The Global Baker

From Rangiora High School student to baking business magnate – we caught up with the “Global Baker” - Dean Brettschneider to find out the secrets of his success.

Words: Pattie Pegler Images: Supplied

Type Dean Brettschneider into the Google search bar and the autocomplete options include ‘sourdough recipe’ and ‘net worth’. They seem like a strange combo – but perhaps not for a man who has created his own personal brand as the Global Baker.

Today Dean owns several businesses in Singapore including a bakery chain Baker &Cook, a sourdough pizza brand, a burger brand, Crosstown Doughnuts and a baking school and does some consultancy. Is working non-stop basically the key to business success?

“You have to be relentless, you know,” says Dean speaking from Singapore. “Relentless on yourself, on your relationships, on your family. Relentless on yourself physically. I think that was part of the motivation to write the biography really. I felt there was a story to be told about that side of it.”

Dean’s biography, Passion Is My Main Ingredient, does show behind the scenes. And it’s exhausting.  He’s winning awards, he’s buying a bakery, he’s working for corporates, he’s in London, he’s in Shanghai, he’s writing baking books, he’s on television.  He simply doesn’t stop.  

Early Years

He attributes that drive to various sources. Growing up in Waikuku Beach he recalls putting Readers Digest books down his socks as shinpads for sport. “I came from nothing. And so it was very important to me to be able to provide,” he says.

But he also experienced an early taste of hard work and success that spurred him on. As the only boy in the home economics group at Rangiora High School when the then owner of Rangiora Bakery, John van Til, came looking for an apprentice Dean was chosen by default. That was in 1985.

During his apprenticeship he lived with his grandmother, Nana Smith, in Rangiora and worked 16-hour days as he learnt his trade. He captained the New Zealand baking team for the Trans Tasman Baking Trophy in 1987 and in 1988 was New Zealand Baking Apprentice of the Year. It was the sense of pride and satisfaction in his skills that rewarded him – and set him up for the future.

Meanwhile his Dutch father and a grandmother who sent gifts from Holland at Christmas gave him an interest in the world beyond North Canterbury. “It was an intrigue. I was certainly aware that I had another culture in my life,” says Dean.  

At 20 he headed overseas using money his parents had offered him in lieu of a 21st birthday party. He gained experience, worked in the UK, met his future wife and moved back to New Zealand.

There followed a career that saw him buy and sell his own bakery in Dunedin, start writing his own baking books, work for a variety of corporates and spend several years in the dynamic city of Shanghai. There was no such thing as regular hours but he enjoyed the adrenalin of it and honed his skills.

But nobody gets to work on this basis without sacrifices and Dean has stacked up two divorces and moved around so much he seems to lack roots. He feels more European he says but business is in Singapore. He has friends and family in New Zealand. His son is in London.

It’s something he seems aware of but also pragmatic about. Money cannot buy happiness he is clear, but it can buy security and freedom and choice.  

“I was building financial freedom and that comes at a cost…I live on my own. I spend 99% of my time on my own. I make a lot of business decisions on my own,” he says.

But he’s on good terms with his first wife and has a strong relationship with his son, Jason, 24. When Dean’s first marriage broke up Jason opted to stay in Shanghai with his father for a year. It was a year that cemented their relationship says Dean. And he has put a focus on maintaining that ever since.

So what next? Well he’s ‘semi-retired’ he says. He doesn’t bake anymore but he does teach occasionally. He loves cycling and travelling and is a Netflix junkie who’s been bingeing on Sons of Anarchy.

But he also likes people and is well experienced in television work having appeared as a judge on NZ’s Hottest Home Baker way back in 2011. Since then he’s done several television shows including most recently, The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

One of the projects he is enthusiastic about is that he has recently acquired the Singapore rights to The Great Singapore Bake Off from the BBC. “It means I own the format here and I just need to work with the TV networks to produce it,” he explains.

Embarking on producing a television series sounds like exactly the sort of semi-retirement that you’d expect from this high energy entrepreneur.