r/AustralianCoffee

They say pulling the single espresso is very challenging and hard to pull off.

I'd say, "Hold my longblack!" 😂

In this video, I'm pulling an espresso solo, from 10g of coffee grinds into 20.7ml at 31 seconds. 🤔

Did someone say pulling the espresso solo is bl00dy hard? 😁

Hello,

We have moved to the US after living in Melbourne for several years. Really miss the mocha and cappuccino we got from the local cafes 😭 I know I can’t make professional barista style coffee with this machine but would want to try my best.

I have recently got this Brevilla Barista Pro and been using Lavazza beans. Wondering anyone had any luck making the best Aussie style coffee?

What grinder settings you use, how much coffee? How much milk? Any advice would be appreciated. We have been trying but not getting anywhere close.

Thanks

Hey all. The mods gave me the OK to share this, so here goes.

As of yesterday cafes can't add a surcharge when you pay by card. You've probably seen that news everywhere, so no surprises there.

But I have some data to add to the conversation. As I had lot of price data from before the change, so I had a decent baseline to compare against.

I'm re-pricing cafes now and will post results here as they come in: smallflatwhite.com/surcharge-tracker

A bit of background on how I have this data

A few of you might have already seen data from Small Flat White shared here back in April, and it was on ABC News and 10 News in August. It wasn't built for surcharges, it was built to understand what coffee costs in different areas. Since April It's grown a fair bit:

• 9,000+ cafes with a flat white price, out of 36,000+ venues mapped, down to suburb level
• 15,000+ phone calls to cafes, plus 10,000+ cafe menus read
• 79,000+ coffee items off those menus
• plus other information about the beans and roaster they use

Right now the average flat white is $5.07 nationally

• NT $5.41
• TAS $5.20
• SA $5.18
• WA $5.15
• QLD $5.12
• ACT $5.07
• VIC $5.06
• NSW $4.96

NSW and VIC have the most cafes and NSW is the cheapest, which pulls the national figure down (ie weighted average)

Before the ban

I picked a fixed sample panel of 1,500 cafes, spread across each state and between cities and the regions in proportion to where cafes actually are. Between April and September, 29% had already put their flat white price up, 60% hadn't changed, and strangely 11% had come down.

The ones that came down stood out, so I asked about 10 to 15 of those owners. Most said it was competition: a cheaper coffee gets people in the door, and they make it back on the croissant or the muffin upsell. Small sample, but it was consistent. Wasn't at all related to cost being cheaper as they have seen super and wages, and freight and all other costs go up. It was a strategy move to get more volume and higher average orders.

The first couple of days of October

Comparing each cafe with its own September price, same cup size, across about 400 of the sample panel so far:

• 18% have put their flat white up
• 80% haven't changed
• 1% have come down

Note: These are the numbers at 10:20am if you check the site, they will change as the data is coming in right now

Where prices went up, the typical rise was 50c (about 9%)

And for the cafes I've priced in both April and October (189 so far), nearly half (48%) now charge more than they did in April.

Two things I'm hearing on the phone:

1. Some cafes went up in September, before the ban. A handful of owners told me costs had been rising anyway and they knew they'd be absorbing the card fees, so they moved early. How much of that is about surcharges is impossible to say.
2. Some say they plan to go up but haven't yet, might do it next week. So I don't think we'll see the full picture until mid to late October.

One more thing: all the October prices come from phone calls, not online menus. Over the last six months I've seen plenty of menus online lag behind what cafes actually charge, so the phone is the better read. Some of the September baselines did come from menus, though, so treat the early numbers as a first read.

Why I built Small Flat White

I'm a werid coffee person. I've been on a Three Thousand Thieves subscription for five or six years, so a new bag turns up every month, and I love trying new beans and roasters. But I like to understand what a coffee is actually meant to taste like, so I'll often seek out a cafe that serves the same one to know what I'm aiming for. Before I commit to buying a bag, I want to try it. I've found a lot of great beans that way. Tracking which cafes use which roasters and beans kept growing, I realised I could collect the prices too, and that turned into Small Flat White.

The bean side has become its own project, Espressos of Interest (EspressoOfInterest.com). It runs off the same data, with 7,800+ beans and 800+ roasters so far. For each bean it captures the coffee's "DNA" where the roaster publishes it: origin, region, producer, variety, process, altitude, harvest year and tasting notes. The idea is that if you love a particular bean, you can find others from the same region, producer or farm through a different roaster. The approach to roasting will change, but the source is the same. Basically I like data and find it interesting so just started to share it.

I also use it to log the coffee I make at home the beans, dose, profile, how it tasted. I got sick of a random spreadsheet, so it went in there too.

Honest disclaimer: Espresso of Interest is in beta and there's some junk cafes, and beans and roasters junk on it right now. But next week a bigger update (after the calls are done) will push a more accurate and wider list to it.

What are you seeing at your usual cafe?
Plus since most of you are like me, I assume you talk to the team (or are a member of the team) what is the cafe doing?
Have they put prices up, are they absorbing the card fees, or did they move last month?