What is the oldest running business establishment in Dhaka city?

Would you believe it’s a just an ordinary looking bakery in Laxmibazar in the old town that perhaps is the oldest running business establishment of the country. At least that is what its present owners claim today.

The ordinary looking bakery was founded by a British baker, according to the present owners,.

Current owner Nuruddin Ahmed (aged around 80) names the original owner as “Mr Wales” and says that the British owners handed over the business to his father Buddhu Mia before the partition and left Dhaka.

Ever since Buddhu Mia’s family is running the bakery in Laxmibazar, near the famous St. Gregory church and selling mouth-watering pastries, cakes, butter buns, cream rolls and different types of biscuits to thousands of customers. Some of its items look distinctly different from that of the modern bakeries of the city.

The bakery is also one of the first to have baked wedding and Christmas cakes in Dhaka.

Most of their exclusive bakery items such as jam tacks, love letters and cheese cakes are seasonal and made exclusively in the winter, around December and January. “To tell you the truth, we still bake in the old way, the way my father or the proprietor used to. There are equipments back in the kitchen which are a 100 years old,' says Nuruddin.