FOCUS: COFFEE AND CAFES

In short order

Once an afterthought, quality cafés in clubs are now part of a grander plan to have patrons linger longer at all times of the day. Grant Jones reports.

CLUBS SEE STANDALONE café spaces and dedicated coffee offerings as great revenueraisers throughout different periods of the day.

The importance of a quality café offering in a club includes not only the coffees being ordered and how patrons are having it, but what they are having with it, at what times, and in what environment it is delivered.

So who is doing coffee well in the club space? Prior to undertaking a major $7 million renovation, Brothers Leagues Cairns sought inspiration from members about what they wanted in their venue. That research highlighted the need to attract a slightly younger, female audience who wanted a contemporary daytime café. And so the upscale Fratelli’s café was born.

At the heart of the recent downstairs refurb, Fratelli’s features floor-to-ceiling windows, sheltered by a Mediterranean-inspired blue-andwhite awning. Taking inspiration from the theme, the new café features an all-day menu with Mediterranean-inspired grazing options along with pizzas, snacks, treats and, of course, coffee. Also in Queensland, outside of Bundaberg, part of Sandhills Sports Club’s redevelopment and new clubhouse included a transformed open-plan space which includes an impressive new café. The light-filled area sets the scene for a whole new look and feel of the club.

“At Sandhills Sports Club, like so many other clubs and cafés, we have quality coffee, cakes and delicious delights, but these days that alone isn’t enough to stand out in a competitive market,” says club general manager Jodie Harris. “Nowadays, you certainly cannot be successful without great products, but it is only one part of what you need to provide for the discerning customer.

“Our café area was deliberately designed as the heart of our club – the central point, allowing patrons to immerse themselves into the full scope of club offerings. The café location takes full advantage of the welcoming Queensland sunshine with the amazing natural light providing a warm and friendly atmosphere, when combined with our comfortable seating, welcoming staff, and friendly members, we believe our cafe environment is well worth a visit.”

Brothers Leagues Cairns sought inspiration from its membership for Fratelli’s.

Seven Hills RSL Club, in Sydney’s west, recently unveiled its own new look, including a new café at Fitzroy Lane. Apart from tea, cake and coffee, Fitzroy Lane also has a dessert bar that features gelato. The new offering sits in a lightfilled open-plan space lifted by soaring ceilings, booth seating and greenery. While Fitzroy Lane is now up and running, the club’s Iron Bark Café is also undergoing some renovations to expand the current kitchen area. Once done it will offer light lunch meal options.

At Club Helensvale’s new refit on the Gold Coast Hinterland (see page 28), the Café Discovery menu starts with a cappuccino and finishes with a Vienna, with options of almond, soy and lactose-free milk, plus vanilla, hazelnut or caramel flavour shot. And don’t forget the Dirty Chai Latte, just as they like it on the Goldie.

Providing a quality coffee product is an essential part of the overall offering, which helps to build business outside of the traditional lunch and dinner times.

- Paul Hope, Wallarah Bay Recreation Club

So important are clubs in the coffee space that Nestlé Professional recently unveiled a new look for one of its Buondi brands – Complex Soul – at Wallarah Bay Recreation Club on the NSW Central Coast.

“At Wallarah Bay Recreation Club, our catering business is a huge part of our competitive appeal,” venue manager Paul Hope says. “We are fortunate that our location, right on scenic Tuggerah Lake, provides an excellent backdrop for dining.

“Providing a quality coffee product is an essential part of the overall offering, which helps to build business outside of the traditional lunch and dinner times. We have many patrons who take advantage of our great range of coffee and cakes throughout the whole day.”

Up to date for more than a century

With more than 100 years of coffee experience, Melitta has moved with the times and now offers expertise not just in coffee and coffee preparation but providing digital solutions, flexible financing and comprehensive support tailored to the unique needs of its club clients.

“We understand the diverse demands of largescale and small-scale catering, ranging from the ability to prepare large volumes of coffee in a short time to catering to a wide array of tastes,” says Justin Rejske, Managing Director of Melitta Professional Australia. “In addition, we offer a wide assortment of options for clubs, restaurants and hotels, whether full-service or self-service, fast or classy, cool or casual.

