After a successful launch in Llanelli, Saint Hugo bakery has now expanded with a new outlet in Swansea
A Bake Off star who brought the flavours of France to Llanelli is now setting his sights on Swansea. Pastry chef Benjamin Condé, who made it to the quarter finals of Bake Off: The Professionals, returned to his Llanelli roots after opening a bakery and coffee shop at Llanelli Market.
After his business was met with resounding success, Benjamin is now setting his sights on Swansea, with a new venture in the city centre. Benjamin had left Llanelli to perfect his trade in France, before he returned to Llanelli to open his venture, Saint Hugo bakery.
The name pays homage to a street in Nice which Benjamin regularly visited while learning his craft.
Having brought the flavour of France to Llanelli, Benjamin said the business has already served 7,000 customers since it opened, and has sold 2,000 pain au chocolat pastries within three months.
The team was initially “nervous” about the opening of a store in Llanelli but inspiration from across the world helped reassure them.
Benjamin said: “It’s gone down really well. I think we were obviously a bit nervous, I guess, or perhaps we were nervously excited when we opened Llanelli as to bringing such a high-end food to such a rural area.
“But I think, to be honest, looking at a lot of well-known restaurants, for example the French Laundry in California, and you’ve got some different restaurants in Finland and Sweden that are really out in the outback, and they focus on pushing absolutely crazy standards and using the best of every ingredient they can find locally and I think that’s why they succeed.”
The focus for Saint Hugo bakery is making sure that their food is made from the best ingredients.
Benjamin said: “So for us, we’re kind of nervously excited to put really high-end food, and focus on the best butter, the best flours we can find, the best techniques using the best equipment we can find.
“We’re using local milk, we’re using the best flour from Paris and the best butters from Edinburgh and all kinds of stuff.
“Obviously we were worried about it to a point as to whether people would really be drawn to that in the same way that we are drawn to sort of making it.
“We’re absolutely obsessed with the products we make and how we make them. And we absolutely love what we do as a team.”
Benjamin added that the bakery has been very successful in Llanelli.
He said: “Since we’ve opened Llanelli, we’ve been absolutely, absolutely, hammered by people every single day.
“I mean, we’ve served 7,000 customers since we opened. We’ve sold nearly 2,000 Pain au Chocolat in three months.”
The company has put a lot of work into the ingredients they put in their food, even importing chocolate from France to give people an authentic taste of French pastries.
The bakery has now opened a second location in Swansea, with plans for another one in Llanelli.
Benjamin said: “People in Swansea travel to us quite a lot. We get quite a lot of Swansea people coming to us, so I’m just excited to bring that to Swansea and focus on the same quality but with a more sit down feel as well.
“So there’s a lot more seating for people to sort of have that experience but hold on to a bit.”
The new shop in Swansea is based at 11 St. Mary’s Square, next to the Social Bean.
Benjamin added: “It’s really, really central. I think, historically in Swansea, you’ve had to go to Uplands for what I would call specialty coffee and sort of artisanal pastries.
“I think there’s nothing wrong with how they do it. But I think for me everybody has their passion for what they do and it’s just different, isn’t it? But it’s a good place.”
Talking about why he chose Swansea, instead of the capital Cardiff, Benjamin said: “I firmly believe, I think, Cardiff is the absolute pinnacle of where brunch has mastered itself.
“But I think for me, retaining our bakery in Llanelli, and retaining really, really passionate staff here. Having access to ingredients from the Gower and from Swansea, fruit in the summer from Swansea Gower, so we can have things like strawberries and raspberries and blueberries, and having Shirgar butter in some of the doughs.
“In our brioche, we use Shirgar, for example, and then we use Edinburgh Butter Company for the lamination.
“But we use Parisian flour and having access to vegetables grown locally, and local milk, and local dairy, and all these different things on our doorstep, I think going too far afield would remove from the ability for us to do that, and also for us to lose that special nature that comes with that.”
He continued: “Also, we’re quite tied locally in some ways with the local environment.
“We really want to support and nurture people. I want to be at the bakery where people go, ‘I want to work there. I want to train under those people. I want to work with that team because they really care’.
“And if we can be that team and make that foothold where we are in Llanelli and Swansea, which I believe we can, then I want it.”
Benjamin says customers in Swansea will have a “wholesome experience” where they will be greeted by a barista, a front of staff member or both.
He added that people will be able to enjoy a “really, really, solid pastry”.
Benjamin said: “We also will offer things like lunches. We offer light lunches on the go.
“We do filled brioche, for example. We do a ham and cheese brioche, we do roasted veg brioches, we do focaccia.
“And I think it varies depending on the season. So we’re very much the same as a Michelin restaurant.
“Our menu will change every two or three weeks to include things that are seasonally growing.
“So for example, as the fruit season comes in, we’ll start adding peaches and apricots and stone fruits, and then we’ll move on to raspberries and strawberries and blueberries and blackberries and when we get to autumn we can go on to the apple season.
“So I’m very conscious of maintaining my Michelin-starred routes, but putting them into a very humble food, but just doing it exactly as we want to.”
He added that he expects the business in Swansea to offer a more “polished” experience as compared to Llanelli.
Benjamin said: “I’m looking forward to seeing a different demographic of people get to experience the food that we found Llanelli people really enjoyed.
“And I think being able to offer that to a different demographic means a lot. I also think Swansea offers something that we can’t offer in Llanelli.
“Swansea offers a much more sit down experience and I think being able to have a bit more seating space [will allow us to] do some things that we weren’t able to do in Llanelli.
“I’m very proud of the Llanelli bakery and I’m proud of everything we’ve achieved in it and will continue to achieve in it and continue to expand with it, and I am really proud of the team here and what it offers. It is a very open bakery.
“But I think Swansea offers perhaps a much more polished customer experience.
“You can sit down, the furniture is lovely, the chairs are comfortable, the rooms are air conditioned in the summer and it’s warm in the winter. It’s soft furnishings, nice fabrics, everything is cosy, and you can just come in, have great food, and just really experience what Saint Hugo has to offer.”
Saint Hugo opened its doors on Friday, May 9 and will then be open each week from Tuesday to Saturday.
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