Jimmy Griffin bears a 125-year tradition with ease and good humour. The Galway baker is head of a family business which dates back four generations. To date, it has held firm in the face of stiff competition from multiples.

"We have a craft, we have diversified, and I think our customers know that." Those same customers will elbow each other out of the way to get to the counter on a busy Saturday morning, when queues can sometimes stretch right out the door into Galway's Shop Street.

It's not just the gingerbread men and the Bailey's cheesecakes that they fight for, but the cottage loaves and grinders that can't be bought anywhere else. "Grinder" is the Galway name for a turnover or heavy batch loaf with its inimitable thick and chewy crust.

The bakery owes its origins to Jimmy's great grandfather, John Griffin, and it now employs 22 people. Some of the current staff have been there for over 30 years, and would remember Jimmy's grandfather, Matthew.

Anthony and Eithne, Jimmy's parents, continued to run the business until the late 1980s, when their son returned from abroad.

Jimmy, 36, says there was never any pressure, but he decided himself to take the three-year diploma in the National Bakery School at Kevin Street College of Technology in Dublin. He studied in Germany and Switzerland and worked in the USA before returning to Galway.

He is now married, and he and his wife Jean have two children - Dillon, who is almost five years old, and Janice, who will be four years old in February.

Bakers put in a long day, and no more so than on the Griffin premises. Jimmy will spend two to three hours in work each night preparing for the next morning, which starts at the crack of dawn and extends 12 to 13 hours.

However, last year the bakery introduced a five-day week and began closing on Mondays - which gives everyone a weekend off and allows the proprietor to go flying, as he has a private pilot's licence.

"It is a very labour intensive business, and so it wasn't making economic sense to open six days," says Jimmy. " I found it hard to get bakers during holiday periods, and it was when I was attending the European Bakery Championships in Switzerland that some of my colleagues suggested the change."

He has picked up many business ideas when competing abroad, as he and his staff do regularly.

He was captain of the Irish team which won the bronze medal in the European Bakery Championships in 1997, and one of his bakers, Richard McCabe, became World Pastry Champion two years ago.

He also took the European championships twice over.

McCabe has now gone to the US where he is working with the Sheraton group.

Griffin has a multinational staff. "Ten years ago, 99 per cent were Irish but now I have six to seven nationalities here. I have two French bakers, including one French master baker who is making preservative-free products."

The ethnic mix has many benefits. It allows him to expand into new products.

"We're doing a lot of dietary breads, and hope to have five to six different organic breads by Christmas," he says. One of the products, "spelt" bread, is made from a very digestible grain that dates back 7,000 years.

The shop recently introduced a ticketing system for its customers to try and bring some order to the Saturday morning "mill". The reaction, Griffin says, has been "very positive".

It means that more senior citizens can relax on the shop's bench while they wait to be served.

The face of Galway city centre is fast changing. Recently, Thomas McDonogh and Sons, the hardware/household store on Merchant's Road, announced that it was relocating to the outskirts, and it is expected that a multiple may move into the prime site. Griffin's Bakery is the same age as McDonogh's, but the proprietor has no plans to move.

Yet Jimmy Griffin is also realistic. "This profession takes a lot of commitment, the hours are long, and there's a generation of Irish people out there that don't want to put in that sort of time on the job." So does he hope to see it carry on to a fifth generation ? "I won't put any pressure on my children," he says. "It has to be a love and a want."