A five-year-old girl sits behind a counter counting cash at the till while customers buying baking ingredients stay to chat since they are enamoured with how cute she is.
This is how Gerry O’Farrell remembers his family business, the Flour Barrel on Wyndham Street.
It's where his daughter Kathleen sat on the counter and where she and her brothers Luke and Cameron grew up.
“So when she got older she’d be like 'dad I think I remember that you only paid me $1 an hour,'” said O’Farrell.
The Flour Barrel has been a Guelph fixture since 1982 and will continue under the same name but with new ownership. After 42 years, O’Farrell is no longer the owner as of 4 p.m. Tuesday.
He’s retiring and planning to do more writing and go on canoe trips.
“There's so much to do. Life is too short,” he said.
“Nobody knows how much time we have. And like, I've spent enough of it doing what I have loved,” said O’Farrell.
O'Farrell, like his daughter, was part of his family business. His father Edward ran a country general store in southwestern Ontario. Part of O’Farrell’s allowance was earned by sweeping the shop floors.
They sold everything from soup to nuts, farming supplies and ammunition. “And it's similar to the Flour Barrel really in that our general store was the crossroads of the community,” said O’Farrell.
Neighbours and farmers who lived 2 km away would be in the aisle at the store chatting, he said.
His mom got sick with breast cancer so the store closed. His dad then worked for a grocery chain but got bored. He was struck with the idea of opening the Flour Barrel after seeing a bulk food store in Toronto. He found a space in Guelph on Wyndham Street that used to be a furniture store.
O’Farrell, 22 at the time, came back to see his parents after living in Australia and New Zealand.
“I was more interested in beaches than I was baking,” he said.
His dad said he needed some muscle to help set up the store. O’Farrell was only supposed to stay for two weeks. Then he was going to go to Ottawa to break into the tech industry.
“And after two weeks he says to me ‘so when are you leaving’ and we were swamped, and I was working with my father … it was so beautiful,” said O’Farrell.
Those two weeks turned into 42 years.
Five months after the store opened, Edward died. About a year later O’Farrell’s mom Kathleen passed away too.
His greatest gift was spending time with his parents. He would work with his dad 14 hours a day, and some days they would drive to and from Toronto to get suppliers.
Opening the store was challenging but O’Farrell loved it.
The store started with basic flours like all-purpose and whole wheat. It now has about 55 different kinds of flours. A baker’s dream. Plus accompanying ingredients like nuts, dried fruit, chocolate and glacé cherries.
O’Farrell doesn’t call himself a baker because great bakers come into the shop all the time. He has tried to make oatmeal raisin cookies but his sister can make them better since they smell just like the ones their mom used to make.
Heather Elliott has worked there for 35 years and is now part-owner along with a family from Rockwood.
Elliott recalled a woman in her 90s who used to come in to get ingredients for a Christmas cake. She brought with her the receipts with the ingredients listed and the prices since she started making the cake the first year she was married.
“And she'd always say ‘well, I think this will be the last year. I can’t make it any more it's too expensive,” said Elliott.
Customers have often come back with samples of the baked goods they made after getting advice from Elliott.
The store had a campaign years ago about supporting local farmers. The Flour Barrel brought in local honey, eggs, and flour to show these ingredients aren’t far away.
When the pandemic started “we as a small store had two options, we could close or stay open. And we chose to stay open,” said Elliott.
It turned from a bulk food store to a store with packaged ingredients in an instant, she said.
“There was this explosion, explosion of people wanting to bake specialty breads, mostly sourdough,” said O’Farrell.
Elliott is looking forward to carrying on the business while O’Farrell "goes out and paddles the world.”
“I mean he should be so proud. He has a legacy for Downtown Guelph,” said Elliott.
“I feel like I won the lottery when it came to careers. I worked for myself. I was successful. I worked with great people. I've … met so many wonderful people in our community,” O'Farrell said.
