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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Slow sale of hot cross buns

by

Bobie-Lee Dixon
1929 days ago
20200409

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

The tra­di­tion­al buy­ing of hot cross buns in Trinidad and To­ba­go on Holy Thurs­day, even at times to the point of ma­nia, was dras­ti­cal­ly slowed down ac­cord­ing to bak­eries across the coun­try.

They told Guardian Me­dia, the de­creased pa­tron­age by cus­tomers was ex­pect­ed with the pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures this coun­try has tak­en to fight the spread of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Some said they even cut their pro­duc­tion of the well-sort-af­ter bred-based item, in some in­stances by 50 per cent.

VG’s bak­ery at Rail­way Road Ari­ma said it did not cater too much hot cross buns, as it an­tic­i­pat­ed, the sales might be slow­er than usu­al. It said where its pro­duc­tion an­nu­al­ly is in the thou­sands, this year they on­ly pro­duced 2,000 buns.

“We don’t even have enough. I don’t think it would last out for the day,” the man­ag­er said.

The pop­u­lar St Mary’s Bak­ery at East­ern Main Road and Sel­l­i­er Street, Curepe con­firmed there has been a de­cline in the pa­tron­age of its cus­tomers buy­ing hot cross buns. The man­ag­er said, while it was not do­ing too bad­ly, they have not seen as many cus­tomers as per usu­al.

In the South­land, Puff and Stuff Bak­ery at Cir­cu­lar Road, San Fer­nan­do, said sales on hot cross buns had been fluc­tu­at­ing. It said the nor­mal Holy Thurs­day rush was ‘of course’ not the same.

Di­rec­tor Gre­go­ry Laing said the sales on the cross buns at his bak­ery were around 60 per cent. He said al­though peo­ple may see a lot of lines out­side the bak­ery, those lines could be de­ceiv­ing. He said where­as the norm would be to serve 15 per­sons at a time, on­ly four per­sons were al­lowed at once to main­tain so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

“Nor­mal­ly I would do 12,000 buns on a day like this and I on­ly did 6,000,” said Laing.

He said the make­up would be, those same cus­tomers would pur­chase oth­er bak­ery items, such as breads and sweet­breads to stock up for the long week­end.

He al­so not­ed with the time frame gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed—9-6 pm for such es­sen­tial ser­vices to con­duct busi­ness, they have al­so lost five hours of sales, his bak­ery would nor­mal­ly open from 6 am and close around 8 pm.

Jodelle’s Bak­ing Ser­vices Ltd at Freel­ing Street, Tu­na­puna, said it de­cid­ed to not pro­duce any cross buns this year.

At Gafoor’s Bak­ery Ltd at El So­cor­ro Road, San Juan, its cashier told Guardian Me­dia in re­gards to sales of hot cross buns, “It is a lit­tle de­cline. Nor­mal­ly it would be a lot more peo­ple.”

Bread Bas­ket in St Ann’s Port-of-Spain, how­ev­er, said it did not see much of a dif­fer­ence in pur­chas­ing be­hav­iour when it came to the cus­tomers get­ting their fill on hot cross bun buy­ing.

The bak­ery man­ag­er said, “We are get­ting pa­tron­age, we are still see­ing the reg­u­lar traf­fic in cus­tomers for hot cross buns, we are still mak­ing buns.”

The man­ag­er al­so not­ed it opened its doors since 6 am yes­ter­day and cus­tomers came as usu­al to buy their buns.

Chain bak­ery Lin­da’s said though there was a good turn out, there was a drop back to what it nor­mal­ly ex­pe­ri­ences on a Holy Thurs­day. The manger at its West­ern main Road, St James Branch, said cus­tomers were call­ing around to the var­i­ous branch­es to find out about hot cross buns and from the feed­back, its branch­es have all seen the drop back

To­ba­go Bak­ing Ser­vice Ltd at Old Gov­ern­ment Farm Road Shaw Park, To­ba­go, al­so felt the pinch of a de­cline in cus­tomers reach­ing its es­tab­lish­ment for Holy Thurs­day cross buns.

Its di­rec­tor told Guardian Me­dia be­cause of the sit­u­a­tion, it de­cid­ed to do a dras­tic cut back on the pro­duc­tion of its an­nu­al hot cross buns. She said the de­ci­sion was tak­en be­cause they did not want to be­come over­whelmed with cus­tomers, in light of pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures to curb the COVID-19 spread.

She said her bak­ery would usu­al­ly do large or­ders for banks and church­es among oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions but it de­cid­ed to do a 50 per cent scale back in its re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic.


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