Why are bakeries and fishmongers relatively rare in Ireland?

Shenshen

iamwhoiam wrote: »

There are bakeries on every corner in Germany too . Its a matter of demand in my opinion , in Germany you have a meal called Kaffee und Kuchen between lunch and tea time . People are invited for Kaffee and Kuchen or often arrive armed with a tray of fresh cakes .
That extra meal is not common here so bakeries wouldn’t make the same profit .
Maybe its the same in Holland and so far more bakeries

If you go to Southern Germany, it's even quite common to eat cake for breakfast. So I would agree, the demand for cake in Germany is much higher than here.
That said, Germans (generally) are mad bakers, my mother would bake at least one cake during the week, and two for Sundays. so bakeries tend to specialise in things you can't easily make at home. Plundergebaeck, for example, which would be something similar to Viennoiseries, or very elaborate cakes (Sahnetorte). The cakes would be sold by the slice, it would be rather unusual to buy an entire cake.

Personally, while I do miss them, I'm also not that upset that this doesn't really exist here in the same way - it helps my waistline.

FrankPoll.

I know a local Baker well

The cost of the ingredients and the electricity were the reasons he gave me for closing down his shop.

Maybe there was other stuff like food safety and red tape

liquoriceall

I think it seems to be a price thing. I'm based in limerick so on Saturday we have the food market and fish, cakes etc are amazing. Or if you travel to west Clare, Ennistymon has great bakeries etc

whisky_galore

Fish: Catholic punishment food on Fridays hangover.

spurious

At the time of their closing I thought the Kylemore missed a trick not expanding their range to include 'typical' breads for our various immigrant communities that were arriving. Ask anyone what they miss from home and bread is almost always in the top three.

FrankPoll.

The Irish like their sliced pan and steak in the main

99nsr125

Because we have bad wheat and don't eat fish

machaseh wrote: »

I'm from the Netherlands
and I have been living in dublin for 2 years now.

What I really really miss here, is the bakeries. In the netherlands, every village has at least a bakery and every neighbourhood in a larger city would have several bakeries. You can get not only bread but also local pastries which differ per region and you can sometimes even order custom cakes for birthdays.

When I moved to Dublin I was shocked about how there aren't bakeries everywhere. Yes, the Lidl has a (relatively good) bakery inside, the quality of the bakeries inside other supermarkets is variable at best. But why isn't there just like... a bakery? Like a separate store?

And yes, I know that they are not completely absent from Ireland. In south city center dublin yes there are a couple bakeries. But these seem very expensive and the quality is often not worth the price. When you live out in the suburbs (such as Clongriffin where I used to live), no bakery is in sight.

The same goes for fishmongers by the way, yes the supermarket has fish but why are there so few actual fishmongers? The only thing yous seem to have here is butchers, but I've repeatedly come back from the butcher empty handed because they only had a few cuts on sale and that's it, couldn't give me anything custom or out of the ordinary. Offal? Forget about it. A fattier cut of lamb meant for stewing? Nope, only chops.

Why is the quality of food shops here so low (except real south inner city dublin)?