

Could coffee be an Australian entrepreneurial success story? - Specstacular
http://internationalbs.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/could-coffee-be-an-aussie-advantage/

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liedra
I moved to continental Europe over a year ago (from Sydney) and was appalled
by the terrible coffee here. Most of it comes from a push-button machine if
you're lucky to get an espresso-based coffee at all. Those that are done by
hand are not so great either: I've seen the same grounds be used for several
coffees in a row, for example. I had to time my order so I got a fresh grind!
The only good coffees (i.e. up to my Aussie standards) I've had were in Milan
at a very top coffee shop and the top-of-the-range degustation restaurant in
my city (in Belgium)! I've travelled a lot since I got over here too.

It got to the point where I decided to buy my own machine. But the ones you
can buy in shops here for reasonable amounts are all the push-button stuff
with substandard heaters etc. So I asked my boyfriend to bring one over from
Sydney (just a cheapie Sunbeam one with a boiler) when he came to visit, and
since then (and after acquiring a very expensive grinder locally) I've managed
to make decent coffees. So much so that my local friends/colleagues
continually ask me when I will be inviting them around for coffee next. I even
had a bunch of Italian colleagues tell me that it was one of the best
espressos they'd had. And I'm not a fully trained barista either, I just
learned from my dad :)

Really though it makes me sad that I've had this experience, but it means I
can really see the potential for good quality coffee making over here.

~~~
Luc
The whole Italian espresso culture is something quite recent in e.g. Belgium.
Twenty years ago it was all drip coffee, and a cappuccino was a drip coffee
with a dollop of Chantilly cream on top. I don't think there's anything wrong
with that especially, it's just a regional variation.

A coffee salesman once told me they had to use different way of burning the
beans between the Flemish north and the Walloon south (generally the more
south you go in Europe, the more bitter the taste, according to him).

Also, Caffenation in Antwerp is pretty good.

~~~
liedra
I'm in the south so Antwerp is a bit far to go for a good coffee :) But yeah,
it's definitely an expansion area here I'm sure. I don't know about regional
variations on bean roasting between the north and south but you're right on
the bitterness: the stuff I've bought locally is quite bitter! But I found a
shop that sells a reasonable blend that's been freshly roasted, so I enjoy my
good coffee at home :D

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bootload
_"... Australians (well, at least inner-city Melburnians) have embraced coffee
with abandon in recent years. ..."_

Try 60 years.

~~~
weeksie
Bingo. The big reason why coffee sucks in the US is that the Italian
immigration wave hit before the espresso machine was invented. It hit Oz
afterward.

And, leading from that, coffee in Oz has been pretty damned good for a long
time. I've never been anywhere that takes it as seriously as we do save for a
couple pockets in the pacific northwest of the US, and even in those places
it's nowhere near the consistent good quality you'll find in any Aussie
Capitol city.

~~~
bootload
_"... The big reason why coffee sucks in the US is that the Italian
immigration wave hit before the espresso machine was invented. It hit Oz
afterward. ..."_

Excellent observation, I'd never thought of it that way.

~~~
Specstacular
But Italian migrants did continue to go to US right through to the late 60s
(indeed most Aussie Italian families I know have a tale of a great uncle/aunt
in Canada and a couple more somewhere on East coast of US or in Chicago)...
I'm intrigued by the theory though...

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cubicle67
For those of you in Australia who like good coffee at home, I have to
recommend 5 Senses <http://www.fivesensescoffee.com.au/> (good example of how
to make a great website without Flash, too)

Place your order, and they'll roast your coffee the next morning, ready for
you to pick up after lunch. It's some of the best coffee I've ever had, and is
all FairTrade too.

[I have no affiliation, just a regular customer]

~~~
Specstacular
Oh, that does look tasty...

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matrix
While I'm proud to see the cafe my sister manages get held up as an example to
be exported elsewhere, I'm skeptical. The fact is, when scaling up a food or
beverage franchise, food quality takes a distant back seat to consistency,
supply chain management, leveraging economy of scale, and all kinds of
unglamorous factors like that. The truth is, on average, people don't care as
much about quality as you might think they do. Starbucks, McDonald's, Chill's,
Olive Garden... the examples of mediocre, but consistent winners go on.

~~~
liedra
Who says anything about scaling up a franchise? It sounds like they're talking
about a few small cafes rather than a new Starbucks. They're already doing
that in Melbourne, so I don't see why it's particularly different.

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anarchitect
When I moved to London from Adelaide, Australia six years ago there were very
few places you could get a reliably good cup of coffee.

Over the following years, Flat White opened in Soho and slowly but surely more
cafés with a focus on coffee followed. It has to be said that the baristas in
most of them are often Australian or Kiwi.

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goatforce5
I was once waiting for my coffee in Flat White and got to overhear a
conversation between the barista and someone with a backpack who had just come
from Heathrow. It went something like:

"Bruno just got a X300 espresso machine for his Fitzroy location, but - get
this - he's put a G2 filter on it!"

"A G2?!"

"G2!"

"Wowww. That's mindblowing!"

...

If your barista is geeking out about hardware modifications to their espresso
machines, you know the coffee is going to be good.

Every Australian I know who lives overseas misses the cafe culture from there.
I spent a couple of years living in West End in Brisbane, and you couldn't
move for all the awesome indie coffee joints on Boundary St (having said that,
West End was looking a little sketchy last time I was back there).

EDIT: Removed an extraneous word. Turns out I need more coffee.

~~~
liedra
I'm about to move to London... I'll have to check it out! Also it has a fab
name, nowhere else knows what a flat white is, and the cappuccinos they make
here in Belgium have fake whipped cream on top! :( :(

