Charlie Catue

Baking in Sandton means planning around power cuts and managing kitchen temperatures when load shedding hits. Charlie Catue operates in an environment where Eskom's schedule shapes production hours, and where electricity costs directly affect margins. Getting bread and pastry right under these constraints requires real skill — maintaining fermentation timing when you can't control ambient temperature, baking without interruption when the grid fails, keeping product fresh without reliable refrigeration. It's not just about knowing recipes; it's about adapting them to South Africa's current reality. Bakeries that manage this properly stand out because they're solving a logistics problem that most customers don't even see.