Two café owners highlight the benefits of operating on a day-to-evening basis and finding the right Lavazza blend to appeal to customers from dawn till dusk.
In Australia and New Zealand, there’s a growing trend of hospitality venues that straddle the line between café and restaurant. While traditionally cafés would open at dawn and close by early afternoon, and many restaurants strictly stuck to lunch and dinner services, this new breed opens early doors and serves drinks and food straight through the day until late.
It’s a trend observed right across the region and in different styles of venues, gaining momentum at a time when hospitality owners have had to pivot traditional business models to make a profit. It also appears to be favoured by consumers, who are less constrained by customary eating times and more interested in socialising out of the home.
For Phil Ludavici, Owner of Hello Neighbour, Cativa Cucina, and Stella Restaurant in Adelaide, establishing venues that offered coffee and brunch in the daytime and restaurant-style plates in the afternoon and evening was a winning combination.
“We found if you’re primarily a brunch venue, it’s very hard to get the evenings going. On the other hand, restaurants that close in the afternoon find lunchtimes tough. This is especially true in the cities where you get fewer corporates heading out for lunch nowadays,” says Phil.
“With our venues, we’ve found the daytime to nighttime setup works well. It’s more casual and people seem to like that.
In the days we get a lot of mums with prams, the early evening will be families, and then later will be a younger crowd.”
While the menus change, the golden thread that runs through Phil’s venues is the coffee, which he recently switch to one of Lavazza’s Mosaic blends after more than a decade with a local supplier.
“The contracts for Stella Restaurant and Hello Neighbour were coming up for renewal around the time we opened Cativa Cucina. My main issue with the previous supplier was the equipment it supplied,” he says.
“I’d been contacted by a lot of roasteries, but Lavazza really stood out from the crowd – not just for the equipment they could provide but also the coffee.”
The team at Lavazza visited Phil and his coffee team and introduced their new Mosaic range of blends developed exclusively for the Australian palate and roasted in Melbourne. The three coffees – Retreat, Ochre, and Tidal – each have a distinct flavour profile, with Phil and team opting for the dark chocolate, walnut, almond, and toffee notes of Retreat.
“We were really impressed with the coffee. It perfectly suited the tastes of our customers across our venues, and also complemented our menus,” he says.
“The equipment we received was brand-spanking new and the best you could get on the market. To make great coffee, you need great equipment, and the team at Lavazza delivered everything we needed to make our customers happy.”
Hello Neighbour in Hyde Park was Phil’s first venue to test the new day-evening setup. In the daytime it deals in classic all-day brunch dishes such as brioche French toast with whipped Biscoff, hazelnut, and white chocolate praline, and corn and zucchini fritters with mint yogurt, tomato salsa, lime, and coriander. In the nighttime, however, it turns into Artusi by Night, a completely different concept serving gnocchi, pasta, and other Italian-inspired dishes.
“At first, the difficulty was finding chefs who could adapt to both menus, but once we found the right people it became second nature to them. The setup now works very well,” he says.
Phil believes operating with longer opening hours and capitalising on both the day and night market is one of the keys for hospitality success in the challenging climate.
“Unless you’re a family café running on a very small team, it’s hard to make money at the moment with the traditional setup,” he says. “You need to have that till ticking over at all times.”
Another business owner who’s recently taken advantage of the day-to-night concept is Khaled Noun. Establishing Rosina’s in Wentworth Point in New South Wales at the end of 2024, he saw the value in giving customers a wide range of choice – no matter what time of day they visit.
“People have very different working patterns and no longer just want to have breakfast at breakfast time. We’re open from 6am to around 11pm, and we offer our whole menu throughout the day,” says Khaled.
“We get shift workers such as nurses coming in early who want a bowl of pasta, or construction workers who want an egg and bacon roll in the late afternoon. Our opening hours aren’t just focused on making money but also on giving customers the power to choose what they want to eat and when.”
When looking for a coffee roastery to supply the goods for his Italian restaurant, Khaled knew he’d find the right coffee to complement Rosina’s rustic European food from Lavazza.
“From the range, we chose Ochre because it was the blend that best suited our customers’ who prefer a less bold coffee. It has a lot of sweetness and less acidity,” he says.
Khaled believes Ochre works well with both black and milk-based drinks, and that the most popular way for the blend to be served is as a cappuccino.
“Ochre is an all-rounder. It cuts through the milk well, but if you have all the parameters in place, it also makes a fantastic black coffee without too much body. It delivers tasting notes of chocolate, macadamia, and honeycomb,” he says.
“We see people ordering coffee all through the day. Interestingly, we get a lot of late-night Uber Eats orders for takeaway coffees – a market we wouldn’t tap into if we didn’t operate on a day-to-night basis.”
Both Phil and Khaled highlight how impressed they have been with the service they’ve received since working with Lavazza. The team offer tailored solutions for each business they work with, not only finding the coffee that best suits the venue’s customers but also the equipment they need to craft it.
On the back of the success of his venues, Phil plans to open another day-to-night café-restaurant spot in Adelaide later this year. Coffee and brunch will be the focus in the day, while at night high-quality and creative Asian food will take centre stage.
“Across our venues, we currently do more than 100 kilograms of coffee a week. This new venue will also do around 50 kilograms a week, so choosing the right coffee for our business is extremely important,” he says.
“I tried Lavazza a long time ago, but the Mosaic range is a whole new level. The coffees are fantastic.”
For more information, visit lavazzamosaic.com.au
This article appears in the April/May 2025 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
