From plumbing to Greek pastries: adversity leads to sweet new career

A serious back injury ended his career as a plumber at age 20, and aside from being painful, it left Kosta Kostidis at a loss as to what to do for a living.

But the love and advice of relatives, including his 89-year-old grandfather, helped Kostidis find a sweet but very different career — in the field of Greek pastries.

A few weeks ago, two years after the injury, Kostidis opened a small shop in Sydney Road, Brunswick, whose prime product is a custard-filled pastry called bougatsa.

The street-side outlet is named Bougatsaki, meaning, in Greek, “little bougatsa”.

There’s a symmetry to the move, given Kostidis’s pappou (grandfather), Efthimios Oplopiadis, is a former baker.

In 2024, Kostidis was a fourth-year apprentice plumber when he “did his back” on a job in Melbourne’s south-east.

“I was out of work for a year, seeing physios and specialists,” he said.

He was bedridden for months, and he still receives treatment.

“It was not fun,” he said. “For a couple of months, it was really bad.”

When Kostidis felt better, he was keen to work, but there was a problem: “I had no idea what I wanted to do.”

While at home in Coburg, he would make bougatsas with his pappou, and had the idea of selling pastries.

Oplopiadis had worked as a baker in Melbourne factories for 30 years after migrating from Greece in 1968 and liked to make pastries at home.

His daughter, Kosta’s mother Martha Oplopiadis, says bougatsas have been a staple of family gatherings, as a dessert, for generations.

One year ago, Kostidis started a food van selling bougatsas, which took off. He has worked at parties, festivals and soccer games.

In February at the Antipodes Festival in Lonsdale Street, in Melbourne’s CBD, Kostidis, his mother, his sister, Danean, and cousin Lynda LaManna helped Kosta sell more than 3000 bougatsas in three days.

Opening the shop in Brunswick last month had been a huge but exciting step, Kostidis said.

He was inspired by specialist bougatsa outlets in Greece.

And his mentor – his cousin’s husband, LaManna Supermarket chief executive Patrick LaManna – encouraged him to focus on bougatsas.

“To be honest, I’m not too sure what I would have done without Patrick and my mum. Coming off a year when I wasn’t working and was just lost, they helped me find myself, pretty much,” Kostidis said.

His grandfather, to whom he has always been close, has also been a great support, being a sounding board, and suggesting ingredients, including savoury fillings.

It feels right, says Kostidis, to follow his pappou in the baking business.

Oplopiadis said he liked that Kostidis had opened a shop. “He started slowly and has been steadily progressing and coming up with new ideas,” Oplopiadis said.

“I’m happy to see the family helping him. It’s a lot of hard work.”

Oplopiadis, originally from the city of Serres, in northern Greece, reckons that bougatsas will draw customers.

“You see, when you eat bougatsa, it makes you happy, it’s not a heavy dessert. It has light, velvety custard, it’s just delicious,” he said.

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