This is the very first video in a new on going series where we will do coffee shop walk through's to explore how they are designed, what equipment is being used, as well as discover the interesting history and stories behind them. It's always interesting and a lot can be learnt by taking a close look at successful businesses to understand how they operate and identify what makes them so successful.
In this video Luke and Jimmy drop in on Beach Street Dispensary in Harrington NSW which is one of our accounts that hasn't actually been in business very long at all but they are already off to a flying start.
With this particular account, we got involved very early on and even before anything had been built. This meant we were able to consult and work closely with the owners to design a productive and efficient cafe. The new owners were also able to spend a lot of time training here at the roastery working hard to perfect our coffee making process so they could nail it from day one.
So, follow the guys here as they take you for an in depth look around Beach Street Dispensary in Harrington and show you why these guys are becoming so successful with their little coffee shop.
Video Transcript
0:15
So today we're going to share with you a little gem.
0:18
We're in Harington,
0:19
which is a little bit south of us, about 3 hours from our roastery.
0:23
And we're going to meet the team there.
0:25
This is an awesome little cafe.
0:26
They've got a beautiful little set up, and we just want to walk in, do a quick
0:31
little run around and just talk you through what they've managed to achieve.
0:34
How we did the layout and what the great business is about.
0:37
How long have they been here Jimmy?
0:39
So Beach Street Dispensary has been about six months
0:43
and it all came together pretty quick in the end.
0:46
They built it from scratch, had found a really cool old space on the corner
0:51
block with some great views, we'll show you and
0:55
and they managed to build this beautiful shop from nothing.
0:58
Yeah.
0:58
So there wasn't an existing shop here at all.
1:01
They've had to build their business from scratch.
1:04
It was a very rundown takeaway shop.
1:09
They'd put a deck on it.
1:10
They cleaned up the kitchen, scrubbing all the oil
1:13
off the walls, you know, put the hard work in early.
1:17
And that's really paid off with the look and feel.
1:19
And and obviously, the business that they're running now, so.
1:22
Yeah. Awesome. Oh, we'll look forward to sharing it with you now, guys.
1:37
Oh, there you go.
1:39
Welcome to Beach Street Dispensary here in Harrington.
1:42
There is a bit of a motorbike and car show on here.
1:45
So a couple of awesome burn outs going on and boys on the bikes.
1:48
But come on in and have a look and I'll show you around this awesome
1:51
little shop.
2:02
So it's a tight little space
2:05
and we thought these guys just need to get to get coffee out and nice and quickly.
2:09
So the coffee gear that we've got here is a double swift.
2:12
So we've got our main bean and decaf
2:15
and they can offer singles just through a tiny little GS2 there.
2:18
So that allows them to offer beautiful singles that we roast.
2:22
You got a three group GB5
2:25
and an i-rinse jug washer down there as well.
2:35
And you've got the kitchen
2:36
over to the side here for the guys doing awesome job.
2:38
Hey, fellas.
2:39
And then a beautiful little deck back out this way.
2:50
So you got double entries into a shop and a really small space.
2:53
So it is a key to make sure that you got the work flow working really well.
2:57
So we're going to duck back in and show you how customers order which way to go,
3:02
which is out through that door
3:09
front door.
3:09
So as a customer, you're going to order here.
3:11
You can either then wait for your takeaway to come out this way or grab a seat.
3:15
But the work flow means you can grab some food.
3:18
You can again grind your coffee.
3:20
You can do your shots, do your milk and everything
3:23
then goes out this way where the path is for the kitchen.
3:26
So that is a really great streamlined
3:29
process to order and get your customers flowing through.
3:33
In a small space you can't have a blockage.
3:35
You can't have the customer coming in
3:36
and then bumping into people behind them that need to order of
3:39
they've got to turn around and go back out.
3:41
So this double door works amazing here.
3:44
So again, in tight spaces, you got to think about all the opportunities.
3:46
These guys got an amazing retail space here,
3:48
so you can sell bags of coffee to customers for home.
3:51
Don't think just because you serve coffee by the cup
3:54
that you can't make an advantage of selling your beans in a cafe.
3:57
So much coffee drunk at home and you might as well make advantage
4:00
of making a couple of bucks out of these bags.
4:02
Now this is all fresh stock that you can give to your customers.
4:05
And then they're using extra stock, which is fresh roast again to fill up
4:09
a shelf and make it look like it's, again, a good retail presence in the store.
