Two local businesses have pivoted during lockdown, writes Caitlin Sloan
The Morning Brew turned to full-time catering
For Roseanna Griffin at The Morning Brew, commuters were her bread and butter.
Prior to stay-at-home orders encouraging employees to work from home, she would park her coffee van at Helensburgh train station at 5.30am each day before making the rounds from Thirroul to Engadine.
“I’ve lost the majority of my [regular] customers,” Roseanna said.
“I no longer go down to the station anymore because there’s no one going into the city.”
During last year’s lockdown, Roseanna began delivering milk, bread and hot coffees to doorsteps to get by. This time, she’s turned her coffee van into a full-time catering business.
“I thought that this time I could do something different,” she said.
“I thought… let’s just use the coffee van and the products I sell to my tradies and my customers and turn it into a catering style [business].”
The Morning Brew now offers an assortment of catering boxes, including breakfast platters, various salads and lunch options, and goodie boxes for those with a sweet tooth.
For Halloween, she’ll be teaming up with other local businesses to put together a spooky treat box, set to send the Trick or Treaters wild.
“I’m teaming up with a few businesses that make personalised cookies as well as craft boxes,” she said.
“It will have a Halloween-style donut in it, it will have a Halloween-style cookie, it’ll have chocolates, lollies, hot chocolate mix, marshmallows.”
Roseanna said the community’s support has persuaded her to continue catering indefinitely.
“I’ve been very blown away by the support and the continuous customers buying for their families, for their friends,” she said. “It’s been amazing.”
Binners launched a Farm Food Truck
It began as a bold idea formed around the dinner table in September 2020. Now Binners Farm Food Truck has been serving coffees, burgers, fish and chips and more for 10 months.
The truck is parked at the front of Binners Farm fruit market, which has served the Helensburgh community since 1975 under owners Kevin and Denise Binner – originally as an egg farm. Their new service aims to offer both locals and passing motorists a meal made of the same fresh produce found in store.
With Covid-19 restrictions preventing people from travelling to work or exploring our region on weekends, the Food Truck has relied on local support to keep them afloat.
“[We have a] really loyal customer base which has been awesome, I think that’s probably kept us going through Covid,” Nicole Binner, who runs the business alongside her parents, said.
“It’s been the locals coming back, because the people driving past has stopped.”
Nicole said that the excitement of having a new takeaway option – which largely uses local products, including bread from the local bakeries and meat from Helensburgh’s butchers – has not worn off in the community.
“We’ll always keep it affordable, it will always be high-quality ingredients and consistent,” she said.
“We are so grateful to Helensburgh and how they have supported and continue to support our little truck.”