Why are Aussie Cafes taking over America?

Why are Aussie café concepts springing up in American cities? It’s because the High Quality Cafe (HiQC) is a profitable business model that has longevity in the complex and ever-changing hospitality business of café service. Restaurants have a limited shelf life, especially high-end dining businesses. The High Quality Café concept developed in Australia with a well-designed food program combined with excellent specialty coffee service now has its own identity in the marketplace. We all hear about the huge success of Australian coffee businesses like Bluestone doing well on New York’s streets: this is because they are offering more choice than just a good espresso-based drink and a pastry, unlike most USA coffee shop structures. Success stories like Toby’s Estate have grown to have numerous cafes in America because these businesses offer a decent food choice combined with great fresh roasted coffee.

Don’t forget breakfast
These businesses are also offering simple but quality breakfast menus – we all know this is the best time of the day to extract the dollar from the punter and get the cash before they wake up.

And the rest
Other Australian café entrepreneurs like Mark Dundon of Melbourne’s Seven Seeds fame is doing well in America with his West Hollywood café in Los Angeles and his new styled version of his famous Sydney joint venture, The Paramount Project is gaining legs. Other iconic Australian based cafes like Little Collins in New York and the Collins Quarter in Savana, Georgia are all good examples of Aussie café culture changing the game.

Time for change
Starbucks set the American standard 20 years ago for how the coffee shop or espresso bar model looks and operates. The model was solid and has worked well in busy CBD locations, but as people see the need for change, trends shift in café service levels. Starbucks have recognised this and are changing their look with the new Starbucks Reserve which has employed specialty coffee concepts, even borrowing our famous Southern Hemisphere beverage of the humble but popular flat white.
I struggle to see how the specialty cafés in the USA are still making a living just selling coffee and light snacks out of a deli cabinet. Of course, the numbers of people are larger and the volumes are bigger but the per head spend is small compared to the Australian café solution. This will be the main catalyst for the American café structure’s push to be more profitable.

American/Aussie understanding
One thing Australians need to understand is American coffee service is very different: 60% of coffees served in American cafes are brewed coffee while Australia has a culture of 98% espresso based drinks and they are mostly milk based. And while I know a nation can’t be converted overnight just because we think we do it better, I love the concept of brewed coffee especially when it’s fresh and is a good single estate bean.

Many of the Aussie cafes in the USA have tossed the old ‘avocado smash’ on the breakfast menu, thus claiming it to be an Aussie iconic café standard dish. I don’t mind the odd avocado on toast but it’s not really our café signature dish.  The big innovation in the Australian café menu is putting high quality fresh products using high skilled cooking practices developed by restaurant chefs on the menu board. This does not mean expensive food – it just means good, clean food that is delivered in a quality café setting with amazing coffee service. And the nice thing about the new modern café food concept is there is no booking, you rock up at lunchtime and get a table because it’s first in best dressed.

On the ground
I spent six months last year living in Portland and have helped Matt Milletto and his team at Water Avenue Coffee develop an Australian style café model that the American market will welcome. Water Avenue already had a good strong coffee following but food sales were low even though Matt’s offering was quality deli cabinet items. They have now introduced a well-travelled, high-end restaurant chef Ryan Kennedy into the scenario. Ryan’s menu is still very simple and light and has incorporated trendy food styles like paleo, organic, low fat and many farm gate products along with the coffee philosophy that Water Avenue Coffee have been practising in beverage production.

Water Avenue’s chef Kennedy learned to respect the food he consumed at an early age.  He grew up on a ten-acre ranch in Colorado where his family raised rabbits and grew most of their own vegetables.  Ryan qualified as chef at the Western Culinary Institute in Portland, which is where his life-long passion for cooking locally-sourced ingredients was born. Since that time, Kennedy has worked as the Butcher at Les Nomades in Chicago and at the Thomas Keller-owned Bouchon in Yountville, CA, where he learned fundamental culinary techniques and respect for all aspects of the restaurant industry. In between these two stints, he worked one-on-one with farmers and ranchers sourcing sustainable livestock in the Pacific Northwest. After moving to Houston to raise his young family, Kennedy took a position in the coffee industry, working as a cafe manager for Blacksmith. The coffee community in Texas offered a launching pad for Ryan to build a recipe database of simple foods that paired well with coffee. He has now returned to Portland and partnered with the Water Avenue team and owner Matt Milletto to create a locally-sourced, fresh, simple and Australian inspired menu.

Ryan and his team at Water Avenue have the challenge in the city of Portland to compete in the same space with some pretty amazing coffee businesses including Stumptown, Coava, Barista, and Heart Coffee. These coffee businesses do great coffee but have limited food offerings so Water Avenue is looking at Australia’s HiQC model for some inspiration to fill this void. Matt and Bruce Milletto travelled down to Australia as guest speakers at the Golden Bean Roasting Competition a few years back and had a look at the café scene in Sydney and Melbourne. They have stuck to a planned attack in affecting change at Water Avenue that included getting a chef on board who understands their vision.
Ryan is using some very cool cooking techniques in his menu presentation at Water Avenue, firstly because he was tight for space in the kitchen area so he incorporated cooking tools like a sous vide bath, a bank of induction hotplates, a small Combi oven and some contact grills. The kitchen looks more like a lab but Ryan with his hi tech tools can put some pretty incredible dishes out in quick time. I was lucky enough to be there during the few weeks of the menu changes at Water Avenue and was blown away by the simple but tasty soft scrambled egg breakfast bun. More complete dishes include the baked eggs with rapini, kale, chermoula, goat cheese and routons.

I can see the HiQC model sticking around for a long time and it’s certain to have significant impacts on the North American market in the near future, in the same way seen in the geographically closer Asian markets that have had direct Australian fusion. I am very proud of the Australians that have taken on the adventure and changed emerging markets through their passion and innovation of the café lifestyle they know and believe in. It’s a fun business to be in when everything is running smoothly but it can also be disastrous if you get the plan wrong just slightly. I believe we have about 500 HiQC cafes in Australia and the number is growing as regional areas embrace the concept and further the momentum.

Story by Sean Edwards