Quaint cafe in Flinders St adapts to market with gelato offerings

A cozy corner cafe on Flinders St is shaking things up with plans to include a gelato shop, blending its classic charm with a refreshing new twist. Find out more.

Brett Snell and Fran Niedermaier with their cafe Little Sunshine & Co, which they hope to adapt to include a gelato shop.

Sometimes businesses have to adapt to the climate, and that is the case for Little Sunshine & Co coffee shop, which has closed off its inside large dining room as it considers diversifying into a pop-up gelataria.

There’s a sparkle in German owner Fran Niedermaier’s eyes as she sits at the cozy cafe on the corner of Flinders and Fletchers Sts besides her partner Brett, as she discusses plans to return to her origins as a gelato maker by the end of the year.

The cafe sells wraps, toasties, baguettes, as well as sweet dishes such as teacakes, frangipani tarts, cruller, and almond croissants, and its owner prides herself on using authentic ingredients like one would use in the home kitchen.

“I tried to use quality ingredients and that’s important for us as a family at home, what my children eat,” Fran said.

Food items from the Little Sunshine & Co Bakery owned by Fran Niedermaier.

“And I find that ever since Covid a lot of people actually care where the food comes from again.

“It was worldwide, and my sister says the same in Germany, people care where the food comes from and they’re willing to pay a price.”

Food items from the Little Sunshine & Co Bakery owned by Fran Niedermaier.

Fran moved straight to Townsville from Germany, and worked in the hospitality industry, becoming an ice cream chef at Juliette’s before co-owning Bakehouse on Eyre in 2019.

But after stepping away from the North Ward business, she began her new corner cafe business in 2021 when she was 32 weeks pregnant, and since then the cafe has thrived with a small clientele of locals in the area, as well as fitness and social groups passing through the area.

Food items from the Little Sunshine & Co Bakery owned by Fran Niedermaier.

Brett’s family has seen the changes to the neighbourhood for more than 75 years as they ran a motorcycle dealership, and his father built the building in 1972.

That section of Flinders St has increasingly become more desirable in recent years as old railway infrastructure has been replaced with apartments, a cinema, florists and a dance studio which brings in a stream of foot traffic.

Food items from the Little Sunshine & Co Bakery owned by Fran Niedermaier.

They wanted to keep the cafe humble and manageable without being crowded and overwhelming, so much so that even though they bought proper street signage to advertise themselves on Flinders St, they somehow kept postponing its installation.

Little Sunshine & Co cafe has a delicious selection of sweet treats

“We wanted to have a small cafe that makes high quality coffee with a quick turnaround,” Fran said.

“And then we got so busy, so we thought we had the spare space in the back … let’s put more tables in.”

Food items from the Little Sunshine & Co Bakery owned by Fran Niedermaier.

She said after three years, the couple had come to the realisation that it was not really viable to take up space on a dining room for a corner cafe which did not offer full breakfast and lunch meals.

So they reconsidered the space that they had and their trading hours of 6.30am to 1pm, and Fran’s previous experience as a Juliette’s ice cream chef.

Little Sunshine & Co is at 679 Flinders Street.

Originally published as Quaint cafe in Flinders St adapts to market with gelato offerings