This week I paid $7.80 for a coffee. Technically it was an oat-milk mocha.
You might find one or both of these things disgusting. But behind that $7.80 coffee is the story of why WA cafes and restaurants are on the bones of their arse, even as business booms.
And the cost of that coffee is just the canary coughing up coal dust. The story starts in Quindalup, where I had brunch at Goanna Bush Cafe on WA Day. You can read my review in next Sunday’s STM, but the short version is this: Goanna Bush Cafe does the best brunch in the area.
Go there. Where things got interesting was when I ordered a takeaway for the drive to Perth. Upon hearing the words “that’ll be $7.
80”, I paid with the nonchalance of someone who fears being perceived as a tight-arse, while silently wondering if my cup would be inlaid with opals or diamonds. As a journalist who has written my fair share of “is this WA’s most expensive cup of coffee” stories over the years, I’ll admit I also felt a minor professional thrill. Could this, in fact, be WA’s most expensive cup of coffee? And, if so: why was it so? The answer to that question gave me fresh appreciation of the razor-thin margins in WA hospitality right now.
The industry faces the same challenges as over east, where Neil Perry and others are sufficiently concerned that they’ve formed the Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association to campaign for changes to migration, tax and industrial relations. Watch this space. Goanna Bush Cafe is own.
