“Mr Hunt, here is your mission … Should you decide to accept it. A great little not-for-profit called STREAT needs some help. They have no money (as usual) and they want to print and sell 3,000 copies of a cookbook. OK, it is going to be a fabulous cookbook – but they don’t actually have a [...]

This story goes back to the mid 1990s. I approached long time friend Grant Tulloch for a cartoon to promote my café, aptly called the Udder Cow, located in Comboyne, a small village surrounded by farms and Friesian cows. Tully, as he is also known, had long been sketching people in the Hunter Valley (near [...]

In this business we always enjoy meeting all the passionate people in our industry. One person we have forged a great relationship with recently is Sean Cunnington from the oven and grill company called Unox Australia. Sean has supplied some great new equipment for our product launches this year, such as the Café Biz evening [...]

MANFREDI CELEBRATES THE ESSENCE OF SPREZZATURA Australia’s godfather of Italian cuisine, Stefano Manfredi, and leading coffee roaster Wayne Archer have launched a new family of blends for Espresso di Manfredi. The chef and the coffee blender have reunited again to translate their ideas, following the launch of Classico in 2000. Now the duo have released [...]

280 Australians are diagnosed with Diabetes every day, with over 1,000,000 Australians already diagnosed to date. With the growth rate of this disease, it is estimated 3.3 million Australians will have type 2 Diabetes by 2031. In 2009, Natvia co-founder Samuel Tew began his journey to incite a worldwide health revolution to change the way [...]

The second edition of the Brazil Late Harvest Cup of Excellence (COE) competition is one of great importance, due to the fact that it is the first competition that revolves only around natural processed coffees. The 2013 competition was held in Varginha in the state of Minas Gerais, a small city that lives and breathes [...]

My Coffee My Barista It was another exciting opportunity to visit India just before Christmas, to fulfil my role as a coffee tour guide for the Equal My coffee My Barista Competition (MCMB). Equal had offered a trip to coffee origin for the winner of this popular competition. MCMB created great interest, and thousands of [...]

For quite some time now, Sydneysiders have been able to satisfy their sweet tooth with treats from Adriano’s Sydney stores – his two patisseries in Balmain and Manly, The Star at Pyrmont, and Café Rozelle. When deciding on the best location for his latest retail venture, pâtissier Adriano Zumbo decided it was time he reached [...]

Café Culture would like to showcase an outstanding group of café industry people this edition. We have been working closely with this group of coffee machine specialist, Disave for the last few years and would like to highlight this champion business to a national audience. Disave is all about its owners Paul, Dean and Emma [...]

It was at the Golden Bean 2011 when I was first approached about assisting with the first large scale installation for Proaster in Australia. Justin Metcalf was moving ahead with a new coffee roasting business venture with partners, as part of the company AESP. The roaster and plant setup was integral to the business getting [...]

‘dc’ are great supporters of Rainforest Alliance and are dedicated to helping give back to the industry in which they operate. Café Culture recently had the pleasure of attending yet another important industry event at the “dc” Laundry, Ducale Coffee’s newest coffee space in Kings Cross in Sydney. The night was part of creating awareness [...]

True stories are often the hardest to swallow. Before we talk about the great coffee and food at STREAT, let me tell you the story of young “Jimmy” – a graduate of STREAT’s hospitality training and life-skills program. Jimmy still feels overwhelmingly sad about the way his mother, father and step-father treated him from early childhood. [...]

Elixir Coffee is owned by brothers Jason and David Narciso. Before starting Elixir Coffee, they owned and operated a number of successful cafés in the Brisbane CBD. They have seen, heard and learned all about the coffee industry from the ages of 8 and 5.  Café Culture caught up with the boys to find out [...]

It was my third visit to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), but this time I was on a completely new mission – not entirely just a holiday. I was looking for that elusive sweet berry-like coffee that I had tasted in Hanoi a year earlier.  Stepping back a year, I was in Hanoi assisting with [...]

In this issue of Café Culture, we’ve decided to profile two well known coffee industry characters, Charles Stephens and Salvatore Savarino. Both men are from Espresso Company Australia (ECA). I first met Charles over twelve years ago at a dinner during Fine Foods in Sydney, as he was preparing to launch his Famous ECM Giotto into [...]

A true testament to hard work!  After ten years with an unclouded vision and a loyal team of supporters, Café Biz celebrated its tenth year with great success. We all walked away proud and enlightened, with 100% commitment to continuing this great café industry show. C afé Biz has seen the largest ever roll up, with [...]