Melitta offers expertise in coffee along with digital solutions, financing and support.

Beyond its product offerings, from beans to high-performance coffee machines, Melitta is also committed to assisting businesses in digitalisation.

“Our digital solutions meet the highest standards, are constantly improving and can be integrated with third-party systems for added flexibility. With Melitta as your partner, you can stay ahead of the curve, ensuring your business is future-ready,” Rejske says.

The coffee for your club

Complimentary coffees and Complex Soul-infused chocolates by Nestlé Professional’s Corporate Development Chef, Elke Travers, were recently enjoyed by more than 300 patrons at Wallarah Bay Recreation Club on the NSW Central Coast as part of Nestle Professional’s Buondi rebrand launch, which also includes other blends Dark Spark and Steady State. Live music, face painting and games for the kids added to the fun of the ‘Buondi Good Day Out Festival’.

“The Buondi coffee blends are versatile and produce great tasting coffees, with or without milk,” says Nestlé Professional master barista Jo Yuen.

In general, clubs keep it simple with only one coffee blend, so they need a great all-rounder, with Wallarah choosing Complex Soul.

“Buondi’s Complex Soul is the perfect blend for the environment at the Wallarah Bay Recreation Club,” says Yuen. “It suits the clientele who like a more subtle cup and is ideal for that moment when you hit pause with a coffee after enjoying a meal with friends and family.”

Buondi relaunched its Complex Soul blend at Wallahara Bay Recreation Club.

The refreshed Buondi, with the ‘Crafted for Now’ tagline, boasts a more contemporary, yet approachable brand look, to better reflect Australia’s increasingly sophisticated coffee culture and aims to elevate the coffee experience within club venues, says Nestlé Professional Oceania general manager Kristina Czepl.

“Buondi is founded on the belief that people deserve experiences and moments that are enriched by good coffee. Whether it’s a smooth cup of coffee after dinner at the pub, or a cuppa at the local club while catching up with friends, Buondi is crafted for now.

“Our ambition was to create a more urban and stylish aesthetic, which enhances our coffee offering and encourages customers to stay longer at venues, providing additional revenue opportunities for pubs and clubs.”

Yuen and a team of dedicated state champions can also facilitate tastings and offer training.

Fitzroy Lane cafe at Seven Hills RSL.

“Our trainers are helping bridge the gap and providing a competitive advantage for hospitality companies,” adds Yuen. “By teaching staff how to create a quality brew, we’re helping our customers to ensure consistent quality of service, which in turn leads to greater customer retention and increased profitability.”

Pressing the right buttons

In today’s evolving café and restaurant sector, the use of automation in cafés is being embraced by clubs not only wanting to address general staff shortages and the lack of barista experience, but also to meet the high standards Australian coffee drinking club members now expect.

Our café area was deliberately designed as the heart of our club: the central point, allowing patrons to immerse themselves into the full scope of club offerings.

- Jodie Harris, Sandhills Sports Club

Franke Coffee Systems’ offers two categories in professional coffee machines – the fully-automated A line modular coffee machines that can be individually configured to produce high-quality beverages and the recently-launched BeyondTraditional product category.

BeyondTraditional’s first product line, Mytico, goes beyond industry standards to combine smart Italian coffee machine design with Swiss quality machinery on the inside. So, looking good on the outside for the customer experience with technology on the inside that can deliver for staff.

“(Mytico) enhances the experience for the member and raises the ambience of today’s multi-tiered club sector,” says Franke Business Development Director, Oceania, David Downing.

The Mytico integrated technology is designed to help club F&B managers address operational challenges by reducing training, ensuring consistent coffee preparation, making it easier for new employees to operate and improving operational efficiency.

Club Helensvale

“The Mytico with two coffee modules to prepare drinks in parallel, gives clubs increased output at peak periods without pressure on F&B managers to increase staff coverage during these high traffic periods,” Downing adds.

“Adding tap-and-go payment features or clubintegrated reward payments, offers significant advantages for members to use those accumulated rewards,” Downing adds.

