BABCO — short for Brick Artisan Bread Company — is a kiwi-owned boulangerie and patisserie on Albert Street in Terrace End, Palmerston North, making everything by hand from modest ingredients to create what they call everyday luxury. Since opening its doors in October 2017, it has built a following for honest food: fresh produce, scratch cooking, ingredients you can pronounce, and no additives or preservatives.
The cabinet changes with the daily bake but typically holds proper sourdough made with nothing but flour, salt, water and house starters, plus croissants, pain au chocolat, danishes, cruffins, baguettes, brioche, bagels and other breads of the world. There are authentic lye-dipped German pretzels (including chilli cheddar and garlic & parmesan hybrids), sandwiches and toasties filled with house-made sauces, pickled vegetables and slow-cooked fillings — with vegan options available — as well as fudges, silky slices, decadent cakes, toffee caramels and truffles. House-made jams, sauces, preserves and pickles are the secret behind much of the flavour, and coffee comes from local roaster Mouthwater Coffee Company, with milkshakes and soft serve alongside.
Behind it all are Jeremy and Alice, the husband-and-wife bakers who started with a backyard pizza oven and two second-hand wood-fired ovens, sold bread on the side of the road and went full-time within nine months. Their first real shop — designed and partly built by the couple, with a retail front lined in 100-year-old New Zealand macrocarpa — is warm, inviting and proudly Palmy.
Step onto Albert Street in Terrace End and you'll find one of Palmerston North's most loved bakeries: BABCO, the Brick Artisan Bread Company. It looks like a neighbourhood shop, and it is one — but a little different from your local pie shop. Everything in the cabinet, from the sourdough to the pretzels to the jams, is made from scratch in the kitchen out the back, every single day.
The name is a promise. BABCO operates as a boulangerie and patisserie where modest ingredients — flour, salt, butter, eggs, milk — are turned into what the team calls everyday luxury. The kitchen follows a simple philosophy: fresh produce, scratch cooking, ingredients you can pronounce, and no additives or preservatives. The house-made jams, sauces, preserves and pickles are, in their words, the secret to BABCO's deliciously unique success.
BABCO began, as good stories often do, with a workaround. Jeremy and Alice — now married, then newly so — moved into a rental that had everything except an oven. Not satisfied with the microwave, Jeremy built a pizza oven in the backyard, and a love of cooking with fire took hold. A winning TradeMe bid on two wood-fired pizza ovens turned the hobby into a mobile food business: pizzas a few nights a week, bread and pastries sold on the side of the road, loaves delivered to homes around Palmerston North.
Within nine months demand had outgrown the prep kitchen, so the day jobs were quit and BABCO went full-time. The first proper shop opened on Albert Street in October 2017, and the couple designed the space themselves — even helping build it. The retail front is lined with 100-year-old New Zealand macrocarpa, and the ECO leaf wallpaper and shop flowers came from local makers they wanted to support.
The heart of BABCO is proper sourdough: nothing but flour, salt and water, flavoured and risen by a wheat starter and a rye starter, baked with quality flours from around the world into loaves that are flavoursome, hearty and memorable. Around them sits an ever-changing range of specialty breads — baguettes, brioche, bagels, bialy, focaccia, English muffins, challah, fougasse, the dense German Vollkornbrot and, at Christmas, panettone.
The pastry case is made fresh daily: viennoiserie shaped into croissants, pain au chocolat, pain au raisin, danishes, cruffins, pastry straws and escargot au chocolat, all built on quality high-fat butter for that melt-in-your-mouth flake. Then there are the pretzels — authentic German knots, dense and chewy, dipped in traditional lye, salted and baked, with chilli cheddar and garlic & parmesan hybrids available every day. Sandwiches and toasties hero the bread with fresh salads, pickled vegetables, house-made sauces and slow-cooked meats, and vegan options are always on offer. At the sweet end: fudge, silky slices, decadent cakes, toffee caramels and glittery truffles.
And then, once a year, the hot cross buns. Inspired by traditional English tea cakes, they're delicately spiced with a brioche-style dough enriched with butter, eggs and milk, studded with fruit soaked in cointreau and port, crossed with a lemon vanilla biscuit and glazed in orange-infused brandy sugar syrup. They appear in store in the run-up to Easter, and regulars count on them.
Coffee comes from Mouthwater Coffee Company, a local roaster run by a multi-award-winning barista. The house Mouthwater Blend is caramel and malty with bittersweet cocoa tones — full-bodied, low in acidity and a genuine all-rounder, with decaf available. Milkshakes and soft serve round out the drinks.
Customers describe a relaxed atmosphere where you can eat your pastry and drink your coffee on site, with friendly staff and daily tastings of different breads and spreads. Reviews call it the best artisan bakery in town by a wide margin — and note, wisely, that the goodies fly off the shelves.
BABCO trades Wednesday through Saturday from 7:30am to 2:00pm and is closed Sunday to Tuesday. If you have your heart set on a particular loaf or pastry, come early — the day's bake is finite. Whether you leave with a crusty sourdough under your arm, a bag of croissants or simply a coffee and a cheese straw, you'll be tasting what the whole team set out to make: joy, baked from scratch.