Ormiston Café is located in the new suburb of Flat Bush in Auckland, NZ and was opened by Sanjay and Jyoti Luthra in 2017. Offering a full kitchen menu alongside a well-stocked cabinet, Ormiston Café has become a hit with the locals with their motto; ‘a lot can happen over a cup of coffee.’
What do your customers love about Ormiston Café?
People love our friendly staff who are welcome to everyone. We cater to young people, elderly customers, even fur babies. Being the local café for our community is very important to us and we’ve tried to incorporate that philosophy into the whole business. Our logo showcases the iconic Ormiston Bridge and we have seen the suburb expand around us since we opened.
What did you do before you owned Ormiston café?
Before we opened Ormiston Café we owned a franchise café for five years. The systems with the franchise taught us a lot about operating a successful hospitality business and we have been able to implement these lessons with our own brand at Ormiston and our most recent opening - Ground floor Café in Manukau.
What’s important for you when it comes to coffee?
Consistent quality and reliability in supply. When you have customers who really care about their daily coffee, they always let us know if it’s not as good as normal. With Ozone Coffee we have consistency from the espresso equipment, barista training and coffee beans themselves.
What is something a first-time customers has to try?
From the kitchen, our mushrooms or chicken waffles are crowd favourites. But for something really special you have to give our Freakshakes a go. The Oreo Freakshake is the most popular and loaded up with chocolate sauce, Oreo biscuits and wafers!
How did you manage, adapt and cope with the challenging environment of 2020 and the two Auckland lockdowns?
2020 has definitely been a very challenging for us. However, thanks to our beautiful community, we were able to survive. Our customers, suppliers, landlord and especially our team at Ormiston Café have helped us get through, to have the strength to fight back and to keep moving. We made a few changes to our business model to adapt to the ‘new norm’. For example, we’d never tried online ordering or deliveries before, but once Covid hit, we built these services into our offering with much success. During the full lockdowns in Auckland, we took some time to review our business policies and procedures and spend time with our families – something which we never seemed to find enough time for in the past!