JULIE’S no gambler, but she punted everything on Port Adelaide. House, savings … everything went to buy Lipson’s Tearooms, on Lipson Street.
This was 10 years ago.
Then, no-one was saying the Port was happening.
“It didn’t cost me a lot to buy the business, but I was a single mum with two kids and a mortgage,” she says.
“I had to remortgage. Repayments were only about $100 a week, but it was a stretch. I mean, my kids lived on two-minute noodles for-ev-er! And they were Franklin two-minute noodles, which were 10c a packet! It was terrible.
“To buy this place, I had to put my whole house up.
“I had a little bit of cash, but everything I had went into buying the place. I did not even have enough money to put in the till when we opened. What we did was rustle around the bottoms of bags, and the bottoms of people’s glove boxes, for loose change. We rustled up a few hundred dollars to start off the float.
“My brother Andrew and I worked for six months without taking any money out of the place. It was tough.”
Still, it was a good bet.
Annual turnover when Julie came in was $104,000. Now, 12 months’ wages is more than $150,000 … and business just gets better.
Lipson’s is hip.
Big-beamed, fiery red on one main wall and red-bricked on the other, solidly timbered underfoot and high-brow coffee culture oozing everywhere, it’s at once a picture of where the Port has come from and where it’s going.
And it’s no accident.
Most days, Julie wakes at 6.30am, a few miles away.
Breakfast, eaten while she works, is toast. (Like many professional cooks she doesn’t much bother with her own meals - cold baked beans straight from the can is a standard. See footnote >)
Customers start sneaking in the back way soon after she arrives.
If her car‘s there, they‘re there.
“We never oil the back door, here … never … we leave the hinge squeaky so we can hear people coming in,” she says.
“Regulars will come in and stand in the kitchen and chat.
“It’s great. Really.”
First among the first served is Philippe - if Julie is there early enough.
“He’s been coming here three years. Philippe came directly from France - originally through one of the shipping agents just around the corner - so he is a full-on Frenchie. His office is two streets over.
“He detours, comes down our street, checks to see if I’m here … if I am, he’ll pull up, come ‘round the back and come in.”
It’s partly the coffee and partly the proprietor that pulls the people.
Her personality is in everything.
And Julie is at the centre of most of the conversations that happen at Lipson Street.
“I’m sort of like the water cooler is to an office,” she says.
“You know how everyone stands ‘round the water cooler and exchanges information … well, it’s the coffee machine. Being the operator of the coffee machine, I get information from all sorts of people.”
She’s a ready listener and, for some, an agony aunt.
“They are for me too … like, they’ll come in and say ’Good morning’ and ‘How are you’ and all the rest of it, and I’ll say ’Fine’ … and the real regulars will look me straight in the eyes and say ’No, you’re not fine’.”
Julie is the café’s fourth owner in its 21 years of continuous operation.
She bought it from Val Downton. Val did the hard yards - changing the menu from $2 pasties to $6 baguettes, getting the alcohol licence and moving tables out front.
That said, Julie’s put in a lot of hard yakka.
On her own, she pulled up the fake cork - which was glued down - and sanded and polished the floorboards beneath.
She painted one wall beige, then chilli red.
The kitchen chairs stuck up by the roof beams were her doing, too - real life still life.
Originally, the place was an engineering workshop with dirt floors.
The timber floor only went in when it became the Lipson Tearooms, those 21 years ago. (When Val had to change the name, she just added the apostrophe and the s.)
Oil-soaked dirt is a few feet down.
Tea and scones went out of fashion with the Lipson Street crowd many years back.
A San Marino machine lords over the place.
“Coffee pays our wages, for the whole lot, for the whole year,” Julie says, like she’s stating the obvious.
“So that machine is worth a lot of money.
“It turns it over. Thirty per cent of my sales come from that machine.”
The aging Italian works on manual and automatic … but all 10 staffers at Lipson’s are trained and required - no bones about it - to make coffee manually.
