The modern café landscape has largely been built around the hours of 7am to 3pm. First comes the morning rush, before brunch, late lunch, and final coffees – then rinse and repeat.
That’s changing though. Whether it’s run clubs and morning exercise classes creating demand to open earlier, combo café/restaurants closing for a few hours before reopening with a different menu proposition – or any other number of reasons – venues are responding to new expectations.
Tightening cost of living and the advent of work from home have also made the competition for the coffee dollar tighter, but cafés and other venues are getting inventive with how they can best take advantage – and that starts with hours.
To the extreme
Bakery on O’Connell is one of Adelaide’s most famous bakeries. Located on one of the main thoroughfares of the vibrant North Adelaide precinct, it’s on the doorstep of some of the city’s premier evening destinations and along the routes of many early morning commuters.
It identified these late-night and early morning opportunities not long after it opened in 2003. Now, more than two decades later, its 80-seat café has become just as popular for its state-heritage pie floaters – an upside-down meat pie in a bowl of pea soup – as it has for being open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Coffee is critical to the business, with Co-Owner James Kent stating that Bakery on O’Connell goes through between 100 and 120 kilograms per week – much of which is sold in the early hours of the morning.
James began as a baker’s apprentice at Bakery on O’Connell, which was first opened by his aunt and uncle – Jane and Tony – who are now his business partners.
He says while the shift in hours was brought about by hungry late-night partygoers, Bakery on O’Connell now does a roaring early morning trade.
“We started out on St Patrick’s Day in 2003, but we didn’t start out trading 24/7 like we are today, we traded normal bakery hours,” he says.
“We transitioned to 24/7 because a lot of college students could smell the food we were baking in the early morning and evenings and knocked on the door because they wanted to have some.
“It was a bit of chance that we became 24 hours, but it turned out for the best because we quickly had to hire more staff in the mornings because the bakers were getting overrun with early morning customers.”
The thought of late night and early morning customers being guided to the bakery through smell alone stirs imagery of Mickey Mouse floating through the air to a baked pie on a windowsill, but it’s a novel concept that has altered the trajectory of Bakery on O’Connell.
“People smelling the food came with the demand, and the demand has only grown. In the summer months, when the nights are longer and warmer, we’re often busier overnight than we are during the day,” says James.
“Then, in winter, when the nights are colder our day trade carries the night a bit, but it’s just continued to grow.”
Combining cultures
While suggesting every café and bakery in Australia should immediately transition to operating 24/7 hours is borders on insane, Bakery on O’Connell’s success shows the potential of shifting dayparts.
James notes that Adelaide may be behind other metropolitan hubs like Sydney and Melbourne – where some cafés open as early as 4:30am – but there’s plenty of room for earlier opening around Australia.
What about the other end of the day, though? The traditional afternoon slump in cafés is slowly being replaced, with tea-based signature drinks and other low-caffeine options significantly rising in popularity in recent years.
With many of these drinks originating in Asia, it makes sense for Asian-inspired venues to lean into the later opening – much like how Melbourne’s Hikari has done.
Damien Xiao, Director of Hikari, says the venue was created from a desire to combine Melbourne’s café culture with Japanese tea traditions, one of which is opening later in the day.
“I noticed that in Japan, both cafés and tea-focused venues often stay open much later into the day, and there is a very natural rhythm in how people consume drinks: typically, a coffee in the morning, and then something like matcha in the afternoon,” says Damien.
“At Hikari, a large part of our menu is built around matcha-based drinks and other tea-focused options, which are actually very well suited for after 3pm. Because of that, it felt quite natural for us to extend beyond the traditional Melbourne café hours.
“We wanted to create a space where customers could still enjoy high-quality drinks later in the day, not just in the morning rush.”
While opening slightly later than many cafés – 8am on weekdays and 9am on weekends – the minimalist café and homewares store often extends hours late into the evening, pending demand.
“We’ve found a balance that works both for customer demand and operations,” says Damien.
“We typically open until 6pm during winter and extend to around 7pm during daylight saving in summer. This allows us to capture that afternoon and early evening crowd while maintaining consistency in quality and service.”
