Flinders Street café Boy & Bloom has moved a few doors up the road, expanding into a larger space with a refreshed menu.
At 10am, Boy & Bloom’s office rush begins.
The café attracts a lineup of people who snake through its space, all thirsty for a caffeine hit.
This crowd used to gather at 88 Flinders Street, but Boy & Bloom founders Michael and Jessica Morphett recently moved the venue eastward to 112.
The move was a necessity given the plans Michael and Jessica were shown for work to be done at 88, which would “put a lift basically in the middle of our service area,” Michael says. “We can’t work around that.”
Thankfully, a space 50 metres down the road became available, which also has a larger kitchen and enough room for B&B regulars to sit comfortably (perhaps while reading the latest CityMag).
The Boy & Bloom team decided to “bite the bullet” and pack up shop.
“There was a lot of work to be done at that new space, but we just decided to… go for it,” Michael says.
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“The space that we’ve moved to is the space that we’ve always envisioned for our city café.
“We’re finally there with the new kitchen and ready to crank things up a notch as far as food goes, which is exciting.”
Also cranking the coffees up a notch
Aside from not needing to delete Flinders Street in the address box on Instagram, 112 has the additional aesthetic benefits of high ceilings and a concrete floor.
“We decided to do a nice polished concrete look, which is something that I’ve wanted from day dot — going into when we bought our first café at 88,” Michael says.
The menu has also had a makeover, with inclusions like a barbecue jackfruit burger, a katsu sandwich and zucchini corn fritters standing amongst other brunch classics.
The most appealing new menu item, in CityMag‘s opinion, is the chorizo with a black bean salsa, romesco sauce and smashed avo, plated delicately on a slice of grilled corn bread, with colourful aromatics tingling all senses.
Yummm
The pandemic was a meteorite that hit all hospo businesses hard. For Boy & Bloom, because of its CBD locale and the fact they decided to open at the beginning of 2020, COVID was less a bump in the road than a jolted stop.
“COVID happened, which just undid all of our work that we put in, and the reputation that we built up,” Michael says.
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“Obviously, [the] city took a long time to bounce back. It’s probably still not quite there yet, so that restricted us on the food menu that we [wanted to] come back with when we when we did start operating again.”
With the city’s mid-pandemic ghost-town days behind it, Michael says postcode 5000 is now attracting guaranteed crowds of people seeking quality food and beverage.
“It’s a consistent crowd… because obviously everyone goes to work at the same time and gets breaks every day,” Michael says.
“At the same time, you get to know your customers quite well and develop good relationships with them and have good banter with them.
“Whenever I go in there, you still see the same crew and it’s just like you’ve never left.”
A familiar face
The last time CityMag spoke with Michael, he contemplated the risk and reward that comes with opening up a business, and whether it was better to pour his money into what seemed like a more traditional option — like a house.
Three years down the track, with three thriving cafés and a newly purchased home, he agrees with his younger self. If he had his time again, he says he wouldn’t change a thing.
“Having Boy & Bloom when we got it provided us with a lot of opportunities that if we didn’t do that, if we did decide to buy a house first, we wouldn’t have had those opportunities,” Michael says.
“No regrets at all… if you have an opportunity to start a business, and it’s a good opportunity, I’d 100 per cent do business first.”
The opportunities Michael might otherwise have missed are Boy & Bloom’s southside store, and FKA, the recently opened Dawn Patrol collab venue.
Boy & Bloom is located at 112 Finders Street, and opens Monday to Friday, from 7am ’til 3pm.
Connect with the business on Instagram for more.
Dawn Patrol collabs everywhere
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