For many the smell of freshly baked bread is one of the most comforting, heart-warming smells – and need we say, deliciously mouth-watering. For Trini-born Anne Marie Yip Choy, and her son Jason, it’s their everyday reality.

This artisan, classic bakery product plant churns out a wide variety of breads and pastries daily, including croissants, baguettes, cinnamon brioche – made to use the French toast at the Ritz-Carlton; cream-filled pastries, hamburger buns – of Margaritaville fame, and vols au vents – ideal for use by caterers. And according to her clients, the taste is authentic, a standard maintained by the in-house consultant, Luc Deycuper, a pastry chef from Brussels, Belgium, who previously spent 13 years in Russia.

A year in the making, Yip Choy opened Pastryanna just one month ago, and has literally hit the ground running. Already, clients include the Ritz-Carlton, Rose Hall, Sandals Royal Caribbean, Versair, Coyaba and Margaritaville. In fact, National Meats, located in Ocho Rios, has just signed on as their distributor island-wide of their frozen products. She also adds that a number of other large hotels have shown interest, and are in the process of coming on board.

Totally computerised, state-of-the-art equipment fills the 17,000 square-foot factory. Jason, who is in charge of production at the factory, explains that on average, the factory runs about three to five different products per day.

“However, if we were to run one product for the entire day, say croissants, we have the production capacity to make about 10,000 a day,” Jason says, “and if it is a larger product like baguettes, we could do about 5,000 per day.”

When it comes to production, Yip Choy explains that all of the raw materials are stored in an air-conditioned environment. This maintains the quality, ensuring consistency for all of the final products. “We want to guarantee the best quality for our customers, and so our materials must also always be of the best quality.” The computerised procedure also ensures this top-notch quality.

Yip Choy, whose background is in baking (her now ex-husband ran and owned Kiss Baking Co Ltd in Trinidad, where she ran the cake room), moved to Jamaica last year, and set up premises in the industrialised Freeport, Free Zone area in Montego Bay. “I was visiting Jamaica on vacation, and staying at a hotel,” she says, “when I realised that there was no top-quality bread available, and thought it would be a golden opportunity for my son and I in Jamaica.” She built the factory, from the ground up, at a cost of US$2.5 million, explaining that she was very hands-on during the entire process.

When it comes to competition, Yip Choy says that this mainly comes from the hotels and restaurants baking their own bread. “We know that these hotels are very price conscious,” she says, “so we wanted to be able to create a quality product at an affordable price.”

And the future? Well, although Yip Choy cannot share details of her forthcoming trip to Miami for the baking trade show this weekend in Florida, she explains that while she will continue to serve those in the tourism industry (hotels, restaurants, etc). She believes she has found a gap in the local market that she can fill. But she’s not sharing her idea. “Just wait and see,” she says with a smile.