“I just think it’s good to have more control over it,” the boss says.
She taught herself - helped by occasional tips from coffee company reps - and she does the teaching. And it’s Julie who services the machine and the grinder, and sets the grind.
“I also do a final bit of blending here,” she says.
Lipson’s buys from two South Australian suppliers of coffee beans, but Julie’s not saying who. One’s in Adelaide, and one outside.
“When I first came here, I did not like the coffee at all.
“I went all ‘round Adelaide and went to all the roasters … and you’ve got to match it to your machine. I found one that I liked, but I just wanted a little kick at the end. The locals I’d found said ‘We can do this and we can do that’, but it never was right.
“So what I used to do was get a blend from Grinders in Melbourne, and do the final blend here, with a little bit of theirs (with the locals’). I don’t do Grinders anymore because they’ve been bought out by Coke, and I will not support Coca Cola.”
More tables out front made a big impact on the bottom line - Lipson’s now seats about 80 and serves as many as 150 meals a day.
And life was made easier in the back of house.
“We put in the cool room (and a six-burner professional cooker to replace the two-burner domestic stove) … and with the original coffee machine you had your back to everybody. And the machine was over there (pointing to the back door). I was like: ‘Nuh, can’t have that.’ Especially when it was only Andrew and myself.”
Andrew, her brother, cooked for several years at Lipson’s.
He gave his all, but it was Julie’s money that went into the place and it was always her life that Lipson’s was going to dominate, for life.
“It’s serendipity,” she says, smiling hugely.
She painted the red wall red six years ago, while Andrew was out of the country.
“He walked in and nearly died of a heart attack.
“I didn’t tell him I was going to do it - I just did it (laughter). He’s quite conservative and safe, and he walked in and said: ’What’ve you done!?’
“I said: ’Red’s a good food colour. That’s why you do red.’”
And it’s her stamp.
The lofted chairs are hanging on hand-made nails that are as old as the building - the youngest on the block, it was built about 110 years ago.
Despite the height of the cathedral ceiling, the place is never cold.
There’s a lot of chatter.
That said, the amount of custom varies with the outside temperature - 28 degrees centigrade is perfect eating out weather. February and July are the weakest months - too hot or too cold, and people are reluctant to leave their offices.
And it’s still the businesspeople who carry Lipson’s.
“Breakfast, coffees and lunch,” says Julie, looking around her near-empty café at around 4pm.
“I’d love to have it full now.
“If you get more people living locally, you’ll probably get the mums coming in for coffee before picking the kids up from school, or dropping in on their way home.
“On the weekends, it should just go boonta!”
So, Julie’s all for new housing developments in the area - albeit with a few reservations about how the character of the Port has been compromised in the name of progress.
“I would have liked them to have hung on to a lot more of the heritage. I know they’re only pylons, but what was over there (indicating over her shoulder) was Century Wharf, over towards Ethelton. They started ripping them out of the water. Then the Heritage Trust people said “Oi, oi, oi, leave ‘em alone”.
“They’re cleaning up, but that’s part of the heritage. Don’t sanitise! So, there’s been some argy-bargy about that sort of stuff.
“Around by Fletcher’s slips there are some really amazing old sheds. It would be fantastic if they could leave the sheds, with their slips. Put some boardwalks around them, or something. They should leave the original, old little fingerlings - the tiny jetties that come off (the sheds) … stunning, they are.
“And they should leave the old sailing club."
Julie relishes the healthy competition presented by the Port Dock, a block away.
“This is good,” she says.
“I reckon they’ll hang in. I think they’re the only ones, of recent times, who’ve come in with what it takes to last.”
She looks forward to more places opening.
However, replicating the atmosphere of Lipson’s will not be cheap, or easy.
“If you were to walk into the shell of a new building and want it fitted out something like this, you’d have to spend half a million," Julie says.
"You can spend $70,000 just on a kitchen … how you gonna do an interior like this?”
Tricky ... bring 'em on.
 |
 |
 |
 |