How to create consistency across a nation

Beraldo Coffee Managing Director Daniel Beraldo discusses one of the keys to crafting consistency when sending coffee all over Australia.

With the incredibly competitive Australian coffee roasting landscape, there are few businesses that can claim to be fully national, and fewer still that have remained family-owned for their entire journey – let alone both.

Beraldo Coffee is one of these handful of rare roasters. After initially opening in Northcote in the early 1990s, it turned its original roasting site into a café. Now it roasts in the northeastern Melbourne suburb of Heidelberg where it has become a staple of the city – and the state’s – coffee scene.

Founder Paul Beraldo is no longer in charge of the business, but he still works hands-on within the company at the age of 77. Instead, it’s his son, Daniel, who took the reins about 17 years ago, who now leads the business.

“Dad purchased a coffee roaster and we started from there in September 1993,” says Daniel. “We initially started with ah 60-kilogram Petroncini roaster, and everything was hand packed back in the day.

“We’re still family owned. There aren’t many family-owned coffee roasters anymore, we’re in our second generation and the third generation is growing up very quickly and ready to come in. We’re probably few and far between among our competitors.

“Being a roaster that’s been dedicated to the business for more than 30 years, the key with the company is providing consistency to our customers, which is obviously places like cafés, bakeries, restaurants, and hotels.”

Since its foundation, Beraldo has grown to establish a national footprint, sending its beans to every state in Australia. In addition to supplying to all commercial Pancake Parlour locations in Melbourne, the business also works with cafés and bakeries, and non-traditional coffee spaces like offices and car dealerships.

With such a broad reach, scaling that consistency Daniel says has been a key part of Beraldo’s offering to customers becomes more difficult to manage. From hand-packed bags and a single 60-kilogram roaster to now managing fully national operations, maintaining quality  is the goal.

In modern coffee, though, there are new technological avenues that can be explored to help regain some of that bespoke control. Namely, fully automatic machines.

“When you’re making a coffee through a fully automatic machine, it will provide you with that consistency week in, week out. If the baristas are chopping and changing it doesn’t matter, the result will be the same,” says Daniel.

“We’ve got a couple of café customers that are going down the fully automated track, as well as pubs and clubs that don’t have the time or knowledge to operate traditional machines.”

As part of the range of automatic machines it provides to wholesale customers and offices, Beraldo offers the Franke A300, A600, and BeyondTraditional Mytico line to suit different needs and fitouts.

The relationship with Franke was started with Daniel at the helm of the business, and it’s a partnership that has since continued to grow over the course of almost a decade.

He says providing quality fully automatic machines has not only offered more versatility in what Beraldo can offer clients, but it’s helped the brand gain footholds in other, less traditional coffee service areas.

“I introduced Franke into the business about eight years ago, and it’s a relationship that gets stronger and stronger every year,” says Daniel.

“With Franke machines, the consistency they give is key. It means there’s less reliance on the barista to create the exact same cup every time in cafés or bakeries.

“Our reach also extends into hotels, gaming venues, car dealerships, and service stations. They’ve really helped us gain a foothold in those sorts of industries, where there isn’t necessarily going to be a trained barista on staff who can make a good coffee.”

Offering the compact A300, the more commercially sized A600, and the professional Mytico, Beraldo aims to cover all bases of what clients may need in a fully automatic coffee machine, but Daniel says he has a clear favourite of the three, due to one key function that has become a hallmark of Franke’s A Line range.

“I would lean towards the A600 as my favourite choice,” he says.

“That’s because of the FoamMaster system that can be included. It’s a different milk foam system that allows users to customise temperature and consistency of milk foam.”

Daniel was on hand at Host Milano to see the unveiling of Franke’s New A Line, which will start with global distribution of the New A600 and A800 models in 2026, and represent a new era of fully automatic machines from the manufacturer.

The FoamMaster feature Daniel discusses so positively will come as standard in the new line of machines, along with a range of other new technological functions.

It utilises technologies like ultrasonic flow measurement and optimised temperature control to produce foam without steam, preserving the natural taste of milk and milk alternatives.

For now, though, he strongly believes in the potential of fully automatic machines in both traditional and non-traditional environments and says they remain critical to driving consistency coffee roasters and cafés seek.

“The great thing with Franke machines is as long as they’re cleaned and maintained correctly, the consistency is second to none,” he says.

“We’ve also got a good reputation with our own technical team that does our servicing and support across the network, and that covers all preventative maintenance with Franke.” 

For more information, visit coffee.franke.com