4:13
You can sell your alternative milks.
4:15
Again, this is all the stuff we use every day.
4:16
So make sure you add value to your business.
4:19
When you look behind the bar, come on down here.
4:24
We've got our
4:24
aged coffee down here and all of our extra syrups and bits and pieces.
4:28
So this is what you're going to be using
4:30
this week, usually about ten day old coffee and all your retail stuff
4:33
is fresh roast that arrives so up to maybe seven days old.
4:37
The set up along here again, the workflow is nice and easy.
4:40
There's a little bit of extra space here.
4:42
This is gold space for baristas.
4:44
You can put a cup there, you can put a little order there.
4:47
So having a machine set back really does help.
4:49
And then you've got two fridges underneath for all of your milk.
4:52
Now our pumps, water filters are all behind there, so it's all neat and tidy.
4:57
The drain is a bit of a tricky one because it does have to run
4:59
all the way along the bench.
5:01
And back out through here.
5:03
So if you've got a long drain running that way,
5:05
make sure you get a nice big sized pipe and that'll keep flowing forever.
5:18
Getting to a Jimmy.
5:19
Oh, yeah. All right.
5:21
So it is a small kitchen here, but that is a milk bun, bacon and egg roll with avo.
5:27
Look at that amount of bacon?
5:29
Oh, and a home made little chutney there.
5:33
A relish.
5:34
So you can produce awesome food in really small kitchens.
5:38
It's about having good quality ingredients
5:41
and a good amount of it
5:43
and charge the right amount of money in a beautiful little box.
5:46
So simple.
5:46
How's the coffee Jimmy?
5:47
That is delicious! Great.
5:50
That is perfect. What do you drink, Jimmy?
5:53
I got a double shot latte.
5:54
Extra shot in there.
5:57
Beautiful. Can't help but.
5:58
Can't let go of that morning milk coffee.
6:01
I'll move on to the blacks, I'll probably have three more black coffees today, but
6:05
yeah, nice morning
6:09
and milk strong coffee for me.
6:13
This is so good.
6:16
It was worth waiting to get here
6:17
to have a good brekkie.
6:24
Yeah, all the kitchen has
6:26
a couple of small grills, a small oven, you know a microwave and a fridge
6:30
and you can produce that brekkie roll we had today.
6:34
So you don't have to have a flash kitchen to produce beautiful food.
6:38
So this is Mel, the owner of Beach Street.
6:40
All right. It's an absolute cracking little shop.
6:42
Well done in such a small space. Thank you.
6:44
So how is the coffee?
6:45
What do you think of your overall experience with our coffee?
6:48
Oh, look people love it.
6:51
My husband and I chose it because we
6:54
tried different cafes and we came up with it.
6:56
This was one of our favorite blends and it's been really well received.
7:01
The customers are happy with it. They love it.
7:03
They keep coming back. Awesome. It's going good.
7:05
Thanks for your support Mel and I wish you all the best in the future.
7:07
Thank you Luke. Cheers.
7:09
So we've just left Beach Street there at Harrington.
7:13
And we want to just, I don't know, talk a little bit
7:16
more about the account, how they started and sort of where they are now.
7:20
So the account's been going for six months.
7:22
But Jimmy, how did
7:25
Mel come and see us initially?
7:27
Like how did she contact you?
7:28
So Mel just went through the normal channels,
7:31
just reaching out through an inquiry on our website actually.
7:34
Just filled out the form and we go straight back to her
7:38
and we just asked a bunch of questions about,
7:40
I guess how she found us, which is always interesting to us.
7:43
And she had actually done the research
7:45
by going to a lot of our accounts.
7:47
She knew Buyi in Old Bar was one that she loved.
7:52
She'd always had a great experience there.
7:55
So that's great for us that between our accounts,
7:59
that consistency, she could she could see that straight away.
8:02
She even talked to Bennett before approaching us just to get an insight
8:06
from one of our cafe partners as to what it was like to work with us.
8:10
But also
8:11
from a business point of view,
8:12
you want to be pretty confident the suppliers
8:16
being able to support you.
8:17
Then she reached out.
8:19
We obviously got to work with her from scratch.
8:22
She she had some hospitality experience, but she was pretty green and pretty fresh
8:26
and got really willing to learn and I think we
8:29
we always love people that are willing to learn.
8:31
It just makes it so much more fun for us.
