SHARE
COPY LINK
SWEDEN IN LONDON

SWEDEN

Swedish bakery to bring Londoners sourdough

Hugely successful Swedish stone-oven bakery Fabrique is setting up shop in the British capital, bringing natural sourdough bread as well as cinnamon buns with a Swedish flair to hungry Londoners, The Local's Rebecca Martin discovers.

Swedish bakery to bring Londoners sourdough

”We have always loved London, but we weren’t as enamoured with their bread,” co-founder of Fabrique, Charlotta Zetterström, tells The Local.

Zetterström and husband David, who has a background as a breadmaker, started up their first shop in Stockholm in 2008. After working in a bakery part-time while studying economics at university, they both knew what they wanted to do.

The couple aimed to make it as easy as possible for people to get hold of good, wholesome bread, every day, the whole year round.

After seeing a small shop and bakery up for sale, they decided to take a chance and go for it.

“Right when we started there were people lining up to buy our bread. There was a definite demand,” says Charlotta Zetterström.

“I think we rode a little on the ‘sourdough wave’. At the time, we didn’t see it like that, but when we look back we can see how we had help from the debate about natural ingredients which had just hit the Swedish media.”

The bread produced at Fabrique is made with clean and natural ingredients and baked in a traditional way, by hand, around the clock, in a stone oven.

After opening up their first bakery in Stockholm four years ago, they have since grown to include six more outlets in the Swedish capital, as well as a bakery on the Baltic island of Gotland, Rute Stenugnsbageri, which is open in the summer.

And now, despite having one toddler and a five-month-old baby to look after, the couple are thinking big and planning for the opening in London in November.

“We found a really cool location for the bakery in east London and we’re hoping to open in November,” Zetterström says.

The shop in London will be very much like the Swedish stores, she adds.

“We are going to bring Sweden over to Britain – so we will be selling Swedish cinnamon buns as well. We’re pretty sure that they will like it.”

However, the couple will not be bringing Swedish produce. Instead they’ll be using locally produced ingredients – in itself a challenge as it means having to adapt recipes accordingly.

“We will have to work on the recipes to get the balance right. But this is what is unique with our concept. We won’t be bringing frozen bake-off bread but will be baking it from scratch on site,” Zetterström says.

The couple are convinced that the London store will be as much of a success as the Swedish shops. According to them, the British are becoming more aware of what they eat, although the organic food trend with locally produced ingredients hasn’t quite hit as hard there yet as it has in Sweden.

“But we think Londoners are ready for our bread,” Zetterström tells The Local.

The new store will be opening on November 8th in Shoreditch, in east London.

Rebecca Martin

Follow Rebecca on Twitter here.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

SHOW COMMENTS