Zondar! Nerds in Food Land

Last post was about the café as a business meeting place. I came across a Sydney Coffee Club event, basically a place for like minded entrepreneurs to hook up. Have to watch the site for the next Sydney meeting. BarCamp do a similar thing.

With the amount of cafés popping up in ground floors of sky scrapers it’s an essential for businesses, apparently they’re emerging are on middle floors of CBD skyscrapers. Wallaby (rugby’s big round here) George Gregan seems to be honing in on the corporate market. Four of the ten GG espresso cafés are on ’staff only facilities’. A reliable sources tells me staff can take clients there for a coffee, swipe it on to their security pass and salary sacrifice it, itemised on their pay cheque; pre-tax. I wonder if George gives them free wireless…?

Sitting at the benches next to the Met Café staring into the glassed-in section, I noticed there were a few stereotypical patrons inside. Clearly conducting a business meeting, notes scribbled on to paper, wouldn’t they prefer to make that electronic in an email/ wiki/ txt file? It seems not.

Made me think about the city café as a meeting space.

What sort of infrastructure would a café have to offer to bring in more business-meetings? On the flipside how can a couple of coffees for 1 hour spent at a table be made worthwhile for the proprietor?

Apparently the guys at Delicious Monster got their startup started up while working from a coffee shop. Some people call this going bedouin but it seems to be more popular in the States than in Oz.

Is there an unmet opportunity for cafés in Sydney, or are there already a bunch of cafés with internet and workspaces already on offer? Considering the café addictions of most IT people and the benefits of holding a meeting in neutral territory fuelled with a decent stimulant it may be a prosperous venture…

It’s nice to be able to offer clients a decent coffee. The morning tea offers itself as a neutral talking point so it’s best to make it good. Many clients are more particular about their coffee, one wanted to wait and see how the cappucino faired before he decided whether it needed a sugaring, rationale: a good coffee doesnt need a sugar. A client also shared; “If im having a tough morning i’ll give my barista a bit of a wink and he’ll click a few extra grams in…” I like that my barista its like, my stylist, my personal trainer, or [heh] my guru!

So apparently there are two things to learn for every topic, once you have these down pat you can talk knowledgably on the subject. So what are the two things about coffee? Beans? a clean machine, the water pressure or temperature, a barista who looks like a jazz musician is surely one of them!!

A little while back I found this amazing close-up of a drop of milk, kind of bouncing into a coffee, check it out, stunning detail. Not quite as stunning but rather cute are these coffee milk designs the second one reminds me of The Scream, not sure if thats what the designer/ barista had in mind…

Who could be trusted to deliver one of Sydneys finest long blacks? None other than Brendan from the Met Café… A comfortable stroll from a sunny patch of grass in Wynyard park, i’ve never had a bad long black from Brendan. If i’d taken the colour from the photo and perched a berret on his head he’d pass for a horn blower down at the Basement… At most good café’s the barista is the the kingpin, the Met Café is no exception, he’s is instrumental in delivering a high grade fix and wraps it in quality banter everytime.

Ventured further uptown to the AMP tower in Bridge st, suits, automatic revolving door, patterned marble floors ‘A grade CBD office space’. Placed the order with one of the bounty of staff (was it 6 waiters???) took the number, my brother correctly commented that with ‘Dave Brubeck’ as the barista; we were in for a good coffee.

Soaking up long comfortable lounges, six or seven waiters pacing, $3 long blacks, convinced us the place does a very healthy catering trade with the big bananas that gaze at harbour views from their offices atop.

OK, 1st entry.

Almost every lunch my brother and i hook up for a 2pm coffee in Sydney CBD. We try to sample new places but always seem to end up at a couple of faves. Caffine kicks in and we chat about the cafés, how they’re run, how good their coffee is and whatever 2 minute convo the barista has managed to entertain us with. To bring some of that here, maybe snap a pic, share thoughts on who’s got the better long blacks, yeah, see if that works out…