Author Archives: Nick

And the winner is… Ms Hernandez!

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Toby’s Estate was 2007s winner of the ‘how long is my $1 coffee queue competition’ but they had their ass kicked this year by Cafe Hernandez, enhorabuena! Why do people wait 20 mins for a coffee? Addiction? Not really it was everywhere… Good coffee? Yeah and coolness.

Not big brand hype. Word of mouth & coolness have worked for the Hernandez family and their 24 hour coffee shop… Gentrification of the Potts Point location has helped.

Build a brand in the cafe industry, on cool, quality & word of mouth. Certainly not on glamorous logos, I struggled to find an example at the stall to take a photo & snapped this from the top of a menu card.

Cafe Hernandez

The coffee scene is like clubbing. Make yourself cool by having a long queue of agitated customers full of buzz, someone out of the scene won’t know what it’s about and is likely to queue up. And like the Hernandez queue, when you get to the front you must be rewarded.

2008 Aroma Festival. Where did all the brands go?

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The buzz you’d expect at a caffine party, big buzz, not so much hype though… Why would people get out there & spread their gear without giving their brand any… ‘jujjjjj’?

The Rocks was decked out with stalls all shaded with the same tacky plastic non-descript white blankness. From a distance they looked the same. Punters have to walk right up to a tent to work out what it was for. Isn’t this the big event for the year, the big chance to big-up your crew’s brew?

2008 aroma festival tents

Is it an all pull marketing industry? Craft a delicious product then hang out and wait til its demanded? We know that’s not true although brands that play like that were noticeably absent (Starbucks and McCafe come to mind) .

Mission: dig up some kind of visual representation of the brands hidden under those white plastic generic display tents, take a snap and stick on flickr.

A coffee in Sydney is $2.50

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So a couple of people commented that $3.00 is a bit much for a coffee in the city although i’m sticking by that call for Annandale. Quick scout around cafe’s at Ultimo and agree that $2.50 is closer to the mark.

Cafe Columbia: $2.20
Corner Cafe: $2.50
Cafe Fusion: $2.20
Cafe Q: $2.80
Bourke St Bakery: $3.00

Cafe Fusion do four different sizes of coffee add an extra shot as you go up – all the way to a ‘Quad’, four shots in an extra large.

The 8 Best Pastels in Rio de Janeiro

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This is a snippet (my translation) from an article on the Brazilian news site OGlobo. The only pastel I’ve tried from the list is the Pastel de carne from BB Lanches in Leblon, and it is not from this world.

1- Pastel de feijão (beans) from ‘Mineiro’, in Santa Teresa

2 – Pastel de camarão (prawns) with catupiry (cream cheese) from ‘Bar da Portuguesa’, in Ramos

3 – Pastel de camarão (prawns) from ‘Bira’, in Guaratiba (o Bira não é pé-sujo, nem é barato, mas o pastel é irresistível) Bira is not a stand up style bar and nor is it cheap but the pastel is irresistible.

4 – Pastel de presunto cru (raw ham) with gorgonzola from ‘Bar do Adão’, in Grajaú or in Botafogo

5 – Pastel de carne com ovo do BB Lanches, no Leblon (described in the post below)

Pastel de Carne

6 – Pastel de camarão (prawn) from ‘Bar do Abel’, in Niterói

7 – Pastel de queijo (cheese) from Bigode, at the street market on ‘General Glicério’, in Laranjeiras (only on Saturdays)

Back from food on the beach in Brazil

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I’ve just arrived back from Brazil… The food is addictive. A pastel de Carne from BB Lanches in Leblon, Rio is the greatest snack on earth (is it?). Hot oven baked pastry filled with perfectly cooked saucy mince beef, nestled into the meaty warmth is a small quail egg. Washing it down with an acai is the way to round off a day on the beach around posto 12 Ipanema/ Leblon. Though, the beach won’t leave punters hungry. A constant stream of prawn sellers, haloumi cheese grillers, biscoito globo pimpers, and empanada dealers bring it all to your chair on the sand.

