Sweetie Pie’s Bake Shop is no stranger to winning awards.
The beloved Glen Innes bakery was awarded four gold medals in last year’s Great Aussie Pie competition for their Chilli Mexican, Prawn Mornay, Vegetable Satay and Vegetable Mornay pies, along with a host of other medals.
Owners Nicole and Zaylie Hyde are a local couple that work together as a team to achieve the very best for their customers, a strategy that is clearly paying off.
Zaylie says the team are entering again this year with new entries, such as their popular “Honey Chilli Duck”, “Surf and Turf” and “Bangers ’n’ Mash”, and are hoping to take out more titles to go with their “Australia’s Best Vegetable Pie”.
These creative combinations, alongside the couple’s driven work ethic and dedication to their customers, are just some of the reasons behind the bakery’s popularity with the locals.
Sweetie Pie’s Bake Shop began three years ago after the couple decided to move to the country and were drawn to Glen Innes, where Nicole’s mum was born.
After inspecting the shop’s location, they bought it two days later and Zaylie says they haven’t looked back since.
“We had an idea that I would do the service and she would do the baking and we would work together as a team to start this business and that’s exactly what we did.”
All their success has not come without hard work, with the pair putting in long hours to get all their freshly baked goods ready for the day.
“Nicole will come in around 12am and get everything started because we do our pastry fresh every morning, everything’s made on site, and she’ll usually finish around 2 or 2:30pm.
“I’ll come in at 4:30am and help top the pies, and with presentation and other things like that, then service with our lovely employees all day until the shop closes.”
A new addition to their work-life balance is their baby daughter Venus, who Zaylie says is just perfect.
“She could be there sometimes for five hours in the morning, but she’s so good and has really adapted to the life with us.”
“We love our community and are so grateful to be a part of it. We love everything about Glen Innes and the New England.”
Zaylie says family and community are two of the most important things behind their dedication and hard work in the bakery.
“We love all of our customers, we’d be nothing without them! So it’s really important to us that they get treated right and get that one-on-one attention from us.”
She says the support goes both ways and some of their customers have been alongside them since the beginning.
“One of our favourite customers, Phil, who has sadly passed away, used to come in every afternoon and we would go out there, see what he wanted, make it for him and then have a little chat, which was his social outing for the day and it was so nice to be able to interact with him and give him a break from being at home.”
She says he came around before they even opened and would chat to them while they were painting the shop.
To this day, Phil’s coffee mug is still sitting on the machine and is not allowed to be moved.
“We love our community and are so grateful to be a part of it. We love everything about Glen Innes and the New England,” Zaylie said.
After the flood of positive feedback and comments from the New England Best Bakery poll, it is clear why New England Times readers voted Sweetie Pie’s Bake Shop the Best Bakery in the New England.
Sweetie Pie’s Bake Shop is open Wednesday to Sunday, at 40 Edward Street Glen Innes.
For more information, visit their Facebook page.
Top image: Nicole and Zaylie Hyde behind one of the display cases of their award winning pies. (Jim A. Barker/New England Times)
Sweetie Pie’s Bake Shop was voted by New England Times readers as the Best Bakery in the New England 2024.
See the other winners and more details about this promotion.