Feeding the need for coffee in the western suburbs

If ever you find yourself living in an area without a reliable source of good coffee then you might want to follow the lead of Rianna and Jack Bingham.

Forget making your espresso at home. It will never make the grade. It will only ever make a mess.

Just secure yourself a shelf full of your favourite coffee beans, brighten it all up with a few tins of Dulux and open your own café.

Just be warned. Rianna and Jack have made it look very easy. I suspect that for most people it isn’t.

I forgot to mention one detail. You only have 100 days. This is the time limit that this young couple imposed on themselves after moving out to Elermore Vale. This period includes, Rianna tells me, the many hours spent wandering around Wallsend, trying to spot the perfect location by peering into empty shop windows.

Not that there are many. Even before this excellent little café opened a few weeks ago, there was a lively, genial atmosphere in this area that always distinguished it from the trendier postcodes. There are fewer empty windows around here now than on Beaumont Street.

Estabar

Equium Social

Corner Lane

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Wildflower, Jack and Rianna’s first venture into the coffee business, is that it was born in the most unlikely of places, blooming out of their imagination rather than an empty shop window.

What now serves Glee coffee and seeded cream cheese bagels with maple walnuts and chives ($6), from a sleek and stylishly designed shopfront, was only a month ago an abandoned furniture store. When the Binghams contacted the property owner, they say he didn’t believe that they could turn the dusty old place into a café, let alone complete the project in just over three months.

Don’t underestimate the Binghams. Aside from the concept and the design, Jack and Rianna have officially brought the coffee drought around here to an end as well.

The locals are laughing. They’re sitting on milk crates out the front, sipping the best coffee this postcode has ever had, wondering how they ever lived without it.

Up on the only shelf inside sits The Goods blend by Central Coast roasters Glee. Brothers Ben and Chris Gleeson started out in the coffee world like the Binghams – with an effective combination of imagination and discipline, bound together by the strength of family. Like several other reputable roasteries these days, Glee doesn’t let any old café serve their coffee. 

Of all the house blends being ground in cafes around Newcastle, there are very few that are as reliable as The Goods. Same quality, different day. It does, strangely enough, always prove to be exactly what the name suggests.

Wildflower is no different. From between old walls and ends, it’s always exciting when new beginnings grow.