By Jessica Yun
Australia’s largest cafe chain is in the midst of a brand transformation so quiet that you’re not supposed to notice.
“We’ve got brass plaques out the front, no logos on uniforms, no logos on menu. You can’t see ‘Coffee Club’ anywhere from where you’re sitting,” Coffee Club boss Scott Meneilly said.
Australia’s biggest cafe chain, The Coffee Club, hopes to shake off its reputation of being daggy.
“We don’t want people to shop by brand, we just want them to show up because they like the space.”
Founded in 1989 in Brisbane and expanding into a network of 250 stores in Australia and 151 internationally, The Coffee Club has become known as the neighbourhood cafe with the cookie-cutter black and white facade frequented by suburban families and a predominantly older demographic.
Meneilly is aware of the need to shake off this image to thrive in Australia’s cafe scene, which tends to favour small, independent operators and spurns chains; the smaller the hole-in-the-wall, the better your coffee.
“It’s a place where people feel comfortable taking their parents because their parents have been going there forever. It’s somewhere that a 30-year-old doesn’t look at going,” said the chief executive, who joined the business 18 months ago.
The Coffee Club is looking to elevate its brand through refurbishments to make it a more sophisticated and inviting space.
“The evolution of this brand has been not dramatic enough. It’s been too slow. So it’s fallen way behind current times.”
A former executive at Boost Juice and Retail Zoo, which operates Betty’s Burgers, Meneilly was tapped for the role after five years at Sushi Sushi where he enlisted Australian painter David Bromley to create designs that communicated the “art of sushi”.
The Coffee Club boss chief executive Scott Meneilly.
To elevate The Coffee Club into a more sophisticated premium brand, Meneilly is rolling out a program of store refurbishments as well as overhauling its core product: coffee. The cafe chain now uses beans from Three Stories, a specialty coffee blend roasted in Melbourne. A lesser-known fact is that Three Stories is also owned by The Coffee Club’s parent company, Minor DKL.
“What we’re trying to do is be the independent en masse,” said Meneilly.
The chief executive has also split the chain’s stores into three tiers, the most premium of which is “collection”, offering a more upmarket dining experience. Its new Charlotte Street, Brisbane, location doubles as a flagship for this category, catering to corporate types convening for casual meetings as well as travellers flocking from nearby hotels.
The second tier is “community”, street-situated cafes that will be refreshed to blend in with the local area, whether that’s beachside or industrial; and the third is the “classic”, the shopping centre outlets that will ditch neutral and chocolate tones for brighter colours and better lighting. Most Coffee Club stores fall under this category.
Some franchisees are sceptical, and they have reason to be: a 2020 rebrand attempt involving a light blue and orange colour palette and hand-sketched illustrations was rolled out unevenly and in many instances fell flat, failing to drive higher sales.
“How do you overcome that? Prove it,” said Meneilly. Starting with a handful of corporate stores, completed refurbishments have taken same-store sales growth of -3.7 per cent over 16 weeks to 30 per cent over nine weeks.
The Coffee Club in Morayfield, Queensland.
There are 50 stores in the pipeline for refurbishment between now and the end of the year, with a further 80 slated for 2025. “With a robust brand transformation, it’s got to come at pace,” he said. “What we want to do is have a bit of a surprise attack on you.”
Meneilly acknowledges the menu, which has been largely unchanged, featuring the typical brunch classics such as eggs benedict and the big breakfast, will need rethinking, but argues customers won’t see what’s on offer if they don’t like the space and walk in to begin with.
Minor DKL is profitable, albeit less so than the year before, notching nearly $7.3 million in profits after tax in 2023, down from $10.1 million the year before, according to its latest financial report lodged to ASIC.
The reduction in profit is largely attributable to higher costs of running the business, including cost of goods, operating, administrative and occupancy expenses, all of which offset revenue gains that rose to $149.5 million from $125.7 million in 2022.
Like many other cafes and hospitality venues, the sector hardest-hit by business failures, The Coffee Club has felt the effects of cost of living pressures on food orders. “We’ve seen coffee sales increase, but the add-ons decrease,” said Meneilly.
“We’re trying to bring in new people. So whilst the add-on sales are reducing, we’re bringing in a new customer group that’s wanting to trial us. The thing that we are very conscious on, though, is value.”
The Coffee Club, which leans heavily on its Australian roots, is owned by Thailand-based company Minor Food. Minor also owns Sizzler, which officially closed its last Australian store in 2020 after buckling under pandemic lockdowns.
Borrowing some of Sizzler’s nostalgia and injecting it into The Coffee Club in the form of a limited time resurgence of Sizzler’s beloved cheese toast has already generated the kind of buzz and excitement necessary to revive a “sleeping giant” brand.
A limited number of items from the menu of shuttered restaurant Sizzler will be revived at The Coffee Club.Credit: Edwina Pickles
The door is open to making it a permanent fixture on Coffee Club menus.
“Before lunchtime on the first day, we had already sold thousands of Cheese Toast across our stores,” said a Coffee Club spokesperson. “This is a great insight we are using to guide us into the future, both through our overall brand and national campaigns.”
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