Merlo Coffee has announced it will open a new flagship store and roastery to be launched in Melbourne later this year.
“Though we supply cafés all over Victoria, we’ll set up our new Melbourne home in the inner city so that Merlo fans can drop in and see how it all happens,” says Chris Read, Merlo Coffee National Sales Manager.
The Brisbane-based, independently owned coffee operation has set its sights on more than doubling its Melbourne roasting for the local wholesale and retail market.
Chris says Merlo’s Queen Victoria Market (QVM) Torrefazione is bursting at the seams, supplying more than 50,000 cups of coffee each week.
“We’ve only been here a couple of years but growth and demand are incredibly strong. We are now roasting 850 kilograms of coffee per week which is double what we were doing when we first opened the QVM store more than two years ago,” he says.
“As well as opening a larger Merlo shopfront by Christmas, and maintaining the QVM Torrefazione, we plan to double our roasting capacity to more than 2.5 tonnes per week.”
Chris says coffee drinkers in the southern states have acquired different tastes when it comes to their coffee. As such, Merlo had developed a Melbourne blend only offered through the Victorian roastery.
“We are currently selling to about 1250 Victorian customers through our online store,” Chris says.
“We’ve expanded our sales force in Melbourne and are on a big recruitment drive so that we have the same coffee expertise on the ground in Melbourne as we do in Queensland.”
Merlo Coffee began in 1992 as a small coffee nook in Brisbane and has since grown to include 19 coffee shops, six espresso bars, hundreds of employees and 10 Torrefaziones where in-house roasters supply thousands of cafés around Australia.