Sheradine Turkington hands over the Griffith Bakers Delight to John Sharma. Photo: Supplied.
The longtime owner of Bakers Delight in Griffith has departed the industry after selling her store so she can begin a new career in the wellness sector.
Sheradine Turkington, 51, became Australia’s first female franchisee of the fresh bread chain in 1998, when she established a store in Prahran in Melbourne. Since then, she has owned six bakeries, including stores in Albury and Wagga.
“It’s been a blast, but it’s put a big toll on my body physically and mentally; I’ve been crazily paddling like a duck under water … I have felt the bakery no longer aligned with me as I’ve had to really give it everything. In the last 12 months, I found the wellness industry is where I need to be,” she said.
The Griffith store will now be managed by John Sharma, who has moved from Melbourne.
Ms Turkington has already launched her new business venture, Reset Well with Sheradine, which provides seven days of meals, snacks and drinks to improve gut health. It’s the latest development in a 36-year entrepreneurial career that rapidly grew from humble beginnings.
“I started with nothing; I left home when I was 15 with a pillow and doona. I left school in Year Nine … I moved from Yarrawonga to Melbourne and got a job in a pharmacy, where I managed to help my boss build up from one tiny shop to having several different businesses,” she said.
“I had a friend working in a Bakers Delight in Chadstone. I wanted to see what it was like. I’d work in the bakery from 3 am to 7 am every day, then also do my full-time job in the pharmacy. I had a lot of energy back then and worked so hard.”
Ms Turkington then built a new Bakers Delight store in Prahran.
“I was a girl in a very male-dominated industry; it was usually the men doing the baking. It’s heavy, physical and demanding … our mixing bowl holds 120 kg of dough … but I did four months of training while working full-time and set up the business.
“Within nine months I returned to the country, to live in Albury, where I built a store in Lavington … we then took on a Wagga bakery and another store at the Sturt Mall. They called us the million-dollar club; we were turning over a million dollars, which was a lot of money at a time bread cost a dollar a loaf.”
Sheradine Turkington became the first female franchisee of Bakers Delight in 1998. Photo: Supplied.
While in Albury, she kept getting calls from Bakers Delight founder Roger Gillespie, urging her to run the Griffith store.
“My husband and I moved to Griffith in 2004 and took over the store … but after a while I was pregnant with my second child; I thought two bakeries and two babies was too much. I leased the Wagga bakery and sold the Griffith store in 2006 and got out of baking for a while.
“My husband Peter wanted to get back in the industry, so we bought it back in 2014 and spent the past 10 years running it. He’s a pilot so baking was a big change for him, but he’s been a great support … though this past decade has been the toughest time; it’s been a lot harder to get staff.”
Having also trained 20 franchisees over the years and helped them set up their own businesses, Ms Turkington felt she’d given the industry all she had.
“It’s been great; the community has been amazing. It was an emotional week getting out … having to let go of the great team we have that’s been there from day dot; it’s been a rollercoaster but I’m looking forward to the future.”
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