English Market bakery sold after nearly 40 years: ‘We associate Cork with happy memories’

After almost 40 years trading, Sheila Fitzpatrick has sold her Alternative Bread Company stall at the English Market to French baker Benjamin Le Bon. She talks to Joe McNamee about making Cork a home, four decades at the English Market – and brushes with royalty

Sheila Fitzpatrick of the Alternative Bread Company ABC with Ben Le Bon, of Seeds Artisan Bakers as Seeds take over the stall at the English Market, Grand Parade, Cork. Picture: Larry Cummins

One of the more bewitching sights in the English Market early on a Saturday morning, is the soaring stacks of freshly baked breads, patisserie and other fabulous floury fancies at ABC the Alternative Bread Company, in the centre of the market. But, after almost 40 years trading, Sheila Fitzpatrick, who began the business as a single mother newly arrived in Cork from London with five young children in tow, has finally sold her stall to French baker Benjamin Le Bon.

Sheila grew up in an Irish family in Liverpool. When she was 14, her father’s work took the family to London where she finished school, before going to Surrey University where she got a degree in hotel and catering management.

“I’d always had an absolute passion for hospitality,” says Sheila, “I had my first job in a coffee shop at age 14. I trace the passion back to Imperial Palace by Arnold Bennett, a tingling feeling reading about behind-the-scenes in a big hotel. I did my [work experience] year at the Capitol Hotel, in Knightsbridge and met Brian Turner who was pivotal in my career after that. He was one of the major chefs in London in the late 70s, early 80s, when chefs were first becoming celebrities.

“I was 22 when I married, a child bride, and had my first child the following year. We lived in a really crummy flat in Camden and The Capitol asked me back, to do wages, rotas etc. They actually put a phone into our flat and I worked on and off through the next four children. In 1986, Brian opened his restaurant Turner’s and hired me as his PA. My last baby grew up being rocked by various commis chefs and waiters, whoever was around. It was an amazing time to be in London. Everybody passed through [our] doors. Diana ate there, there’d always be a crowd of paparazzi outside.”

Queen Elizabeth II meeting Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, Alternative Bread Company in The English Market during her state visit in 2011. Picture: Maxwells Dublin / Irish Government.

Moving to Cork

In 1996 Sheila’s marriage came to an end and she moved to Cork with her five children.

“I thought life was not going to be the same again so I made a massive decision to give it all up and move to Cork where my older sister was living. My sister and her husband had moved here in 1979 and we associated Cork with happy memories because we used holiday there. My kids were very close to their cousins. We had married two brothers so they were double cousins, nine between the two families, very alike to look at. We lived close by and they all ate and slept at whichever house they happened to be, which was incredibly supportive because I arrived over with my final pay packet in a very old Volvo estate and no idea what I was going to do.”

A brief stint in a Kinsale restaurant led to an immediate job offer. However, it proved too tricky with five children.

“I felt the only thing to do was to work for myself because it’s easier to work around a family. I used to shop regularly in the English Market and felt there was a niche for bread. There was a great tradition of Irish bread, but not many other choices. In London I’d come across sourdough and all sorts of different breads.” A brief involvement with a nascent local sourdough bakery business proved more pipe dream than productive enterprise, so she and one of the bakers, Paul Walsh, decided to start their own business.

“Neither of us had money so I wrote a business plan and we went into Bank of Ireland on Patrick St. Unbelievably, the manager gave us a £5,000 personal loan. The name, Alternative Bread Company, ABC, was to get top billing in the Golden Pages.

Sheila Fitzpatrick holding the old signage of Alternative Bread Company ABC with Ben Le Bon at Seeds Artisan Bakers at the English Market, Grand Parade, Cork. Picture: Larry Cummins

“We found a premises on Tramore Road and painted the floors and walls. Paul started baking and I started selling, cold calling, places like UCC, Actons, in Kinsale — and we got orders. We got an employment grant from Cork City Enterprise Board and took on our first employee. We paid him on a Friday. By the following Thursday we had to borrow back from him to put diesel in the car to deliver the bread. But it grew. We needed somewhere to generate cash flow. And the only place I wanted to go was the market.” The Alternative Bread Company stall opened in the English Market in November 1997 and took off like a rocket. It also provided Sheila with a new ‘family’.

I felt part of a community. I’d grown up in an Irish family and always thought I was Irish till I came here with my English accent, so it was the best thing I could possibly have done to feel part of the place.

“And I loved the people. [Butcher] Paul Murphy opposite, came over on our first day and gave us a coin and said, put that in the till, and you’ll always have money in your till. A gentlemen, Paul was always keeping an eye on us, I always felt very safe when they were around.