8:33
Yeah.
8:33
Mel's commitment to coming
8:35
and making a great cup of coffee before she opened was amazing.
8:39
Yeah.
8:39
She was driving, what, two and a half hours to come and see us.
8:41
She was doing heaps of training and that is such an absolute
8:45
key part to success.
8:47
If you open a coffee business don't practice on your customers,
8:49
make sure you know how to make great coffee day one.
8:52
Yeah, she did. She would drive.
8:54
I reckon there was probably ten visits to the roastery.
8:57
Yeah easy.
8:58
She like
8:59
she had our training room all to herself without a trainer even booked for the day.
9:03
She would just come and spend time making coffees, pouring out
9:07
because you know it can take 100 cups to really get, get a feel for it. So,
9:13
but I mean, on top of that we did.
9:15
We definitely supported it with training both
9:19
in the training room at our Roastery plus onsite.
9:23
What she, once we done the in-stall, we did more training.
9:26
We regularly visit then and then obviously for the last six months
9:30
we do our regular visits and just support her.
9:33
So as she's taking on new staff and grown.
9:35
Gone back and done training with that stuff.
9:38
But I think just seeing then there's a young girl
9:41
that's making coffee it was again pretty fresh on on the machine
9:44
but she's super confident now I think Mel's training and understanding
9:48
is you know helping
9:51
set that standard which is what we love as well.
9:54
Yeah.
9:54
She can jump on to make a coffee but also uphold
9:56
that standard just by looking at it from a distance from an owner perspective.
10:00
Yeah. And knowing it's a great cup.
10:02
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
10:04
Probably the other side of things was aside from being able
10:06
to make a cup of coffee, it's just understanding equipment.
10:10
Like we, we went through a lot of different scenarios on equipment.
10:14
Her skill level
10:16
for opening versus how fast we really wanted to be.
10:20
We could see an opportunity for, for needing to get the coffee that fast
10:23
to satisfy that that morning cup of coffee for everyone in the town.
10:27
Now I will say that if you search Harrington
10:30
the population of Harrington is 3033 people.
10:34
A population.
10:35
A town of and so for her to be now doing 20 kilos of coffee every single week
10:41
that's potentially 800 cups of coffee for a 3000 population town.
10:46
Now if you live in anywhere that's got a better population than that
10:52
on a ratio scale, let's hope you're doing more than 20 kilos.
10:54
But she's doing really well.
10:55
To be, to be already at 20 kilos.
10:57
It's such a small town.
10:59
She's obviously captured the the town's attention with the consistency
11:03
the quality coffee and we picked that kind of early.
11:07
We, we did end up finding a three group that was suitable for her
11:12
that was available straightaway we've actually put a Swift.
11:15
The La Marzocco Swift grinder is one that we, it actually grinds and tamps
11:21
for you and it takes a little bit of the process out of making coffee
11:26
but it
11:26
increases your speed and consistency cup to cup for sure.
11:30
So there's definitely a trade off there.
11:32
I know we love to do specialty coffee, you know, grinding and weighing
11:36
and dosing every single time and using a much better burr set
11:39
and larger burrs and that's getting me far greater quality.
11:43
But there is a point where
11:44
you've got to look at speed efficiency, the number of staff that you have.
11:47
Yeah. In that trade off, and is that going to work.
11:50
Ultimately right now,
11:51
that is the best thing that would have happened to that account.
11:54
Definitely.
11:54
Given that with all the challenges around the world at the moment,
11:57
everyone's really struggling to get staff and that business can open up,
12:01
keep that volume going, they can take orders
12:03
and make them themself with one person and keep really great good speed.
12:07
So yeah, that that's an absolute win putting that grinder in in this scenario.
12:12
Yep, definitely.
12:13
Um, we also did introduce that little single origin grinder
12:17
because again, we really wanted to set the bar of being a specialty coffee.
12:21
Ah, the Swift meant we could do the speed.
12:24
We've got the secondary grinder there so we can do it fresh ground decaf,
12:28
we can do a fresh ground single origin for a long black should we want to.
12:32
So like she definitely wanted to give the full specialty coffee experience
12:38
and just what was relevant.
12:39
Yeah and with that they've got all the retail products
12:41
there and the decaf, the single and the main beans
12:43
that you can sell over the counter.
12:44
So that's being able to taste.
12:46
The customer being able to taste that product for the cup and then buy it.
