Representatives from nine Grinders Coffee partners were brought together in Melbourne for this year’s Immersion Experience, but the lessons taken aren’t only restricted to those who were in attendance.
The strength and breadth of Australia’s café community is more than matched by the quality of its coffee roasters. From large-scale organisations to boutique one- and two-person operations and everything in between, cafés are spoilt for choice when selecting a roaster to supply their beans.
For the past three years, Grinders Coffee Roasters has held its Immersion Experience as a mechanism to not only thank some of its customers for their loyalty but also to continue to educate and help them grow their businesses.
In its inaugural edition in 2023, Immersion was limited to a handful of Victorian customers. For the past two years, though, the opportunity has been presented to carefully selected Grinders partners nationwide.
In 2025, the Immersion Experience saw 18 people from nine cafés in the Grinders network convene in Melbourne for a two-day event focusing on business growth, education, and networking.
Grinders Coffee Ambassador Jono Goldthorpe says the annual event showcases the roaster’s raison d’être and how it can align itself with its partners.
“Everyone in Australia is roasting really great coffee at the moment and providing training for their customers,” he says. “We want to provide above-and-beyond support for our customers and look at how they can not only grow their business through coffee but also learn some tips and tricks to stay on top in the current market.
“The Immersion campaign is a powerful opportunity for us to connect more deeply with our customer base and build lasting partnerships. We’ve focused on engaging with passionate, growth-minded businesses – those eager to collaborate and explore new ways to succeed together. While space was limited this time, our intention was never to exclude, but instead to start somewhere meaningful.
“This campaign is just the beginning of a broader journey to understand how we can better support all our customers, regardless of current volume, and continue building a community driven by shared ambition and mutual success.
One of the Grinders customers in attendance was Madison’s in Broadbeach, which been with the roaster for 29 years.
“Customers like Madison’s are already loyal, but this is a way for us to give back, provide something different, and give them even more reassurance about us as a coffee brand, supplier, and partner,” says Jono.
Delivering some of those key insights was a trio of speakers with hands-on experience of growing their own businesses.
Founder of Indonesia’s Expat. Roasters and former Grinders Coffee Ambassador and Training Manager Shae Macnamara discussed maintaining brand credibility, consistency, and quality while growing into new venues and markets.
Yolk Group’s Kieran Spiteri offered insights into identifying market needs in different areas, like his business has done with its six independent venues and catering provider in some of Melbourne’s most trendy, coffee-loving suburbs such as Collingwood and Northcote.
Finally, CEO of Digital Picnic Cherie Clonan educated attendees on how to excel on social media and improve their digital marketing and online presence.
“When Shae was working with Grinders he helped modernise the brand. He’s taken a lot of learnings from his time with us into his new business that has now expanded from Bali across Indonesia and into Malaysia, which has been exciting to see,” says Jono.
“Yolk Group’s venues are always featured in lists of the top cafés in Melbourne. They all have different concepts, so we wanted Kieran to come in and talk about how that works, how they approach that, and how they identify and meet gaps in the market.
“We were also excited to see what insights Cherie and Digital Picnic had to offer in how social media can help grow small businesses, and the importance of a strong online presence.”
The second day of the event, titled Under the Hood, saw attendees visit the Sanremo Coffee Machines headquarters in Richmond for a more hands-on experience, led by Sanremo’s Technical Relationships Manager Dee Alam.
“When we went to Sanremo, they opened up a coffee machine and gave really in-depth information on how it works, what common issues are, and how they can be avoided. We wanted to give a better understanding of how a well-maintained machine not only increases the longevity but also helps to provide a consistent, quality coffee,” says Jono.
“We then had a networking lunch to create more of a connection between our customers and encourage them to compare ‘war stories’, share contact details, and keep in touch after the event.”
Sanremo Marketing Manager Sofia Calabrisello sees true value in industry partnerships and was honoured to host the event.
“Being part of an initiative that brings together café owners, coffee professionals, and partners from across the country to collaborate and share experiences is incredibly valuable for our industry,” says Sofia.
“For us, the key takeaway was the importance of partnering with people who truly align with our values, because it is when you combine the right vision with the right support that you can make the greatest impact.”
Jono says identifying and welcoming experts such as the speakers and Sanremo is key to helping Grinders’ partners grow.
“Our scale is one of our strengths,” he says. “We’re putting a stronger focus on things such as signature drink retailing, in-store coffee retailing, and using social media and digital marketing, but these things change so rapidly that getting experts to talk about them while they’re in the thick of it is really valuable.
“We can roast incredibly consistent coffee, we’ve got an amazing quality assurance process and roasting process when we deal with our larger customers, but we want to show what we do for our customers that might be smaller in scale.”
The insights gained by those at the event will not be limited to those in attendance though. Jono says Grinders is keen to promote collaboration between its partners to foster stronger connections between its cafés and venues.
“The Immersion was an invitation-only event, but we had photographers and videographers capture key content to share those learnings through our EDMs and online videos,” he says.
“We have a lot of passionate people in our business that honestly do care.”
For Grinders General Manager Steve Bean, Immersion is an opportunity to bring together passionate coffee professionals from all parts of the industry to learn, share, and grow.
“It’s about building a community that uses collaboration to deliver sustainable growth,” he says.
“Having personally experienced the impact a session like this has, it re-enforced that we all go further when going together. My hope is that we can use this event as a base to expand our community and continue to support more growth over time.”
Although these events only happen once a year, they give a strong indication into what the roaster’s priorities are when working with cafés. Jono believes that desire for Grinders to help its partner businesses grow filters all the way through the company.
“The great thing about this event is it shows our customers who we are at our core,” says Jono. “We’re a passionate, coffee-centric business. Our people are that way as well.
“We spend a lot of time with our café partners. We visit and try to support them on a store level to progress the relationship beyond being purely transactional, and this is a way we can really give back and say thank you.”
For more information, visit grinderscoffee.com.au
