BENGALURU: If you’re an old Bengalurean, then chances are that birthday and special celebrations would have been incomplete without a cake from Sweet Chariot. While we may be spoilt for choice today with bakeries burgeoning by the dozen, it was Sweet Chariot that first gave many a taste to Black Forest cakes, lemon tart, Japanese cake among others. The city’s iconic cake shop turns 40 this year, and Glen Williams, founder of the chain, says the bakery that was once an experiment, now has 35 outlets.
Set up in 1981 in a basement on Brigade Road, Williams recalls helping his mother in their family business without having any sort of connection with the world of baking. “My sister was working at the Taj West End and a baker there suggested we start a pastry shop. That’s how the journey of Sweet Chariot started,” says Williams.
Ask him if he saw a business model there since it was in a period when the city hardly had any patisseries, and he laughs that he had no idea of what the future of the bakery would look like. “I was just 26 and experimenting with an idea. I had no formal education in business or baking to understand anything. I started baking only from ’82, after the baker I was working with, got drunk and one day didn’t show up at work,” says Williams, joking that his business journey is nothing less than a horror story.
He’s often asked if he could have pulled up the same risk today. “To start your own business now, there has to be a model, presentation, etc. My advice to anyone out there is that they should put passion first over anything else,” says Williams, adding that none of his four children is part of the business. “One of my daughters did hotel management and I thought that she would probably join the business, but she was clear about wanting to be a teacher, which I supported,” says Williams, who is also one of the partners in Toit and owns the bakehouse chain, Glen’s.
Ask him about the secret behind their signature pastries, and Williams says, “It could sound disappointing, but there is no secret. We have been following the same recipe from day 1. The issue starts when you start experimenting, so we prefer to follow the same recipe that we started with. But yes, we use fresh dairy cream and not the canned whipped cream. We were one of the first to start this practice,” says Williams.
Having whipped up such a success story, one would naturally assume that this bakery would spread its wings to other cities. But Williams who had outlets in Hyderabad in 2010 had to shut it in 2015. “It became very difficult for me to manage resources and other issues,” says Williams, adding that they do have an outlet in Pune. With stiff competition, does Sweet Chariot still enjoy the same stature as it once did? “It’s decent if not great considering that Covid was a huge setback,” he says. However, even during these tough times, he has managed to save the first outlet on Brigade Road – where it all started.