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Café culture is funny in Melbourne, where the largest companies become the underdogs. Gemima Cody investigates whether big necessarily means bad
Ah, Melbourne. We love a bit of small. We’re not happy unless our bars are cupboard sized and our artisan muffins have been made in a share-flat upright cooker. And so, big coffee companies like Genovese are often mistakenly assumed to be faceless corporations. But did you know that 40 years on, it’s the same three Genovese family members that taste, adjust and okay each batch of their flagship Super Brazil blend, every day? Ben Toovey does.
He's been working for the stalwart company for the past couple of years, training baristas, sourcing beans from cup of excellence auctions (the best beans available) and, in response to demand, creating small batch seasonal blends and single origin roasts to complement the main product. “With Super Brazil, we aim for consistency. Every batch is roughly blended to a recipe, but it’s then tasted by the three family members and adjusted by them, so it always tastes like Super Brazil,” says Toovey. Even he’s not allowed near the main blend. “I’d probably have to marry one of them! If one of the Genovese family aren’t here, we can’t roast. Simple.”
Their main 120kg roaster looks like a weapon of mass destruction, but Toovey does his thing for cafés like the Old Barber Shop (Richmond), the Wall (Balaclava) and Izakaya Den (City) on a dinky lil roaster next door. “We get the best of what’s available each season and then develop blends that work well, so with these batches, the flavours will always change.”
Toovey makes a fair argument: “The reason that Genovese became so big is because of 40 years of hard work. After that long, perhaps some of the current smaller Melbourne roasters will be bigger too.” But he doesn’t want to see the industry as a battle of big versus small. He, like every dude from South to North Melbourne, loves the game and is striving to move with technology, learn more and make the coffee better. “What the Americans do well is share information and create community rather than competition. We're trying to do that.”
So maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to get on our high horses because a brand isn’t new and tiny. Remember friends, sizeism is wrong.
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