When best friends Eugene Coghlan, Alastair Hall, Marc Nanfro, and Jared Bryan decided to open their second café, the idea was to create an intimate, relaxed space that focused on bringing quality coffee to the local community.
“Buddy Espresso’s main offering is the coffee. We’re a very beverage-focused café. We offer Toby’s Estate’s Brunswick as our house blend and rotate their single origins for our filter coffee,” Eugene says.
The custom-built eucalyptus green La Marzocco PB Linea is headed by Michael Healey, a hospitality expert who roasted coffee for nine years in his native New Zealand.
Michael, like the rest of the staff, was hired based on his personality as well as his skillset in order to create a tightknit, collaborative atmosphere.
“We’ve handpicked our staff so that the team gels really well. It creates a great energy in the shop and that positive vibe spreads to our customers,” Eugene says.
Buddy Espresso takes its name from the relationship between its owners and is the group’s second venture, after opening Jack and Daisy in Pascoe Vale eight years ago.
“My three partners were groomsmen at my wedding. We’re all best friends, so the name is a play on that,” Eugene says.
When it came to establishing Buddy Espresso, the group of friends spotted a vacant property at 12 Lloyd Street in Strathmore and viewed it as the perfect spot to open a local café. Since then, Eugene says the team is thoroughly enjoying being part of a community of traders in the area.
“Strathmore is a true village. We get our meat from the butcher next door and our fruit and veg from the shop two doors down. It’s a full local shop network, which is really nice to be part of, and our customers are a part of that too,” he says.
As for food, Buddy Espresso serves a traditional café menu with many classics, but Eugene says the simplest items are the most popular.
“The most commonly sold item is a humble toastie that’s done really well because we use premium ingredients,” Eugene says.
The shop’s aesthetic is modern, clean, and minimalist, something which Eugene says the group of owners proudly designed and put together themselves.
“When we took the keys, it was just four walls. We designed everything from the ground up. Personally, that’s the most rewarding part – we created it all ourselves, just four best mates,” he says.
Buddy Espresso
12 Lloyd Street, Strathmore, Victoria, 3041
Open Monday to Friday 6:30am to 3:30pm, Saturday 7am to 3pm
(03) 7015 0873