Our Story
About Cherry Bomb
253 Lobethal Road
A building with memory
Long before the first cup of coffee was poured at Cherry Bomb, this 1870s bluestone cottage on Lobethal Road had already lived several lives. From the 1890s through to 1941, Herbert and Emily Lovibond ran their general store, bakery, and post office from this very building — a place locals knew simply as Mrs Lovibond’s Emporium. The Lovibonds fed the community, kept the mail, and baked bread in the enormous wood-fired scotch oven they had built into the stone walls.
The decades that followed brought Ron and Colleen Clothier, who transformed the space into their Cache of Curiosantique shop. Then, for a time, it stood quietly as a residence — while the scotch oven waited.
In 2019, founder Tanya Schroeder purchased the property with a quiet, long-held vision: to bring it back to life as a place where people gather, eat well, and linger over something warm. Cherry Bomb Café opened in 2023 — and the oven fired up again for the first time in decades.
Founder
Tanya Schroeder
Tanya already had deep roots on Lobethal Road before Cherry Bomb existed. She ran the beloved Ashton Post Office Café a short walk away — a warmly homey space filled with foliage and regulars — quietly building a community without ever letting on what she had planned for the old stone cottage next door.
She is known for a style defined by homeliness, a love of vintage, and a commitment to produce that has a story behind it. She learned to use the scotch oven herself, saying it “takes two weeks to heat up — and once it’s on, you don’t turn it off.” Her sourdough philosophy traces a lineage back to Victorian baker John Reid of Redbeard Bakery in Trentham, a man she calls “the godfather of sourdough.”
Her vision for Cherry Bomb was always to pay homage to the building’s past and to the local produce of the area — chiefly, the cherries. Everything here connects to this place.
The heart of the kitchen
The scotch oven
Built into the stone walls of the original Lovibond bakery, the scotch oven at Cherry Bomb measures 3.5 by 4.5 metres — an enormous wood-fired vault that has been baking bread in the Adelaide Hills for over 150 years. It is one of only a handful still in active use across Australia, with comparable examples found at the Apex Bakery in Tanunda and at Farina in the outback.
Every sourdough loaf, pie, pastie, sausage roll, cake, and baked good that comes out of Cherry Bomb passes through this oven. It runs continuously — you cannot simply switch it on for a Tuesday — and that rhythm shapes the entire cafe.
The menu was crafted by Tony Read, who brought a Melbourne sensibility from the Yarraville café scene to work alongside the rhythms of the oven and the abundance of Adelaide Hills produce.
The signature ingredient
Cherries from down the road
Cherries are not just the name — they are the thread that runs through everything we make. Our fruit comes directly from Ceravolo Orchards, just down the road in the Adelaide Hills, and it finds its way into our kitchen in as many forms as we can imagine: cherry pie (our hero), cherry jam, cherry vinegar, cherry ice cream, cherry and ricotta cake, cherry brownies.
The connection is hyperlocal and intentional. The Adelaide Hills has some of the best stone fruit country in Australia, and we believe you should be able to taste where you are.
Our coffee is equally local: we pour the Kindred Coffee Blend, roasted just down the road, by people who care as much about their craft as we care about ours.