Nestled amidst the bustling cafes, bars, and restaurants of Balaclava's vibrant Carlisle St., a bright sun-yellow building beckons. But step inside All Things Equal, and you'll discover the real sunshine – a team of friendly faces. Serving up much loved brunch classics ranging from smashed avo to shakshuka, this humble café delivers more than just great food and great coffee.
All Things Equal is a social enterprise business, whose mission is to bridge the gap between people with disability and the wider community, while creating real employment opportunities.
“We've been open for about three and a half years. And in those three and a half years, our impact has been creating award wage employment for 28 people with disability. We paid over $360,000 in award wages and we've also seen four people transition into open employment” says Jess Colgan, CEO of All Things Equal. “Historically, people with disability haven't been paid award wages in work, and also, there's been a history of people with disability being placed in back of past, you know, roles or behind the scenes.”
To achieve this, All Things Equal takes an innovative approach. They use support from the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) to fund a team of staff with a background in both hospitality and disability support. This ensures a safe and supportive work environment for the cafe crew, while also allowing them to learn and develop their skills in areas they enjoy and excel at.
“We want people to just come because they enjoy good coffee and good food. Partnering with Veneziano means that we can have an incredible food and beverage offering that meets the high demand that we have in Melbourne for really high-quality products” says Jess.
“It’s Melbourne, we’ve got people who are very passionate about the quality of their coffee, and so it was important for us to get equipment that could actually take away a lot of the variability of the coffee, so that we can have consistent product going out to our customers time and time again. Now with our La Marzocco, Wally and Mahlkönig, E65 Grind By Weight we are able to do that”
And the coffee is just that, featuring Veneziano Coffee Roasters’ Elevate blend as its house blend. The coffee is a medium body, velvety all-rounder that pairs well with or without milk, including notes of milk chocolate, cashews, spice and a honey finish.
“Veneziano has always been a leader in the specialty coffee industry, and we’ve always taken pride in our training and standards. One thing we really wanted to do was to remove as many barriers and safety risks behind the machine to make sure that making coffee is accessible to everyone that works here” says Craig Dickson, CEO of Veneziano Coffee Roasters. “As the father of a daughter with special needs, this is close to my heart, and it is great to be able to support this cause, and to be able to donate coffee, as well as using our industry partners, a big shout out to La Marzocco for coming to the party here.”
La Marzocco's Wally Milk automatic milk steamer, with its touch-free operation removes the risk of burns, while maintaining an incredible milk quality, while the Mahlkönig E65 Grind By Weight, delivers consistently exact coffee doses, to ensure that the espresso is always pouring fantastically.
Things won’t end here though, so what does the future look like?
“We've got a wait list of 84 people desperate to get into their first hired job, and that doesn't even scratch the surface. We've got multiple people that contact us every week looking for work. So, the future is growing our catering services both to corporates and the community, that provides us with a lot more consistent and highlevel revenue and gets us right across Melbourne, which is really exciting. And in the next year we hope to open a second cafe, in another location. So that'll mean that we've got more community to build and more people to get into jobs.”
Once again a big shout out to our partners La Marzocco and Brewtech.
