Cafe Biz Wrap Up

Café Biz attracted thousands of café owners, coffee lovers and industry suppliers from all over the country. The event was packed full of new innovations in products and services for the growing café industry. People were continuously entertained by the many speakers, competitions and invitation spots on the main stage.

The Equal Coffee Chain Challenge was again won by Cafenatics from Melbourne, with Michel’s Espresso, Hudsons and Krispy Kreme all close behind, showing great professional coffee making skills. The competition replicated a real café situation with coffees to be made perfectly under a tight time schedule.

Stefano Manfredi

Espresso di Manfredi by Piazza D’Oro has reached ten years of business success!

An innovative collaboration with Piazza D’Oro and Manfredi Enterprises, with its figurehead and director, celebrity chef Stefano Manfredi.

It was a great pleasure to talk with one of my foodie idols, whose restaurant, Bel Mondo, I frequently visited back in early 2000 while living in Sydney. Not only is Steve (Stefano) a great and passionate chef who has been driven by the quality food scene in Australia, he is a chef who loves making coffee. I think to myself, tongue in cheek, that this is very rare. I have found most chefs I’ve worked with always asked me to make their coffees, as they would not go near the machine (being located too close to front of house service).

Steve’s passion for coffee has made Espresso di Manfredi by Piazza D’Oro a powerful brand enjoyed around the Asia Pacifi c region in major hotel chains and iconic cafés. Steve also now captains the team at the well known micro resort Bells at Killcare on the Central Coast, just north of Sydney.

The Quite Achiever - Brisbane

Having started a coffee career in Brisbane/ South East Qld some 10 years ago and currently here still, it has been an absolute joy to have the opportunity to be a part of a developing Brisbane coffee scene.

With the likes of Aromas, Merlo and Di Bella putting in the ground work in promoting fresh roasted coffee, Brisbane coffee drinkers nowadays are much more discerning in selecting their daily brew. And now there is even more to choose from, with the likes of Veneziano and Campos joining the scene, providing wholesale coffee as well as their own café.

Recently, there have been a handful of espresso bars that are going a step further, by either roasting for themselves or working closely with a roasting company in designing their own exclusive blend for their café.

Combine that with regular rotating single origins, education nights, cold drip and chemex brews, and you have some of the best cafés around.

Project X

It all started with a few late night drinks with a group of passionate coffee people ...It became a caffeine fuelled debate about why we could not design and build a state of the art coffee machine here in Australia. We all agreed that we have some of the best baristas in the world, some of the most innovative coffee concepts and a huge population of coffee drinkers. This conversation spilled over into a meeting with a good mate in the industry, Greg Gibbs, manager and owner of Boema Coffee Machines. It occurred to us that Greg would be in the best position to make this idea work.

Boema is the only coffee machine manufacturer in Australia, starting back in the fi fties long before espresso was popular, and many of the original Boema machines are still in service today. Greg is passionate about moving forward in the industry and would like to see his machines develop with the new ideas around espresso technology, incorporating what our industry here in Australia wants.

So Project X Press machine was born. The team of coffee professionals we choose for Project X all have strong backgrounds in complementary areas of the industry, from baristas to engineering, machine maintenance, to media and marketing.

Soups for Winter

Yes, the cold weather has arrived in most of Australia’s towns and cities, and some hearty country food is on the menu.

Even if you only do it once each winter, it’s a tradition to simmer up those yummy, belly-warming homemade soups that are also a very profitable item on a café menu. We have picked three of our favourite recipes at Café Culture Magazine that are quick and easy to prepare in bulk – ready to appease those hungry winter appetites.