“Kathleen Noonan had the [very small] stall beside me. She said to me, all you need is a metre of counter to raise a family. She raised eight children from that little stall. My own children, as soon as they could see above the counter, worked there and their friends, their cousins, their cousins’ friends.” One daily customer was Billy George, the legendary Irish Examiner sports journalist, now retired.

“When [Sheila’s son] Tom was 16, he had to do work experience and was interested in journalism so I asked Billy. Tom worked with Billy and had his first article published: by Thomas Fitzpatrick, dance correspondent. He did his second week with [RTÉ Southern Correspondent] Paschal Sheehy, another customer.”

After graduating from UCC, he moved to London, returning as editor of the Irish Examiner in 2019, before moving on last year.

“Many years later, I got a phone call from Pascal asking would I give his son Adam work experience. Our lovely Adam was a joy and still works in the bakery.” Deciding to expand, Sheila opened a unit in Douglas Court, next to Dunnes Stores.

“One day we got a phone call saying Margaret Heffernan would like to meet. I thought it was somebody messing but she travelled down in her helicopter. It’s been a good association because there’s a huge amount of respect on both sides.” The ABC stores have since become an integral part of the Dunnes offering in several stores, joined by other high profile franchises such as Sheridans Cheesemongers and Pat Whelan Butchers. Sheila had also begun selling breads from other artisan bakers, amongst them Breton baker Benjamin Le Bon.

New local

Ben grew up on the coast of Brittany, studying history at university. After a masters, he came to Ireland in 2006, having spent a summer here at a youth camp a decade earlier. Tom Barry’s, on Barrack St, became his new local. And working behind the bar was Alison Kelly, the woman who would become his wife and mother to their two boys. After a few years, the couple moved back to Ben’s native France. He cycled through a number of jobs, none scratching an as yet undefined itch.

“I was 30 years old,” says Ben, “and bored with my job. I had worked in a bakery for six months in my early 20s, not a good bakery, but I enjoyed the upside down life. Getting up at 5am, music playing loud, hard going but people always laughing and joking. You were always tired at the end of the day — working six days a week — but I enjoyed it, ready to go back the next day. I also wanted to be my own boss.” Ben retrained as a baker but struggled to find a job.

Nobody wanted an ‘old’ baker like me — 30 is old for a baker in France and nobody wanted an old baker with just one year of work experience.

Learning from Thierry Jack Roch, a chef who traded his Michelin-starred Parisian restaurant to return home to Guadeloupe to open a bakery, Ben and his young family moved to Guadeloupe.

“He had the same profile as me. He had [gone to university] though he’d always wanted to become a chef, which he did when he was 30 so he wasn’t afraid of hiring me. We stayed for a great year of learning and then came back to live in Ireland.” Back in Cork, Ben took over as head baker for Natural Foods Bakery. Eventually, in 2020, he bought out the baking side of the business, continuing to supply his former employers’ cafes.

“I always wanted to be able to reproduce the bread I ate at my grandparents’ farm,” says Ben. “I did research — a trained historian knows where to look — looking for breads and grains from before the industrialisation of baking, when they gave breads time to ferment. In the Middle Ages, brewers and bakers always lived on the same street and that’s when I thought about waste beer mash. If you gave a second life to beer mash by fermenting it again, you could get loads of great nutrients. I went to Rising Sons brewery and they loved the idea. The deal was, a loaf for buckets of mash. That became the giant lockdown loaf, which took off with customers during covid.“ “We started selling them from the market, says Sheila, “And that really extended the range. So it worked for both of us. It was a really nice cooperative venture and it continued.”

In 2023, Ben and his sister-in-law, Ingrid Kelly, opened Seeds, a retail bakery/cafe in Kinsale, an almost immediate success. In March 2025, he met Sheila for a coffee.

“I was actually going to say,” says Ben, “it’s time for me to open Seeds number two but I didn’t want to become her competition. Before I said anything, she said, look, Ben, I think it’s time for me to stop. I’d like you to take over the market.” Sheila says, “We’d always talked a lot and we’ve always been like minded. I had this sense that it was the right time to move on. What stopped me was not having the right person. I knew instinctively Ben was the right person because he respected the product and the history of the market.” Sheila wanted one last Christmas in the market and a chance to tell her staff first.

“Christmas Eve was always very special in the market, a great atmosphere, a lot of our previous staff members used to call in and even come behind the counter to help. Ben arrived in with bottles of sparkling wine and we were all toasting and they all expected me to cry. I said, no, it just feels right and the person is right. And I don’t need to worry about my staff or my customers or the other people in the market.

“When the deal was finally official, Ben and I had always talked about going out for whiskey sours, our favourite cocktail, so when the deal was wrapped at the end of January, off out we went. We trusted each other and it all comes down to trust.”