Journal

Son of Frank, the Italian inspired all-day cafe eatery on Victoria St in Darlinghurst, is just shy of its one year anniversary. Any cafe owner will tell you that the first year of operation is exhilarating, but inevitably it’s a bit shaky and terrifying, too.

It wasn’t that long ago that a Sydney cafe breakfast was very, um, predictable. Would you like scrambled eggs with a side of bacon? Some fancy ricotta pancakes? The best of the brekky spots were those that did freshly squeezed juice and could pull off an Eggs Benny with a hollandaise sauce that didn’t split on you. And as for the provenance of the ingredients…

The larger-than-life phenomenon that Room 10 has become is certainly remarkable, but don’t go calling it a stroke of luck. I sat down with Andrew Hardjasudarma, owner of Room 10, to get the origin story straight. It’s a fascinating and educational tale.

Trends are created by innovators, popularised by early-adopters and destroyed by everybody else. Cafe trends come and go, so positioning your cafe to be on trend is a short term game that needs to be managed with long term strategy.

Your team is one of your biggest assets. Your livelihood is in their hands, and theirs in yours. You will be spending more of your life with them than you will with some of your loved ones, so choosing the right people to crew your ship is one of the fundamentals to a happy life in hospitality.

It seems like there's never been an easier time to open a café in Sydney. Commercial agents would have you believe that any space could be the next big espresso bar. With the shift of classic shop-front retailers to web-based merchants, there has never been more “ideal-for-café” spaces available.

There's a lot to be said for this basket-shaped brew method - it gives us brilliant clarity of flavour, and easy enough to do while you're still sleepy.

Our head roaster Daniel May took off on his first solo sourcing trip in March 2018.

Single lot coffees are our favourite way to experience diversity in coffee. By singling out a particular region, varietal or processing style we can better correlate these things to flavour.