Spilling the Beans on running a successful café with Cheeky Bean Espresso

For Cheeky Bean Espresso Bar in West End, Queensland, consistency is key to success. It’s what has separated the café from the competition, helped build a loyal customer base of regulars, and given owner Cathy Bush the confidence to open a second location down the road at Montague Markets.

“It’s very difficult to get a consistently good coffee, so when people can get a coffee exactly the way they want it every time, it brings them back,” Cathy says.

“We combine that with quick service and a strong focus on personal relationships. We know people’s names and remember their coffee order within the first couple of visits.”

The first Cheeky Bean is a small, ‘hole in the wall’ style café with an emphasis on coffee. Cathy says it built a good reputation across West End, which inspired Montague Markets to ask Cheeky Bean to open a second location there, rather than the other way around.

“People were coming to the original shop from the other end of Montague Street, so now we have a shop set up closer to where a lot of our loyal customers were living and working,” Cathy says.

“It meant that people who drove to the original shop could now visit us on a short walk, so it increased how often they came to see us.”

Alongside coffee, Cheeky Bean offers a variety of milk options, including a range of dairy milks and plant-based alternatives from Lactalis Foodservice. Working with Lactalis Foodservice provides Cheeky Bean with a breadth of dairy products for different customer requirements. Pauls Professional Café Crema serves as a full cream milk specifically crafted to bring out the best in coffee, while Pauls Professional Skinny Milk and the lactose-free Pauls Zymil cater to specific customer dietary requirements.

“It’s important to have a diverse and high-quality milk offering so people can have a coffee exactly how they want it, and that’s what brings them back,” Cathy says.

While the Montague Markets were being built, Cheeky Bean operated a mobile cart at the construction site to keep the tradies caffeinated until the café opened in September 2020.

While COVID-19 presented may challenges to the coffee industry last year, Cheeky Bean was not deterred or even slowed down. Cathy says business is booming more than ever.

“With our focus on coffee, we’re well suited to takeaway, which meant even when people were only allowed out to walk their dogs, they’d walk past our café and pick up a coffee,” Cathy says.

“Our model is a small footprint and efficient working space, which is set up so the staff can still easily have that personal interaction with the customer.”