Anne Wolfers and Sue Zweep, the founders of Zweefers, remain firm friends today. Photos: Sue Zweep.
When the announcement came that Zweefers would close its doors after more than 30 years, it wasn’t just the end of a shop — it felt like the end of an era. To understand why its closure hit so hard, you have to go back to the beginning.
Zweefers is an amalgam of the surnames of its founders, Sue Zweep and Anne Wolfers — two women whose passion for elevating the Wollongong food scene led them to create what would one day become Fairy Meadow’s beloved cake shop and patisserie.
Having trained at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, Sue started Culinarius in the 80s. It was then primarily a deli and a fine foods providore bringing home-cooked meals and specialty food items to the good people of Wollongong.
Aside from retail, Culinarius also offered catering, and Sue ran cooking classes out of her Austinmer home. That’s where she met Anne.
“This wonderful woman sat in the front row of one of my classes wearing the most extraordinary outfits and making these wonderful, witty comments, and I thought ‘I like you,'” Sue says. “She became and remains my very good friend.”
Back then Anne, who had trained in London under the famous Roux brothers, was a partner in a bakery in Sydney’s Rose Bay, and was tiring of the commute.
“Between shuttling the kids to and from school and working at the bakery, the days got longer and longer, and it became untenable,” Anne says. “So I sold my share in the business and considered retiring. But I just couldn’t. I missed baking.”
And so it was that Zwee and Fers joined forces to open a shop they hoped would help elevate Wollongong’s food scene.
“That was the idea behind both Culinarius and Zweefers. The culinary options in Wollongong felt quite limited at the time, and we wanted people to know there was so much more. We worked hard at that, and I think we did well,” Sue says.
Success came, but not overnight. The shop started primarily in wholesale, from an underground premises in Corrimal.
Sue in her Culinarius apron.
Anne recalls struggling to source locally the quantity of ingredients they needed to achieve their specialty offering.
A different challenge looms large in Sue’s memory.
“I was very excited to bring our tarte au citron (lemon tart) to Wollongong, but Wollongong wasn’t thrilled with it,” Sue recalls.
“We couldn’t sell it. People just weren’t used to it, they didn’t understand it. Until one day, Vogue did a spread featuring a tarte au citron and all of a sudden, it became one of our best sellers.”
Word of the wholesale creations got around and soon, customers started coming directly to the wholesale door, and Sue and Anne would happily oblige.
Among their loyal customer base, there were many favourites. The triple chocolate truffle cake — a creation every bit as indulgent as it sounds, with layers of dark, milk and white chocolate mousse topped with a decadent chocolate ganache — has been a fan favourite from start to end.
Both Sue and Anne, however, agree the best thing on the menu was the Zweefers Signature Cake, comprising layers of moist, almondy Japonais cake topped with moussey chocolate.
“I have an emotional attachment to that cake,” Anne says.
“It was my mother-in-law’s recipe, and was always present at family celebrations. It’s a very European-style cake with no flour — it’s all eggs and butter and chocolate and nuts. Gluten-free, all those years ago, before gluten-free was really a thing.
“I was so pleased to see the people of Wollongong take to something so different from what was available.”
Tempting: details from the original Zweefers brochure.
Sadly, the shop quite literally went under in the great flood of 1998, and Sue and Anne lost everything. They parted ways as business partners, but not as friends.
Shortly after Sue found the Fairy Meadow site, and Zweefers 2.0 rose like a phoenix from the ashes — this time with a direct-to-public focus.
In the sweet years after — though she can’t quite recall how many — Sue continued to fly the Zweefers flag, steadfast in the uncompromising standards of the original shop.
“We were very particular. We always used the correct ingredients, and we never took shortcuts,” she says.
But, as Chaucer said, all good things must come to an end and eventually Sue sold the shop. Though ready to retire, it was not an easy decision.
“You give your all until there’s not a lot more to give,” Sue says. “I loved my staff and my customers, that’s the thing that hurt most when I sold the shop. I had some terrific customers who came back time and again. I really found it difficult, putting that behind me.”
The triple chocolate truffle remained a fan favourite to the end.
For Sue and Anne, still firm friends, the news of Zweefers’ closure was sad, but perhaps not entirely surprising.
“The cost of ingredients these days is extraordinary,” Sue says. “I imagine trying to maintain quality without compromise is very challenging, so I understand why it ended this way.”
Anne, whose daughter is Millers’ Local Bakehouse founder Emma Huber, is no stranger to these struggles.
She says that even though the ovens are off and the doors closed, the spirit of Zweefers lives on — in every baker who honours craft over convenience, and in the memories of a community raised on something sweeter.
“I see a throughline between Zweefers and businesses like Millers’. The same desire to raise standards, the same steadfast commitment to providing the best quality possible to our community,” she says.
For Sue and Anne, it may be the end of an era. But for the rest of us, it’s a flavour we won’t soon forget.
