Inside the new Sheridan Kiosk café at Lot Fourteen
Expect a classic but quirky take on breakfast at Table on the Terrace which is finding innovative ways to keep afloat in a cost-of-living crisis.
What attracted Karen Slabbert and Shane Abbott to the Lot Fourteen Sheridan Kiosk space was its connection to the Lot Fourteen precinct entirely.
The duo co-owns The Flour Store at Port Noarlunga and is opening a new café, Table on the Terrace, this coming Monday.
“It wasn’t necessarily the move for the CBD, it was the Lot Fourteen opportunity, having a long history in data analytics” Karen explains of her work history.
“When I immigrated [to Australia], I found out about Lot Fourteen’s existence, and have been excited ever since and watching it go and grow.
“So then, when I saw this opportunity [to open a café at the premises] come up on LinkedIn, I called Shane and said: ‘We’ve got it. We’ve got to give it a go. It’s against all odds because it’s just little you and me from Port Noarlunga, but we’ve got to give it a go’.”
A taste of what will feature on the Table on the Terrace menu
When Community – the previous Sheridan Kiosk café – closed in June last year, owner Brett Hicks-Maitland told CityMag it was due to a list of cost-of-living pressures and a lack of foot traffic.
When submitting the tenancy for the spot, Brett told CityMag it was “based on the promise of a 16-storey innovation tower housing 2500 tenants due for completion ‘early 2024’ and most importantly, a world-class Aboriginal Arts and Culture Centre [Tarrkarri]”.
You might like
“Hundreds of tradies on site for years, and thousands of pedestrians daily. We have been attempting to survive with a diminished capacity district and a cost-of-living crisis,” he told us in June last year.
Brett was also unable to “keep on top of [his] overheads and the tax department needed their money in a short space of time, which was not manageable” so he was given three weeks from notice to “pay or quit”.
We asked the new operators how they will combat these challenges, and they tell us – much like Lot Fourteen itself – the pair will adapt and be innovative in the way they do hospitality.
“In my other life – my non-hospo life – I deal in human movement data, which talks about footfalls at locations. I actually did a location analysis on the site to determine whether the footfall was there and what volume of footfall there was,” Karen says.
“Then I could bring that to the team and go…how would you tackle it? How would you make sure that you can get to it?
“And then we’ve done two things very differently: one, we are owner-managed – so Shane will be here every day – and secondly, we went and got a multi-award-winning venue manager in Grace [Kelliher].
“We can’t speak for what happened here previously, either good or bad…but we have a plan, and we have confidence.”
Karen says one of the main strategies to combat opening a café in a cost-of-living crisis is “digitising as much of your hospitality infrastructure that you can”.
“So by not double handling, not having double equipment means you save time and if you save time, you’re saving wages and that’s the best you can do,” she says.
Table on the Terrace will also use the Adelaide-made point-of-sale system, MyVenue, as a way to digitise its ordering system.
Subscribe for updates
“Each [Lot Fourteen] office…will have their own little [MyVenue] QR code that they can order from their desk, select a time that they want to pick up their food and coffee, and then they’ll be ready when they get here,” Shane says.
“[We’re] trying to make it easy for the people that don’t necessarily get a lunch break, or they’ve only got 10 minutes before meetings. They can pick it up on their way to make it easier for them.”
While there will still be regular table service, this QR code system will also be available on each table when dining at Table on the Terrace.
On building a café in a cost-of-living crisis, Karen also says to avoid being “penny wise and pound foolish” and they will be investing “in the right things that give you bang for your buck” which includes milk on tap.
“Instead of buying 100 two litre bottles of milk a week, we’re having a keg of milk – which is the exact same milk into a keg – [and we’ll] pour it off the tap, which means we’re environmentally friendly by not recycling [bottles of milk],” Shane says.
“We become the dealer for Lot Fourteen [as] those offices that have their own coffee machines can come and buy their milk from us, grab a glass bottle, just come back and fill it up – same with the coffee.
“[We’re] expanding the horizons outside of the four walls to those hundreds of offices that are only metres away by selling the coffee, selling the milk, selling alternative milks.”
The food offering, boasting “quirky elegance”, will have a range of breakfast and lunch classics. It will include scrambled eggs straight from The Flour Store, burrata, chicken burgers and more, all made from locally sourced produce.
The fit-out is simple with wooden chairs and tables, and highlights the excessive natural light beaming through the glass exteriors.
“We’re still making it casual enough for a parent and their kids that are walking past to go to the Space Centre. We don’t want it to be this high-end restaurant that’s only fit out for businessmen and women,” Shane says.
“We want it to be for everyone, but we want everyone to feel special when they’re here.”
Table on the Terrace is opening this Monday and will be open from Monday to Friday from 7am until 4pm.
Connect with the business on Instagram for more.