Barista Mel Cox’s love of coffee began 10 years ago, when she got a high school job at a Shellharbour cookie shop and wasn’t allowed to touch the coffee machine.
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“I was 14, and all I wanted to do was make coffee,” she said.
“It wasn’t even good coffee, but they glorified it and only the manager could touch it, so that made me want it even more.”
Now, Ms Cox is coffee obsessed and will happily hop on a plane to Melbourne just to check out a new cafe. At 24, she has just opened her second coffee business in two years, after starting out at popular Wollongong shipping container co-op Sifters.
She says the decision to break away from the Market Street co-op –which has helped to incubate several small homegrown businesses over the past two years – was difficult, but necessary as her cafe became a victim of its own success.
“I’ve always envisioned having a tiny little espresso bar, completely dedicated to speciality coffee,” she said.
“I was at Sifters for two years, but the busier and busier it got and the more customers we got, the more I realised my passion was with coffee and not necessarily the whole big cafe thing.”
Her spin-off is a hole-in-the-wall on Keira Street called Opus Coffee Brewers, opened with her friend and business partner Bryce Jepson.
To free themselves up to focus on coffee – which they do by rotating through different roasters and beans on a weekly basis – the pair have drawn on their connections in the close-knit Wollongong hospitality industry.
We made it our mission to find people in the industry that were just as crazy and passionate about their speciality as we are about coffee.
- Mel Cox
“We wanted to be a place that could showcase the best things that are coming out of the Illawarra at the moment, so we made it our mission to find people in the industry that were just as crazy and passionate about their speciality as we are about coffee,” Ms Cox said.
This means their patrons can duck in to grab a loaf of bread made in Russell Vale (at drive-through bakery 74 Albert), eat butter and cheese made from South Coast cows’ milk, and order pies from west Crown Street’s Sandygoodwich and sandwiches from Balgownie caterers Bill and James.
All this is served on cups and plates made by a local ceramicist, in a cafe brimming with flowers from a Fairy Meadow florist.
“I guess it’s kind of crazy that we’ve got two different cafes doing our food, and there’s a cafe that’s just up the road that’s helping us out,” Ms Cox said.
“The cafe culture in Wollongong is just so supportive – so you can look over at our community table and see all these people from different cafes and restaurants sitting around on their days off.”