A day at the beach in Salvador has a different vibe and was considerably cheaper than Rio. Hanging out under our barraca drinking ice cold beer eating acaraje and small fried fish for the whole day set us back 15 Reais each. Approx $10 AUD/ USD.

Brazil is famous for its coffee beans, but they don’t seem to have embraced the espresso machine as much as one would expect. Home made coffee or ‘cafezinho‘ (little coffee) is filtered through a stocking into a thermos. Its served in small quantities, usually black and always super sweet. 1 cafezinho in Rio is about 50 centavos, or .35 USD/ AUD.

Single Origin Four Cheese Toastie

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I used to work uptown, now I’m downtown. On the way out of a meeting my colleagues suggested we detour for Single Origin. Glorious words. People tuned in to coffee frequency in Sydney often mention this place oh and they’ve got a sweet website.

The best uptown coffee is at Mecca. The best downtown coffee is at Single Origin.

Mecca’s food is not remarkable, their coffee is kick arse.

Single Origin’s coffee is a deliciously dark & earthy bubbling crema mud pit. Their food is amazing.

A snapshot of their menu please:

single_origin_menu.jpg

Yes that does say “four cheese toasty”. Is that original?? It’s bloody awesome. Oh, what up with the toasted nutella, roast almonds & banana sandwich? Not something I’d normally sort myself out with but they haven’t put a foot wrong yet so…

What do you know about cafes and restaurants in Australia?

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The ABS published a report in 2003/2004, titled: 8655.0 – Cafes and Restaurants, Australia, 2003-04

Oldish news but the latest I’ve found so far. From the report:

At the end of June 2004 there were a total of 15,083 businesses operating in cafe and restaurant services in Australia.

“At the end of June 2004, 51.8% (7,820) of businesses in cafe and restaurant services had access to the Internet, while 20.7% (3,126) had a web presence.”

  • During 2003-04, income generated by businesses in cafe and restaurant services was $10,129.6m, which represented an average of $671,600 per business. Total expenses for this period: $9,733.2m.
  • During 2003-04, the operating profit before tax for these businesses was $404.4m, resulting in an operating profit margin of 4%.

Yah right! How many of these businesses declare all income?!?! [sic]

  • Three quarters of cafe’s and restaurants were based in metropolitan areas.
  • More than a third of all cafe and restaurant services businesses were licensed.
  • Unlicensed cafe and restaurant services businesses accounted for 21% of the total.
  • Most of the rest were BYO
  • Catering businesses accounted for the other 11.9% of all businesses.
  • During 2003-04 businesses predominantly involved in the provision of cafe and restaurant services generated a total of $10,129.6m in income. Cafe and restaurant businesses accounted for 69.9% ($7,085.1m) of this income and catering businesses 30.1% ($3,044.6m).

That is interesting that Catering businesses are pulling 30 % of the income but accounting for only 11% of the businesses, does this make Catering more lucrative?

The break down of turnover for cafes and restaurants is shown below:

Cafe Income Proportions (Courtesy of Australian Bureau of Statistics)

At the end of June 2004, there were 188,102 persons working in cafe and restaurant services. Cafe and restaurant businesses accounted for 76.1% (143,171 persons) of total employment and catering businesses 23.9% (44,932 persons).

 

Caterers pull a third of the income from a quarter of the employees

Cafe Size Employees (Courtesy of Australian Bureau of Statistics)
I thought Melbourne had more cafes/ restaurants per capita than Sydney?? At least according to the graph below, Victoria seems to have less than NSW. Sydney NSW have 10% more people with 15% more cafe/restaurants…

Cafes By State Proportions (Courtesy of Australian Bureau of Statistics)

Cafes By State Proportions (Courtesy of Australian Bureau of Statistics)

Coffee Run

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This guy arrived with a printed coffee order at the cafe this morning. Could have been from a spreadsheet, it had around 10 coffees on it. He flashed it, “Can i just leave this with you?” The order was transferred to lids and queued up…

Someone spent some time at a computer to get that order together, they could have just emailed it. The Cafe then printed it on to cup lids, 10 mins later the guy rocks up to collect his tray of coffees for colleagues. Cafe invoices him or even better his company through online payment. Relationship sorted!