After a Shocking Start to the Year, CBD Cafes Are Seeing Signs of Hope Despite Erratic Trade

Sixty per cent. That’s how much Melbourne’s CBD cafe trade is reportedly down on pre-pandemic levels. But as the worst of Omicron fades into the rear view, how are operators feeling about the year ahead?

For many, the story is the same – the only consistency they’re seeing is in the lack of consistency. But despite two years of soul-destroying Covid-related chaos, several operators Broadsheet spoke to say they are more resolute than ever, determined to bank on the CBD’s comeback, whatever it may look like.

They’re desperate for the state and city governments to encourage people to return, regularly, to the CBD and no doubt hopeful that this week’s announcement, of a new $201 million stimulus package to support struggling businesses across the state – including $10 million to relaunch the wildly successful Melbourne Money project will help.

While shopper and visitor traffic seems to be on the rise, it’s the absence of the city’s office workers that’s caused the most ongoing headaches.

Cafe owners say Mondays and Fridays are worst for day trade, thanks to a new Covid-era preference for long work-from-home weekends. Some even tap Thursday as “the new Friday”. Weekends seem to be showing signs of improvement, but according to cafe owners across the CBD, a lot depends on which nook of the city your business is in and who it caters to.

At three-week-old Dame, an airy and sophisticated new spot in Collins Place, tables are taken up by a mix of high-end shoppers, daytrippers and business meetings. It’s just gone noon on a Tuesday, and a woman in a fuchsia ensemble – with matching Chanel kitten heels, bags from Harrolds and Hermes at her feet – is enjoying the terrace.

The lunch crowd is impressive given the times, but co-owner Simon O’Regan believes it’s more to do with the venue’s proximity to international fashion houses and the Sofitel – as well as its ample Collins Place frontage – than any across-the-board uptick in CBD cafe action.

O’Regan, who has been operating in the CBD for 12 years, and in Collins Place for eight, is also the co-owner of Earl Canteen – a string of coffee houses scattered across the city from the top of Collins to Spencer Street, as well as in Emporium and QV. The outlets reliant on office workers have been hardest hit, O’Regan says, and continue to show the most dramatic swings in daily takings.

Before the pandemic, O’Regan estimates the consolidated earnings of his six venues fluctuated within a range of five per cent on any given day. Lately, he says, it’s impossible to predict. “And the further down Collins Street you go, the worse it gets.”

While Dame may be attracting a “leisure crowd” at the Paris end of Collins, at King Street Espresso in the heart of the city’s law district, where white-collar workers accounted for 75 per cent of its usual pre-pandemic trade, owner Mario Simeone says the last few months have been brutal.

“The start of the year was just unbelievably quiet,” he says. Simeone estimates that in January his venue was trading at around 40 per cent of its pre-pandemic levels. Recently, familiar faces have been returning. “Some of our regulars are literally welling up at just being able to have these normal interactions again.” As more workers returned over the last month, Simeone estimates trade jumped a heartening 20 to 30 per cent.

Simeone also emphasises he’s had it luckier than most in his neighbourhood – being close to large construction sites and the vast West Melbourne police complex, he believes, is what kept him afloat.

And walking down William Street on a midweek afternoon, you can see what he means. Under the towering office blocks, from Flinders to Latrobe streets, dozens of cafes and lunch outlets intended to cater to the thousands of office workers that once filled the buildings they’re nestled beneath, are shuttered – decorative terrace plants are dead in their pots.

At Mr Tulk, the breezy cafe at the State Library on Latrobe Street, the pot plants are still alive, but it’s a similar story of inconsistent customers and erratic trade.

Since the pandemic started, the cafe, which previously catered to thousands of nearby RMIT students and staff, has closed and reopened 10 times according to owner and manager Michael Togias.

“Every day is a random mess,” Togais says. He’s rostering on about half the staff he once needed, and day to day it’s completely unpredictable. He’s beginning to see university faculty members come through the door, but weekday trade is still sitting well below half of its pre-pandemic level. Students won’t be back on campus until next month.

On the weekends, it’s a brighter picture. “It’s strong, it’s picked up,” he says. “Families are coming for weekend lunch on a trip to the city.

“Before, a treat was going on an overseas trip; now it’s coming to the CBD.”

“People have a desire to come back and enjoy themselves, [to] get out and do what Victorians do best,” says Guy Grossi, the second-generation Melbourne restaurateur and owner of Bourke Street institution Florentino. “And that is socialise, eat, drink, go shopping. Go and see a show or go to a sporting event – we thrive on it, it’s what we do.”

It’s an attitude Grossi remembers from a bygone era and one he’d love to see return.

Revealing that he lost a cousin to Covid last year, Grossi says he understands the devastating effects of the pandemic well but believes the time is right to “turn the lights back on, come back together and enjoy each other’s company – to use the city like our back yard.

“That’s what it’s for. It’s a promenade, and that’s the spirit we need to bring back.”