12:50
Yep. Great added value.
12:52
Then one of the things
12:54
we love to do is just we got in so early, then we got to look at her plans.
12:58
So she basically gave me what the real estate gave her, which was just
13:02
a picture of a box and a door
13:05
that said door here out here.
13:08
And we had a blank canvas.
13:09
So we, we're really going to help her map out
13:12
exactly how much space she had where her bench should run.
13:17
So we designed I guess,
13:19
because every inch of that place is valuable in such a small space,
13:24
you want to make sure you get that workflow like we showed you.
13:27
there's the door and the door out and that's
13:29
that was massive and a huge win for us to have those two doors.
13:32
For such a small space.
13:34
So yeah.
13:35
Getting in early, having a look at the plans, working out plumbing, power, water.
13:41
And customer flow as well.
13:42
Customer flow, yeah.
13:43
And it feels cozy.
13:46
The vibe is good.
13:47
It's got a great eye for,
13:49
you know, the fit out, the look and the feel, all those little
13:52
knickknacks that she's got in there to just make it a bit of fun.
13:55
But she's definitely got that nice, clean, consistent Artisti look to it as well.
14:00
So we're really proud of the account and umm.
14:04
Yeah, it's, you know, other people come to us and, and feel that, they want to,
14:09
like what she did she got to experience what Buyi brought to Old Bar.
14:13
Again another small population town doing amazing.
14:17
She wanted to bring that to her town.
14:18
She's done the same thing, so that's what we love to do.
14:21
There goes Brooker.
14:22
Yeah, yeah. Mels husband driving past.
14:23
Who's a chippie, I think.
14:25
and helped build the shop fit out.
14:27
So that was really handy to save a few dollars there.
14:28
Which was really helpful. You don't have to have a chippie.
14:31
You don't have to have a husband for a chippie but you can you can do a lot.
14:37
Yeah.
14:37
So it's been a it's been a great project to work on.
14:40
Go left.
14:41
Going left.
14:45
So yeah, we're really stoked on the outcome.
14:47
It's something that we see is super repeatable.
14:50
We love building these kind of shops with people and
14:53
and if we can help you do the same thing for your cafe
14:56
or if you've got a similar space that you're ready for a revamp,
15:01
we've got we've got the team to do it.
15:03
So yeah, Do you want to know, the best thing I love about our job, Jimmy?
15:06
What's that?
15:08
Coffee? You know, I love coffee, no doubt!
15:10
Is we spend a lot of time helping prepare people to open a business.
15:15
Yeah.
15:15
And here we are six months later, just cruising bye as we go down to another
15:18
another job, we can walk in there, see how successful they are.
15:23
Everything fell into place.
15:25
They opened up day one because they were ready.
15:27
They had the systems in place, they were ready for coffee,
15:30
and the locals really supported them.
15:32
So from a financial perspective, they're doing amazing
15:35
and they did it really quickly.
15:37
There wasn't this big gap
15:38
where people opened up too early and weren't quite ready. Yep.
15:42
So for me, that's the reward that I just love.
15:45
Yeah me to.
15:46
Really helping people achieve their goals. Yep.
15:49
So that's my warm and fuzzy. Yeah.
15:52
It is good. It's good fun.
15:53
We're on our way to Sydney to do it again.
15:55
Yeah, we're going to Sydney to do another one.
15:57
To do another install on a new shop that we've got to plan it out.
15:59
So keep your eye out for another video on that shop.
16:02
Yeah.
16:03
For now I think that's it for Harrington. Yeah.
16:06
So there you go I hope you've enjoyed a little insight
16:09
to one of our fantastic little cafe partners Beach Street here in Harrington.
16:14
So from a humble little shop, they've been able to see this location,
16:17
which is pretty rundown and looked ordinary, creating a great deck
16:21
and great shop fit out to now having an amazing business.
16:24
So if you've got any questions about this kind of set up
16:27
or if you want to know how to achieve some key things about design,
16:32
layout or branding or just great coffee, hey shoot us a question we'd happily
16:36
answer that for you.
16:37
Thanks very much for watching.
16:39
We'll catch you next time. Cheers.
1 comment on Coffee Shop Tour at Beach Street Dispensary
Oh how I wish the local cafes here, had Mel’s level of commitment for a great coffee.
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Oh how I wish the local cafes here, had Mel’s level of commitment for a great coffee.