The real Bite Size story was born in a café in Europe … Any cafÉ in Europe, actually. Greece, Italy, Spain … the place is interchangeable, because what it’s really about is the European culture of hospitality, where a customer is treated as a guest entering your home. You want them to feel welcome, to [...]

Clayton Pine first commenced training as an international buyer for Bushells Tea & Coffee in March 1974. The years and career moves that followed included brands such as Andronicus, Nestle, Belaroma, Amgoorie, King and Robur. In 1993, Clayton started a tea and coffee trading business that would, in 1996, form the foundations of Pine Tea [...]

While coffee roasters and café owners alike probably wish their coffee was appreciated by customers without sugar, the reality is that the majority of consumers add sweeteners to their coffee. However, few coffee roasters and baristas have tested the effect that sugar has on their coffee blend. Most who have are quite startled to find [...]

Portland, Oregon was this year’s host of the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual exposition and the USA Barista Championship. The Scale of the expo is huge; 10,000 people visited the convention centre. That week from all over the world, including dozens from the Australian Coffee industry. It seemed that you couldn’t go anywhere in Portland [...]

So many times in Australia over the last two decades we have seen our manufacturing businesses move offshore or get swallowed up by multinationals. Upon a recent invitation to visit Roband Australia, we discovered this family owned Australian company still made catering and hospitality equipment for the world market here in the northern beaches of [...]

The New Fair Trade – building relationships and generating a trust between the parties is the new Fair Trade; we call this “Relationship Coffees”. Fair Trade became a viable solution when coffee prices were in a low. Now that this is not the case, Fair Trade has become the norm when trading with high-end specialty coffee; [...]

From Chief Sweeping Officer to National Cupping Champion Queensland’s Fred Lullfitz has achieved one of the highest accolades in the coffee industry, winning the 2012 AustralAsian Specialty Coffee Association’s (AASCA) Cup Tasters Championship.The 22 year old Di Bella Coffee Qld Accounts Manager had managed to win himself a ticket straight into the finals, after winning [...]

The players behind this amazing business have hit all the right notes, creating a world beating café concept. I had the opportunity to visit this caffeinated project on a few occasions last year as the build took shape, meeting with its developerS Jack Hanna and Ramzey Choker. they took over the site two years ago,  [...]

Win a trip to India Thanks to Equal Are you Australia’s favourite barista? Sign up at www.mycoffeemybarista.com.ay One of the great things about our business is that we occasionally get the opportunity to visit a coffee growing region in some exotic location in the world. A big thank you to the Rubiaceae family for making [...]

Ewen Litchfield is one of the quiet achievers of the Australian café industry. Introduced into the café world when he worked in the family business, which was a hotel and club hospitality supplier. He then moved from the family business to Kimberly Clark, looking after Sydney and regional NSW distribution. Ewen is now best known [...]

Yes, my passport is running out of pages … with a few new countries being stamped in my little blue book. I recently had the pleasure of visiting Café Show in Seoul, Korea, in November, as a guest speaker of Coffee Magazine Korea and Proaster Coffee Roasters. I found the Korean café industry has amazing service [...]

Travelling the coffee globe, I get to hang out in some pretty interesting places and meet plenty of inspiring people. On a recent trip to Korea, I spent a few days exploring Seoul with Swedish Barista Champion, Costas Pliatsikas. Costas was visiting Café Show in Seoul, looking to purchase a 25 kg roaster for his [...]

This is the first article of an occasional series where Randal and Susan Dennings will be interviewing coffee professionals from around the world, to gather their insights on how to savour and enjoy great coffees. The first report comes from Norfolk Island, a mere 3 hours’ flight from Sydney in the Pacific (north of New [...]

It was a great honour to be present at the preview of the latest technology in espresso machines by Nuova Simonelli of Italy. I had been invited by the national Mocopan Coffee team to meet down in Sydney at their head office and watch the presentation by Nuova Simonelli’s Managing Director, Cosimo Libardo, and WBC Champion [...]

The hills are alive … but it’s not the sound of music that brings people to Austria in January – it’s the snow! And in early January, it was the snow that took me to Austria. Well, snow and coffee. Having exhausted ourselves on the slopes for 5 days, Habib (Maarbani) and I headed to [...]

During Café Show in Seoul, Korea, last November, I was fortunate enough to bump into well known coffee machine designer, Mark Barnett from Synesso. Mark was at the event helping his Korean distributors sell the unique potentials of the Synesso espresso machine to the large crowds of excited baristas. The Korean market, like the Australian [...]

In 2011, the team at Café Culture realised as we were growing so quickly, we needed good people around us at our events – people who understood how we operated and networked with the industry. We put the word out that we needed a ‘roadie’. We’ve had our faithful original roadie/supporter, Matthew O’Brien, since the [...]

