Glutenfree4u is a mixed bag but I’m still glad it exists

Posted: September 3, 2024 Updated: September 3, 2024

Have you heard of Glutenfree4u? Maybe you’ve visited one of their many locations across Australia. Since moving back to Australia I’ve visited their stores a few times.

Now, I’m always going to cheer for gluten free venues, bakeries and online stores. The gluten free community is always in need of more visibility so it’s great when businesses make the extra effort to cater for us.

Clearly there’s a huge market for gluten free and provided it’s done well, the average punter wouldn’t notice the difference.

Being good enough to get all of the market, not just the gluten free

Most food businesses would struggle to survive just on the patronage of the gluten free market. Their offering needs to be good enough to attract non-gluten free customers. Some businesses, like Kudo bakery in Melbourne, do this supremely well.

So it does make me wonder, how does Glutenfree4u, a massive gluten free franchise get away with such a hit and miss range of products?

My first experience of Glutenfree4u was a few weeks after they opened a new store in Melbourne’s inner west in Brunswick.

I grabbed two items, a vanilla slice and a spinach and feta scroll. They were great! I was rapt that we suddenly had an awesome bakery on the west side of the city.

However other visits were less successful.

The hits

Since that first trip I’ve been back somewhere between five and ten times, plus a few visits by my mum picking up cakes for parties.

Here’s a list of what I’ve enjoyed

• Vanilla slice
• Spinach and feta scroll
• Cheesymite scroll
• Caramel slice
• Lamington
• Apricot danish
• Sticky date pudding

The vanilla slice is easily the best I’ve ever had. I still think about it and it was over a year ago that I had my first one from them. I even posted about it on my Instagram page (I’m pretty slack when it comes to grid posts!).

Similarly the caramel slice is top notch. But like, you’d expect it to be. The only component that usually has gluten is a buttery biscuit base. There’s no need for the structural integrity that gluten brings. I got one for my mum and she absolutely loved it.

Also Glutenfree4u do this brilliant zero waste thing of selling the offcuts of their caramel slice for 50 cents a piece. You could actually make an entire slice out of these cheaper than the whole bar. From a waste perspective though, it’s great, and an off cut is a perfect little morsel to go with a coffee.

The savoury scrolls are baked really well, no stodgy raw bits inside. The feta cheese is mostly in the centre but there is other cheese throughout. The bread dough has a good crunchy exterior but fluffy inside. There’s really no reason to think its gluten free. Not crumbly, not grainy. Just a really nice scroll.

The apricot danish was the first pastry I tried from them and it’s excellent! Flaky and buttery. Delicate custard and jammy soft apricot pieces. I don’t think you can tell that it is gluten free at all (except for the price!). I bought the danish frozen (they had a 3 for $10 deal) and it reheated in the oven without issue.

My mum recently bought me a brownie (a miss) and a sticky date pudding. I was super skeptical with the sticky date, but we microwaved it so the caramel melted over the top and it’s pretty good! It’s not as sweet as other ones I’ve tried and the caramel volume works well. I’m not a caramel fan so I won’t rush back to buy it, but I’ll recommend it.

I’ve had a few other products too but I can’t quite recall how they were. I’ve had the savoury muffins which were cheese and bacon and I think spinach and feta.

The misses

Unfortunately, and it genuinely pains me to say this, I’ve had probably more memorable misses than wins when it comes to Glutenfree4u’s range.

Here’s what I’ve tried that didn’t quite pass. For various reasons too, so I’ll go into a bit of detail.

• Chicken pie
• Donuts (purchased frozen)
• Mint slice
• Cherry slice
• Lemon slice
• Brownie

The chicken pie was good in terms of it’s pastry, both the shell and the top, the filling had tender pieces of chicken. However, the filling was so salty that although I only ate half, I wasn’t compelled to buy it again.

The cinnamon donuts, which I bought frozen for a special price, did not recover at all from reheating. At first I thought it was just because it was frozen so it wouldn’t work. However I actually froze a Gfree donut and reheated recently and it was brilliant, better than some other gluten free donuts I’ve bought fresh.

The mint slice and cherry slice are where things really fall apart. I’d expect a mint slice to have a crushed biscuit / condensed milk sort of base (like most slices) followed by a mint creme / fondant and a layer of chocolate. Instead, it’s a chocolate cake base with a layer of … I want to say coconut, coconut oil, mint and icing sugar, finished with a chocolate layer. It was this squidgy sugary coconut glug that was just unpleasant. I couldn’t eat it.

Similarly the brownie wasn’t a brownie at all. It was not dense or fudgy but instead a thoroughly average chocolate cake. Pointless.

The lemon slice though, that was a total disaster. Looking at the ingredients this item is meant to be baked. It was raw. The slice was bad enough that I actually wrote to Glutenfree4u to query it, who asked for my email address to follow up but never got back to me.

What do you buy at Glutenfree4u?

Am I meant to accept that there will be misses at a bakery? Sure, not every product will be to my taste and it’s of course personal and subjective. But I do think some of those misses are genuine failures.

It’s tricky thing. However I think the misses have stopped Glutenfree4u from being my go-to venue. I’ve got stores nearby and yet the last time I went was probably six months ago.

Of course I’ll still suggest it to people, but it’ll come with the same caveats I’ve outlined here. Some items are fantastic, some are not.

What’s been a hit and a miss for you at Glutenfree4u? Let me know in the comments or tell me about it on Facebook and Instagram.

Where to find Glutenfree4u

Being a franchise Glutenfree4u is available across much of Australia. There’s always new stores coming along, you can follow them on their main Facebook page to keep up to date.