Waack's Bakery

A one-line newspaper ad, bakery for sale, suit family, set this Main Street fixture in motion in the mid-1990s, and it has since become the name locals reach for across Stawell and the Grampians. The shop here is the original and the production hub, turning out pies, pasties and sausage rolls alongside the award-winning vanilla slice that carried its reputation well beyond town; the meat pies and hot cross buns have collected their own ribbons. Beyond the daily bake there is focaccia, ham-and-pickle twirls, apple-and-cinnamon scrolls and a decent coffee, plus the odd civic stunt, a half-kilometre lamington laid out for the town among them. Now run by a local family with sibling shops in Ararat and Horsham, it stays firmly independent of the national bakery chains. Worth the queue for the slice alone.