“Our Franke A line automatic portfolio fills multiple functions and positions within the club sector, these include gaming, café, restaurant, events/conferences, sports locations, and entertainment venues, combining staff and selfservice capabilities.”

Coffee bean counting is a numbers game

CAFÉS ALL AROUND Australia recorded 11 per cent annual revenue growth to March with plant-based milks also on the rise, according to the latest available figures.

All states enjoyed a café revenue jump with South Australian coffee shop venues leading the way with a 15% increase, followed by Queensland at 13%, Western Australia at 12%, Victoria at 11% and NSW at 10%, says point-of-sale and e-commerce software provider Lightspeed.

Franke Mytico.

National year-on-year revenue figures for March 2023, compared to the same period in 2022, show outstanding growth across the board with cafés up by a staggering 17%.

In 2022, domestic coffee consumption in Australia exceeded 2.1 million 60kg bags – placing Australians in the top 30 coffee drinkers in the world. According to the 2022 FiftyFive5 Coffee Landscape Study, a bespoke report commissioned by Nestlé, 65 per cent of Australians drink coffee weekly.

The love of coffee is strong in Australia, with one in four people indicating they need at least one coffee a day, with Aussie coffee drinkers consuming 15.4 cups a week on average.

And Aussies also don’t mind paying for a good cup of coffee either, with more than four in five Australians (84%) spending money on coffee out of home each week.

Carina Leagues Club.

And when it comes to dairy milk alternatives, more than 42% of Australians purchase plant-based milk for home, say NielsenIQ Homescan figures, which is reflected in café orders.

The high demand for alternative milk options is reflected in the increased demand across the café sector, and with this comes significant opportunity for expansion with the right equipment, says Franke business development director, Oceania, David Downing.

“Flavoured drinks utilising syrup, hot chocolate or chai are also possible. The Mytico has many advantages, however, combining Mytico with Franke’s Speciality Beverage Station (SB1200) expands beverage offering automatically, for example 2-4 milk types, cold brew, hot chocolate, chai, iced coffee and syrups, all automatically dispensed at touch of a button, complementing Mytico and A lines features for the club industry,” he says.

Pastry on the rise

IT’S A NO-BRAINER to match quality coffee with a range of fresh cakes and pastries, but not every club has a back-of-house pastry chef to roll out acres of dough.

Ready-to-use ranges such as pastry rolls and shells, croissants, and Danish pastries are an easy and ideal value-add that will help with your bottom line. Literally more dough for your club.

And if you want to put your own stamp on things, then frozen puff pastry sheets for your chef’s housemade pies, sausage rolls and sweet treats could also fit the bill.

While pastry supplier Peerless Foods is already well-known in the hospitality industry with its existing brands EOI and La Parisienne, expect its presence to be on the rise in your club café after its recent acquisition of the award-winning Dandenong-based TanGold.

Peerless has an ongoing committment to being a premium supplier.

TanGold is known for its high-quality pastry products directed at the foodservice and bakery markets, something Peerless Foods says it is delighted to add to its range.

“We are excited by the opportunities that this acquisition presents, and it is reflective of Peerless’ ongoing commitment to being the premium supplier to the baking and foodservice industries,” says Peerless Foods’ Chief Commercial Officer, Clyde Pereira.

Peerless Foods is now in the middle of revising its range across all new and existing brands which includes trialling a new range of Danishes and developing improved fillings for the sweet pastry shells. Both baked and unbaked, the shells are vegan and are available in several sizes that are ideal for lemon, jam, custard, chocolate or caramel tarts, family fruit flans, or fruit mince pies with Christmas design lids. Packed into ready-to-use foils, they are made with high-quality EOI Monarch vegetable margarine and premium Australian flour.

Peerless Foods is also experimenting with new croissant flavours of chocolate plus a custard and sultana-filled escargot (or snail to the uninitiated) under the La Parisienne brand of frozen ready-made croissants which just need to be proved, then baked.

Most of the new products will be sold under the EOI Bakery brand, including ready-to-use frozen puff pastry rolls, baked and unbaked sweet shortcrust pastry shells and large Danish squares made with quality butter.