Top row (L-R): chef Manish Gajra and head chef Sumantha Roy. Bottom row (L-R): sous chef Sandesh Bodke, Andre Gerschel, and pastry chef Aaliyah Randeree.
Building up a faithful clientel is something the brand has taken seriously since its launch and Gerschel reveals that when menus change or different items are stocked, customers don’t hold back from voicing their opinions — which he couldn’t be happier about.
“The worst thing you can have as an operator is apathy — it’s great when you have a vocal audience and that’s been something that’s true for us from the beginning.”
Happy to shake things up and drive the business forward, Gerschel explains that he is trying to present Baker & Spice in a new light.
“I wanted to take this [the refurbished outlet] in a more à la carte direction — people love us for breakfast and lunch but I want them to fall in love with us for dinner as well,” he explains, summing up part of the motivation behind the revamp.
The freshly made-over restaurant features a new menu and Gerschel, who describes himself as a “a kichen guy before anything else”, continually pushes Baker & Spice’s chefs to come up with new dishes; all the while using locally grown vegetables and working with organic farmers.
It was Gerschel who introduced meat-free Mondays at Baker & Spice, partly in response to changing market conditions and partly due to the brand’s passion for using UAE-grown vegetables.
“We recognise that the size of everyone’s wallets is not the same as it used to be and we want to be very sensitive to that. Putting money on the plate also means putting money back into the customer’s wallet in terms of sense of value, so on Mondays you can get a three-course meal for 79 dirhams (US $21.50) and it’s completely vegetarian. It’s also often gluten-free and dairy-free, and it presents a huge challenge for us creatively.
“It’s completely driven by the chefs and they’re not allowed to use any dishes from their home countries, so we have guys researching Guatemalan cuisine, or trying to make vegetarian Cuban sandwiches or looking into Nepalese curries — which, for a Sri Lankan chef, is a very big departure. I’ve got a guy who came up with a special Norwegian pickle dish that’s coming out soon; we are striving to use the same gorgeous, local produce in creative ways.”
In the winter season, all of Baker & Spice’s produce comes from UAE farmers and the company has six delivery drivers tasked with collecting the ingredients for the chefs.
“Drive all the way out to the far reaches of Al Ain and Abu Dhabi and you’ll see fields of corn growing in the desert. It’s extraordinary and a testament to the technology of irrigation and how much things have changed. When we started, there were about five or six organic products available, and it was mostly tomatoes and cucumbers, grown by four or five farmers. Now you’re talking about 28 farmers with a product catalogue of at least 120 items,” he reveals.
While there’s no escaping the fact that it is harder in the summer months for operators to obtain local produce due to the weather conditions, Gerschel confirms that Baker & Spice still manages to source a lot of what it needs from inside the country during summer.
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