stores are predominantly in Perth – around 50 per cent are in the CBD area or just adjacent to it, such as West Perth, a satellite business area of the city. Within the CBD the cafes can be found in a niche locations, such as the art gallery, law courts, the maritime museum, and ABC studios. In addition, Caffissimo was a pioneer of placing cafes in city office towers. “We were among the first to go into foyers of tower blocks. And since then, remarkably sites still come up,” Barr said. Shopping centres are also favourite locations for Caffissimo, however, not in the majors, Barr said, because the rental levels are “astronomically high”. “The ones that work best for us are the neighbourhood shopping centres where you have a Woolies or Coles as the anchor tenant, then the usual selection of shops; easy to go into, easy to get out of, easy to park. They work well and the rents are easier.” The chain’s growth has also been boosted by Perth’s increasing urban sprawl. “This market here is growing so much. The whole metropolitan area – it’s bigger than most cities on the planet, in length not in population. The length of the city on the coast has just grown so much,” Barr said. Conversely the cafes’ footprints are consistently small, nothing over 130sqm, “but we could take a postage stamp really”, Barr said. As the smallest stores have low overheads and rents, they trade better he believes. All the cafes are franchised and have no marketing levy as chain is ‘site driven’ Barr said. “The way we figured it out was if we get a very good site, the advertising isn’t critical. So if you get a good site, you get thousands of people everyday who walk past it; it’s going to work, it’s not going to fail.” As the cafe offer is 70 per cent beverages and 30 per cent food being mainly cake and light meals, a lot of time is invested on ensuring quality. Another reason is that people in Perth are very knowledgeable about coffee quality, Barr said. This means that good equipment, including top quality espresso machines and coffee grinders, is imperative. “The days of just using entry level equipment, over here anyway, that’s well gone. We look at the equipment side of it now, the quality of extraction, and baristas are well trained.” Caffissimo has two trainers to maintain its standards. Enhancing the beverage offer, Caffissimo is will launch its own range of coffee capsules. “We’ve got our multi-award winning coffee in them. We make them ourselves on site. We roast the coffee in Perth, we make the capsules in Perth, so the coffee’s really fresh,” Barr said. The pods are compatible with the popular makes of coffee machines and will be available in 18 varieties. Initially, the market will be Caffissimo cafes because of its base of committed customers and captive audience, Barr said. “I think eventually it’ll be online… if it’s successful, the market is going to be worldwide.” This story first appeared in Inside Retail PREMIUM issue 2042. To subscribe, click here.