The small business

For years, Samuel had baked bread for friends and neighbours as a hobby, refusing every suggestion that he should sell it.

"Hobbies are hobbies," he would say. "The moment you sell something, it becomes work."

That changed when the café on the corner, run by his friend Lucy, lost its bread supplier with a week's notice. "Just help me out for a month," she pleaded. "Twenty loaves a day. That's all."

Samuel agreed, mostly to be polite. Within a fortnight, customers were asking Lucy where the sourdough came from, and two other cafés had called.

Suddenly, he was dealing with things he'd never had to think about: council approvals for a commercial kitchen, food safety training, an ABN, pricing that covered flour, power and his time.

There were nights he regretted the whole thing, standing in a hired kitchen at four in the morning with flour in his hair and an invoice he didn't understand.

But there were also mornings like the one when a little girl pressed her face against the café window and announced, "That's the bread man!"

Two years later, Samuel runs a small bakery with three staff. He still says hobbies should stay hobbies, but these days he smiles when he says it.