website and the shop online. It was challenging also to find the ingredients to bake, suppliers were delivering only once per week, it was only me and Artam.
Despite Covid, this was for us a time when our business grew. And with this biggest mistakes came.
Due to the success we had, we decided it was time to go big.
We opened back and we were still doing the pre-orders so we hired too many people. Alongside with this, we moved our kitchen from the bakery to a new unit in the west end thinking to do also wholesale and transforming it into a place where to do pastry masterclasses.
On top of these, we received the offer to open our shop in the new shopping center in Edinburgh, in St James food court.
It is a cool and great shopping center, but we soon realized it was not made for the product we are doing.
After 4 months we left and we added another mistake. To keep the staff that was with us in the shopping center we decided to open our shop in Edinburgh, just in time for the tram works to start in front of it and making our street not the best for a nice walk in town.
Apart from this aspect I had the feeling this was a wrong move, this was not the place we wanted Broken clock to be. It was lacking in personality and did not have our soul in it.
In January we closed and we are now focused on the original Broken Clock.
So definitely a hard learning curve.
"Oh, it was! But it helped us also to understand where we want to move from now and what things we want to focus on.
Certainly, we will bring the kitchen back here as I am missing the atmosphere, the smells and I love the idea of people watching how things are made.
I am already focusing with the other chef in making new products, innovating and perfectioning the products we already sell. See the croissants, I am proud we have reached after a year a great product but because I love challenging myself we are now trying to bake the ones with double colors and with different fillings. I found again the pleasure of experimenting and creating. I think I found my dimension again.
There is also a dilemma between expansion and the fact that people identify the business with you.
It is the reality. Broken Clock for our customers is Anna and Artam, and now the staff that works with us.
It is impossible to divide the two things. People get close to you, get close to people. Also, our product is so unique and has such a personal touch that we understood it cannot be destined for big production.
We love what we do in the way we do.
Glasgow saw a rise in the number of bakeries in the last two years. We passed from pub crawls to bakery tours. How did this impact your business?
I do as well bakery tours- she laughs.
This should worry us but it is positive for a few aspects.
People become curious, try new things around, it helps to open up about different kinds of patisserie and products. It educates people more.
It also helps the competition as I feel I have to be on top of the game, studying for new products, doing research, work better on social media and my branding.
It stimulates me to work every day better to give my customer something that brings them joy.
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