Parting is such sweet sorrow for shop owners

A sweet opportunity to live out a real-life nursery fable is ripe for the picking with a popular iconic Boyanup business on the market.

The town’s landmark lolly shop The Gingerbread House is up for sale, putting a childhood dream of many within sweet, sugary reach.

Owners Jim Earley and Julie Shadbolt have more than made their mark through perhaps the town’s biggest tourist attraction, after starting the business from scratch about five years ago.

In what both described as a tough decision, the pair will move permanently to Perth to focus on their ever-evolving business.

“We opened up our warehouse and lolly shop in Perth last year and we’re trying to run both and being 200km apart, it’s getting a bit tiring,” Ms Shadbolt said.

“We could be up there twice a week and that wipes out eight to 10 hours of your week just driving.

“So we have to make a decision – do we stay down here and work on just this one and close that one, or do we do the opposite? And so we’ve picked Perth.”

The renowned lolly store and cafe is a popular tourist stop along South Western Highway and has been a catalyst in the hard-working duo securing major contracts, which ultimately led to them expanding to Perth.

The icing on the cake came in 2017 when the business landed a deal to supply to Optus Stadium.

Mr Earley is also chief baker and said while the pair had loved building the business, they had “just run out of steam”.

Ms Shadbolt described the Boyanup store as getting “bigger than Ben Hur” but said it was a good problem to have.

And while Ms Shadbolt said it would be good for the new owners to continue The Gingerbread House’s mouth-watering legacy, the property was also ready for someone else to put their mark on it.

“It would be good, but we’ve had people have ideas for a bigger cafe, there’s so much people could do with it,” she said.

“There’s so much space here and we’ve only developed half of the building so there’s still another half out the back that someone could run riot with and the land too.”

She said they were excited to focus on Perth where the pair also has six grandchildren – an unsurprising factor in their decision – but they would also miss the small town and its special vibe.

“It’s going to be very hard to leave here. It’s such a great town, there are some wonderful people and we’ve had a lot of great support,” she said.

“And the town is starting to get busier it’ll be sad to leave it.”