The name was initially as much a reference to their quality coffee offering as to the potential riskiness of opening an artisan bakery-cafe in the largely corporate southern end of Docklands, but since Long Shot opened around eight months ago, the queues have been steadily growing.

Part of the Walker Evans Baker Restaurant Group that includes fellow Collins Square residents Bar Nacional and Chiara, Long Shot  belongs to the increasing new breed of food court cafes – forget soggy focaccias and bain-marie salads. Here, everything, right down to the bread, is made in-house, overseen by talented head pastry chef Shaun Quade.

Quade has worked as head chef and pastry chef around the country, including a stint at the Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld, and The Brix. At Long Shot, he turns out an almost Willy Wonka-worthy selection of imaginative pastries, cakes and drinks that change daily.

"When you have a lot of the same customers every day – and I'd say 90 per cent of ours are office workers from Collins Square – you need to keep things interesting," he says.

As well as house-made cereal (served with activated seeds and nuts and Elgaar Farm milk, $12.50), the breakfast fare here could never be accused of being dull. Sure, there are toasties (usually including ham, cheese and tomato or sausage and bacon, $7), mini quiches ($5) and Quade's made-daily croissants and pain au chocolate ($4.20). But then there's the sweet stuff: the changing line-up could include ginger and lime loaf ($3.50 a slice), candied apple scrolls ($4.50), light-as-air donuts filled with orange creme Catalana custard ($3) or giant candy corn and brown butter cookies ($3.50).

Interestingly, Quade says the baked goods tend to sell well later in the week.

"We've found that at the start of the week people are very healthy and then it changes. We'll start the week selling lots of yoghurt and fruit and cereal and then from Wednesday to Friday, people start relaxing and ordering the donuts," he says. "And we can tell when it's pay day because then people will go nuts."

Once the warm weather returns Quade's popular fermented soda drinks ($4.50) will reappear on the menu. Last summer his Asian-inspired sodas proved a huge hit.

"It was really just another way of wanting to do everything in-house, and you can make whatever flavour you want this way," he says. "It took a while to take off, as people are not used to seeing that, but last summer our cherry and vanilla soda was hugely popular. Once the cherries are back I'll be making that again. I'm still working on a cola recipe, which I haven't got quite right."

His old-school lemon and lemon thyme and ginger beer with kaffir lime are also popular.

Until then, there's a changing roster of flavoured iced teas ($4.50) and, of course, the St Ali coffee that ensures a massive queue in the mornings.

"It's become a busy little spot," Quade says of the tiny space whose queue lengths far exceed the cafe's dimensions. "We were initially a bit unsure as we opened about three or four months after the food court downstairs, so people were used to getting coffee there, but once you do good coffee, people will come." If you brew it, they will come.