Art of Coffee, a new iPhone and iPod Touch app aimed at anyone from the home barista to the industry professional, promises to outline the ‘how to’ of latte art. More than 30 designs are included, using both etching and free pouring techniques. The app is a comprehensive latte art trainer, with three platforms to [...]

Keeping it Real. Businesses nowadays are continually promoting what they want to be, often paying A-list celebrities to endorse a product they don’t believe in. The problem is, they often don’t live up to their promises and marketing messages. How many times have you seen engaging media campaigns that draw you in to a new [...]

In our ever more complicated and fragmented world, we increasingly use brands as compass points to help guide us through our busy lives. Think about it for a moment: you’ve got a well-deserved Saturday night off and a partner or friend suggests the following options – Hoyts, Hogs Breath, Penfolds Grange or The Wallabies. Now [...]

Sasha McGinley’s energy and passion for the coffee industry is contagious. Her excitement as she talks at a million miles an hour is a clear indicator that she loves what she does. Add to this an unusual case of a condition termed auto sensory efficiency (basically a condition which gives you heightened senses), and you [...]

DaVinci Gourmet is renowned for its support of the coffee industry and the talented barista … As part of this support, I have been travelling around doing quite a bit of judging for a variety of different sectors within this same industry. For a number of years now, I have been judging regional, state and [...]

Since January 2010, the Heron Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) detachment have provided support to Australian and International Stabilisation Force troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Recently they suffered significant morale problems, when their automatic coffee machine suffered a catastrophic failure. Flying Officer Brendan Smith decided to investigate the possibilities of acquiring new equipment as quickly as possible [...]

I recently jumped at a generous invitation to visit the top end city of Darwin, to report on its growing café scene. Darwin to me has always been known as a beer town, rather than a coffee destination. A lot has changed in the last few years. Sure, Darwin is still a great place to [...]

It is very rare that you can walk into a cafe, only to be served coffee by an Australian Barista Champion. It is also even rarer to walk up behind the door of a mobile coffee van and be served a brew by a former Australian Barista Champion and 2 x Queensland Barista Champion! Well, [...]

When asking about the espresso coffee scene in Amsterdam, authorities in Australia and the UK led me to believe that there is no good espresso in Amsterdam. Well, I am here to say, this is simply not so. My local research with a hotel receptionist and hairdresser was more positive. (You can always count on [...]

High street café competition in Sydney’s suburb of Surry Hills is arguably the most intense in Australia, with every major coffee brand being represented within a 400 metre radius. To compete in this market takes more than just a unique café offering – finally it comes down to producing a great coffee. Twenty year industry [...]

Café Culture lost their graphic designer Louise Turner to the travelling bug earlier this year. We know she misses us and the coffee … so much so, that she has reported in on her super Swedish coffee experience in Stockholm. After travelling for 8 weeks straight around Europe and seeing a touch of London, I [...]

STORY BY INSTAURATOR Managing Director – Coffee Logic International. Around the world, Australia and New Zealand are recognised as world leaders in the espresso realm – quite an achievement for two continents located roughly 12,630 kilometres from coffee’s original birth place in Ethiopia. However, this shouldn’t be all too surprising, as there are two things [...]

Welcome back. In Part I of this series, we discussed some of coffee’s chemical makeup and its role in developing coffee’s flavour. This time, we’ll briefly discuss a few key components and take a brief journey to explore their role in flavour. COFFEE ROASTING AND AROMA DEVELOPMENT. Although roasted coffee contains over 1,000 compounds, the [...]

STORY BY SIMON DIMATTINA I was lucky enough to be born into a coffee family. My dad was one of the early coffee pioneers in Australia. He purchased Mocopan in the 1950s. At that stage, coffee was not a big focus, but as he ran the company for close to 40 years, he developed its progression [...]

After ten years of involvement in the media business, running an industry trade magazine, a café and coffee trade events, it has been very exciting to see the industry and its players grow around us. As the industry grows and new competition enters the arena, we continue to evaluate our business philosophy and market position, [...]

Italy! Its very name conjures endless images, many of which reflect a culture obsessed with cuisine and coffee.  So when a close friend announced she was getting married by Northern Italy’s Lake Como, we just knew we had to do everything in our power to get there. Fast forward to September 5th and less than 5 hours [...]

Will Priestley is no newcomer to the coffee scene and the art of the barista. At 26 years of age, Will is widely known and respected throughout the industry. He has competed in just about every barista and latte art competition throughout Australia, becoming the Australian Latte Art Champion in 2010 and placing second in [...]