Huy from A PLACE Coffee

Tell us about yourself:

Huy: My name is Huy and my wife’s name is Jo. We’ve shared a joy for coffee since we met.   We opened A PLACE Coffee six months ago at Nightingale Bowden. Jo has worked in specialty coffee in Adelaide for many years. She used to manage Exchange, a well established cafe in Adelaide. I’m very much a coffee drinker, but in terms of making it, it’s very new to me.  

How did A PLACE find its home at Nightingale Bowden?

We’d been planning a coffee business for almost five years. We wanted to take our time, to make sure we found the right area, the right space, the right community.

One random November day, I googled ‘commercial leases’ and I found this space available at Nightingale Bowden.  My background is in social work and I was working in housing at the time and we just thought ‘wow, this is amazing, it’s the perfect fit’. It was a clashing of our two worlds - coffee and housing.  The space aligns with everything we believe in. We really love being in a building that has a passion for helping to house people.

Tell us about the name:

We considered multiple names. Once we saw this space, we were thinking a lot about community, the building and what it represents -  a person’s right to have a place, a home. We want everyone who comes here to feel like they are at home, feel welcomed and comfortable. A place for coffee, a place for people, a place for community. “A PLACE” felt right.

What’s on the menu?

Our passion is in specialty coffee and the experiences around that. We are proud to partner with Market Lane Coffee and feature many guest roasters from around Australia. We’ve also got pastries made locally at Fold. Try Theropy is a sourdough baker that makes vegan ginger cardamom scrolls for us and we use his bread for our weekly specialty toasty. The ice matcha is really popular. Jo discovered it when we were in the States because the coffee was so bad she couldn’t drink it [laughs]. She tried matcha and fell in love with it.

Do a lot of your customers live upstairs?

I’d say half the building have become regular customers and then we have lots of people coming in on their way through Bowden on their way to work or to catch the train.

The space came as a ‘cold shell’. Did you spend a lot of time on the fit-out?

We didn’t do too much. We actually loved how it was. It’s very Nightingale with concrete walls and exposed pipes. We just polished the floors and installed the cabinetry. 

What’s in store for the future?

We’ve only been here for six months, and we’re really just loving getting to know everyone.  Some of the residents have been chatting about a street party and we'd love to be part of it in some way.

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Photography by yaboy.tangs