Loyal customers are panic-buying housemade jam and scoffing one last scone as a Woonona cakery and tearoom enters its final day of service.
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Sugar Butter Eggs was founded by Harmony and Thomas Whalan inside the historic and lovingly restored bank building on the Princes Highway in 2020.
Some 45,000 scones and 1500 cakes later, the Whalans are feeling proud of how far they've come over the past four years and excited about their next chapter in Orange, where they'll be reunited with beloved family members.
They leave with the satisfaction of knowing they turned Sugar Butter Eggs into a place for long, leisurely Devonshire teas with friends, where no-one ever enforced two-hour sittings, the coffee was brewed to perfection and the food melted in your mouth.
But it hasn't been without its hardships, most of which sprang from an "infuriating" and persistent rumour that emerged early on.
"We'd be there all day waiting for people to come and then someone would pop their head in and say, 'oh, there's a rumour going around you've closed down'," Harmony said.
"And that happened probably five or six times and it really made our business suffer. It was terrible.
"It became so extreme and we were posting and posting saying 'please, we're still open, tell your friends'.
"We just felt invisible, to be honest with you.
"I really don't understand it, but those who knew we were there were very loyal."
The Whalans did everything they could to assure the community they were open, painting the shopfront pink and decorating if with topiary trees, an old-fashioned bicycle, a stack of cake boxes and eventually a neon 'open' sign.
It all helped and business picked up, but that boost in patronage had its own challenges, with staffing issues resulting in the couple working long and stressful days on their own.
"You never knew how busy it was going to get day to day, so we just had to do it," said Harmony, who's been decorating cakes for 36 years.
"We were serving sometimes 40 or 50 customers a day, and that's an eight-staff situation and we were doing it all ourselves."
Harmony looked after the back of house, while Thomas - who has low vision from a rare eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa - manned the shop.
"He can only see patches in his eyes and yet he ran that whole front of house like a boss," she said.
Harmony said the best part of having her own teashop was being able to work alongside him every day instead of going off to work in different directions.
"We're both going to miss that very much," she said.
Time for new adventures
The couple decided to sell Sugar Butter Eggs about 18 months ago, after Thomas' brother and his wife, with whom the Whalans share a close bond, relocated to Orange.
"When they moved away, a whole piece of our heart went with them," Harmony said.
The couple decided not to renew their lease and informed their customers they would be closing for good on March 28, 2024.
Knowing there was only a limited time left to enjoy Harmony's popular jam and scones, customers started filling the shop.
"We're glad we waited (for the end of the lease) as we would have been leaving on a low," Harmony said.
"There was so much more to learn and we had to grow as people.
"We learned quicker ways of doing everything. We were stretched so far, we thought we were going to break, but we didn't - the pressure eased off because the work got bigger but we got stronger."
Harmony said they were grateful for their "incredibly kind" landlords, who provided rental relief during COVID, their three "wonderful" part-time staff members and the "fabulous" customers they got to meet along the way.
"Helping celebrate babies coming into the world at their baby showers was such a highlight," Harmony said.
"Then we got to meet them and create their fist, second and third birthday cakes - so special!
"I created several gender reveal cakes and knowing I was one of the only ones who knew it was going to be a boy or girl was so exciting.
"We heard so many times from people who were veteran high-tea goers that we were right up there with beautiful, expensive places in England or Dubai.
"And almost everyone said our scones were the best they've ever had anywhere."
But wait, there's more ...
Sugar Butter Eggs closes on Thursday, March 28, at 4pm, before reopening for two days on Easter Monday for a market, where everything must go.
On April 1 and 2, from noon to five, bargain hunters can buy anything they see: teapots, teacups, tables and chairs, decor, commercial equipment, crafts, gifts, food ingredients - and loads of scones and jam.
And anyone who's ever tried Harmony's exceptional scones and jam at Sugar Butter Eggs will be happy to learn she's hoping to return to the region once a month to run a food stall at Bulli markets.
Harmony's jam was the shop's biggest seller, the recipe a closely guarded secret.
"Nobody could quite pick what was in it," she said.
"A big table of people would be arguing amongst themselves, trying to figure it out.
"One would say, 'I think it's blueberry', and the next would say, 'it's strawberry', and another 'it's raspberry'.
"And I said 'actually, you're all right'; but they often missed plum."
She's less protective of the scones, which she describes as just a "normal lemonade recipe" that her granddad taught her.
The only difference, she says, is people not following instructions properly.
"We've watched Youtube videos and I'm literally screaming at the TV going 'stop doing that!' because people treat it like a traditional scone and start kneading it.
"Every single particle of flour has now got liquid around it and you have just ruined them.
"It's got to be minimal stirring."
She also has plans to create a recipe book, which she will publish on her website.
As for Orange, Harmony's already been offered a part-time job at a bakery, has a permanent booth at new antique markets Dirty Jane's for all her arts and crafts (another passion) and has plans to set up a mobile high-tea service.
Meantime, Thomas plans to rest and refocus, live a creative life and look at teaching music alongside his wife.