Port Adelaide's Mayfair Bakery and Patisserie has been sold to Kris Moroney — a great-great-granddaughter of the Balfours baking family — in a deal InDaily reports is said to be in the multimillion-dollar range. It is quite the exit for owner Phil Donnelly, who bought the business for $1 in 2014, at the age of 21.
In the years since, Donnelly — now 36 — has turned the brand, started in 1870, into a genuine player in national baked goods. The bakery's products are still made in Port Adelaide, and Donnelly says they now sell through Drakes, Foodland and Tony & Marks stores across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory, with his own gluten-free baked cheesecake as the cornerstone — the brand's top-selling bakery item across those chains. He says the business is also in discussions with Coles and Woolworths. "When we launched into the supermarkets, I had in the back of my mind that this would be a good time to exit," said Donnelly, a 2025 InDaily 40 Under 40 alum and Premier's Food Awards Next Generation award recipient. "It's not like we're selling at the bottom when there's no growth."
The sale settles on 1 October, and it is only the third time the brand has changed hands in the past century — Donnelly bought it from Barry Schultz, whose family had run the bakery for 57 years. Under Donnelly it grew from no employees to 36. "We're far bigger than I think people realise," he said. "We've got product all the way up to Cairns and Uluru. We've had a customer pop in the other day that loved the cheesecake so much that they tried in Uluru that they came to Port Adelaide to see where it was made."
For Moroney, the purchase closes a family circle that runs through the most famous name in South Australian baking. "Baking is in my blood," she told InDaily — she started baking at 16 and was a Baker's Delight franchisee at 21. "It's a real full circle moment for my family in many ways. We're very proud of our Balfour heritage. The biggest drawcard for me was eating his products over the years; ridiculously tasty, such good quality. To be given the opportunity to be the next custodian, it's like grabbing the Olympic Torch and running that next leg of the race now."
Her plans start with growing the gluten-free range — and one very specific ambition: "I'd like to be sitting on a Qantas flight eating a slice of our wonderful cheesecake." (Her current favourite from the counter is the blueberry cheesecake.)
Donnelly will stay on through the handover and remain a consultant, but says his next act is bigger than one bakery: helping South Australian food manufacturers — especially Port Adelaide's — into new markets. "Sometimes people don't see [Port Adelaide] as a food destination, but it really is one of the biggest hubs in SA for food manufacturing," he said. "I'm proud to be an ambassador for that and to champion that moving forward."