Vegan bakery Cherry Darlings will close in the new year after some tough times, but aims to go out with a bang.
Cherry Darlings, Adelaide’s first vegan bakery, announced on social media this week that it will close in the last week of January.
Founder Tim Salmon says the past six months have been difficult financially.
“Every couple of days, we’ve got an email from one of our suppliers about a price rise and then wages going up, super going up, insurance going up,” Tim says.
“It’s a double-edged sword in our case, where it’s more expensive and people are spending less.”
Speaking to CityMag in April, Tim shared that running the business took a toll on his mental health to the point that he needed to craft his exit plan.
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He says he’s grieved the loss of the bakehouse, is now resentful of it and is ready for a fresh start in a new career path away from hospitality.
Tim says he learned food burnout is a thing, as his Cherry Darlings journey comes to an end.
“I’m going to take a total step back, maybe in like a year or two I might make a vanilla slice again for myself or doughnuts or something like that.”
In the post on Facebook and Instagram yesterday, the Cherry Darlings team said in their 10 years they hope they’ve shown the people of Adelaide “you don’t need animal products to make your food delicious”.
Looking back over the Cherry Darlings decade, Tim says a highlight was opening their Richmond Road store, where he could design it exactly as he wanted.
Over the decade and the various iterations of Cherry Darlings – first in catering, then a brick-and-mortar in Goodwood, to their current Richmond Road location – Tim says he’s seen Adelaide’s vegan scene change.
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“I see what we’ve done as an important thing because when we started there weren’t options and now there’s so many options,” he says.
“The fact that people have options now and we’re not as needed, I guess is the point of what we set out to do.
“It sucks but the reality is that that also means financially, it’s no longer as viable so it’s a positive and a negative.”
The lease of their Marleston location will be taken over following their closure at the end of January. The business has not been sold.
“It got to the point where we would rather close and keep the reputation, as opposed to sell to someone who wasn’t in it fully for the same reasons we were,” Tim says.
The news doesn’t come as a total shock, given he announced via the Cherry Darlings Facebook page in April this year that he was putting the business up for sale and that if no buyer was found would consider closing by the end of 2023.
Cherry Darlings will remain open at their Richmond Road location until doors shut in January.
“It would be great to see a lot of the old faces we haven’t seen in a while,” Tim says.
“I know it is financially hard for so many people but every dollar is going to help get us to where we need to be to have a really smooth exit and celebrate where we come from, and the little tiny store that we started that to where we’re at today.”
After that, they’ll continue to operate in their offsite kitchen briefly to fill final cake orders and will potentially pop up at markets on occasion throughout 2024.