Brittany Garbutt’s breakthrough moment

2 April, 2024

Ann Nounce

2 April, 2024

Introducing Brittany Garbutt, the owner and Director of Pretzel Australia. She was the recipient of the Pause Awards 2023 in the ‘Women in Business’ category. Which was the best winner (Champion) in the Excellence Category Track.

Additionally, she won the ‘Prodigy’ category on behalf of the business.

At Pretzel Australia, delicious food and fun go hand in hand with uniquely designed stores that offer a creative reimagining of a totally normal experience—buying snack food. Every pretzel at our Australia-wide company is handmade right there on site by our artisan pretzel bakers. Then topped with fresh and fun flavours—both the traditional and the unusual—and has achieved a cult-like status among snack (and fun) loving Aussies.

At Pause Awards, we unite to spotlight simple and elegant solutions to the challenging business problems, well executed that resulted in a positive market adoption that brought business success. So let’s peek inside their breakthrough.

What was your breakthrough moment?

Pretzel Australia became so popular so quickly that within one week of launching, I was looking for a way out. Essentially, I was the only person who knew how to do it all, so that’s what I did without the support of a trained team.

I hit my stride at the five-month mark, yet I still spent that first year working 19-hour days. Despite struggling with the workload and mental health burden, I decided to expand the number of locations and train extra staff to make the model more sustainable.

At 24, I signed a contract for my second store and started training staff in earnest. I knew the investment in staff training and development was paying off when I returned to a perfectly functioning store after a holiday. The ability to take myself physically out of the business and still have it run efficiently and profitably was a significant breakthrough moment in the growth of the Pretzel Australia brand.