Although these non-coffee drinks, like Damien’s aforementioned variations on matcha, along with other staples like hojicha, are often more heroed later in the day, Damien says coffee trade also continues later into the afternoon and evening.
“It became clear through daily trade that there was demand to be open later,” he says.
“We kept seeing people come in during the late afternoon asking if coffee and matcha was still available. There were customers who genuinely wanted quality coffee later in the day, not just convenience. That was the moment we felt the demand was bigger than we initially expected.”
Opportunities and challenges
Jack says one of the biggest challenges with operating for 24 hours a day – and a challenge he envisions for any venue with extended hours – is the same as one of the main issues currently facing the entire industry.
Staffing.
“At our last look we employed 92 staff here. We’re a small business at heart, but that’s a big business level of staffing,” says James.
“Since we’re 24 hours, we need to have a lot of people to call on to staff those hours, and that comes with its own set of challenges. When you start employing more people, especially in those tough overnight shifts, it’s difficult to ensure everyone who works there shares the same values of the business.”
But he believes the opportunities of opening earlier or later than the competition outweighs the challenges – especially for bakeries, which will already have some staff attending early in the day.
“You’re paying the same rent whether you open at 4am or 6am. As long as you can find people to staff it, and as long as you can get some sales in that time, it’s a great opportunity to grow – especially in places where the early morning cafés might not be as common,” he says.
“For bakeries, there’s another element of you already have staff there in the early morning actually baking, you’re already using electricity and most of the equipment is already up and running.
“Opening earlier could be a great opportunity for bakeries that are on busier roads because there will be that demand from people heading to work early to want to drop in and have a coffee.”
That demand for quick coffee in the morning is only being exacerbated by the growing popularity of convenience around the country.
“Drive-thru coffee places seem to be opening up everywhere. There are so many people that are time poor in the mornings – especially tradies really early – that being able to get a coffee and not leave your car is attractive,” he says.
“If you’re opening earlier, you have to prioritise different things than, say, a normal brunch rush where people have more time to sit down and wait.
“We aim to be really fast with the coffee as we’re aware these customers are on their way to work and may not have a lot of time to wait, they’ve got somewhere to be, so we want to get coffees up as quickly as we can to keep them moving.”
He adds it’s important to have supportive partners and suppliers, just in case anything goes wrong.
“We’ve had the same coffee supplier for the past 20 years; it’s a South Australian roaster called Aroma Fresh Coffee. They’re great,” says James.
“That early morning daypart is where a lot of our coffee business is. If you’re going to be operating earlier or longer hours, you definitely need support from your suppliers.
“We’ve had times where the coffee machine has basically blown up in the middle of the night, but we’ve been able to get a technician out in 20 minutes – it actually happened only last year.”
For Damien at Hikari, the opportunities of later trade revealed themselves when he and the other business owners dialled in to exactly what their vision for the venue was, and listening to the needs of customers.
“What sets Hikari apart is that we’re not built around the traditional coffee-first, morning-focused model that many CBD cafés follow. From the beginning, we’ve taken a slightly different approach, shaped by both Melbourne café culture and Japanese tea traditions,” says Damien.
“Our customer base is largely younger and more experience-driven, so instead of focusing purely on standard coffee offerings, we’ve developed a menu that leans heavily into matcha and more creative, specialty drinks.”
He says there’s also a strong emphasis on sourcing and product quality behind the scenes.
“A lot of what we offer, especially our matcha, is carefully selected from Japan, which allows us to deliver a flavour profile and experience that feels quite distinct,”
he says.
Hikari’s target demographic steers slightly away from the typical office worker. With the venue situated on Swanston Street across from the State Library of Victoria and next to the shopping hub of Melbourne Central, it means there’s plenty of people around to make the later hours advantageous.
“Our customer profile doesn’t change too much throughout the day. We’re located on one of the busiest streets in Melbourne, so there’s a constant flow of customers,” he says.
“Since our customer profile stays quite consistent throughout the day, the way we engage with customers doesn’t change dramatically between morning and later hours.”
This article appears in the June 2026 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
