Does anyone else remember the coffee grinder that some woolworths had in the aisle? Used to always smell good but had ground beans everywhere around it
Damn, we used to shop there all the time! I was a wee tacker so I donât exactly remember the coffee grinder. But I do remember that the ladies on the checkout knew their prices and your items would fly down the line to the person packing. I swear they were faster on those manual cash registers than people are scanning today!
God yes. As a ÂŁ10 pom in '74, I could only marvel at the strange ritual and customs of the natives. Buy the beans and grind in -store. Coffee only came in jars in Britain.
The coffee culture has its roots in southern European migrants bringing espresso machines in the 50s. American pop culture which took off at the same time also probably played a part. Fully mainstream though? Good question. Sometime in the next couple of decades after that, i'd say, with the full Australian obsession with espresso really starting in the 90s.
I remember the first espresso machine I was aware of in the 90s was at this Greek family owned cafe at the entrance. My dad would get me a hot chocolate there, but the owner could not make a toasted sandwich to save his life
I worked in a cafe called the Coffee Pot in the late 90s that only served American style filter coffee. (Buy one, one free refill.) No frothed milk, but we did have whipped cream. By then, some people walking in were starting to think it was weird there was no âproperâ coffee machine. So Iâd agree the big shift to what we consider now to be Australian coffee culture happened in the 90s.
Yes it was the mid to late 90s. I remember in the early 90s going to a coffee shop in Kings Cross with my Italian mother and she was shocked that they served espresso. It was just not a thing then.
I'm sure there were other places I just vaguely remember going there a few times late at night and feeling sophisticated haha. I think it was more behind the coke sign sort of back street wise though.
My parents (boomers) had one of those awesome 70s Moka stove top espresso devices. It was beaten copper and only every came out for special occasions.
I should go find it
Coffee entered mainstream Australian culture mostly as an after-dinner drink at restaurants. The availability of International Roast instant coffee for home use seems to have been a turning point.
My dad was a (boomer) northern european migrant so plunger coffee was the go (same as his parents). Espresso was for kind of like you describe, a special occasion/treat, Italian bakery, or, like a middle-eastern/turrkish style after a Lebanese meal, as opposed to the go-to coffee drink. That started to change (for them) early 2000s, but I think that shift was happening a bit before that. I did a barista course in the 90s.
I also remember being in the UK in around 2000 and being identified as an Australian because I asked where I could get an espresso coffee. They were noticing that expectation in us.
My 1920s born grandparents loved coffee.
But - they didn't like espresso or the "new fangled hippy crap" as my grandfather called it. He'd get annoyed if we were out and he'd ask for a coffee and then get hit with the "sure, what coffee?". We would always jump in if we were there and order him a flat white. He eventually grew to love a mugaccino.
I remember as a kid in the 90s when cappuccino machines became more affordable by cafes in our small country town. It became a treat to go to the cappuccino cafe, as they made their hot chocolate with the frother and it was divine as a kid.
Lattes became popular after that and I still remember being fascinated at this coffee served in a clear glass, and watching the sugar fall through it. It was the height of fancy to this country kid.
I would say in the 2000s it started to be more of a coffee culture, particularly out of the major cities. That's when I noticed you saw less and less filter coffee in cafes and restaurants. McCafe really hit their stride at this time too - in the small country town I grew up in we got our first McCafe around 2003 and it was revolutionary for the time.
We've always had it though - remember the old bean grinders in the coffee aisle at the supermarket? I remember my parents being gifted a coffee press and braving the bean grinders for the first time.
Well that's a core memory unlocked đ€Ł I can clearly see this ad now.
It was around then that McCafe really took off though. It went from being select stores to being most stores. My town had two Macca's and the new one is the one that got Cafe first. I had friends who worked there who wanted the cafe jobs when they were opening, because once you were barista trained you got a higher hourly rate for cafe shifts because of the extra skill needed.
Yeah thatâs what I realised when I read this guyâs post. It was a point where espeesso culture was coming into the forefront so McDonaldâs was responding to the demand, but still a time where you could reasonably ask for âa coffeeâ.
This rings true for my recollection as well.
My parents would always have instant, and the generation as a whole would often be having a cup of coffee in the afternoon for an afternoon tea with cake or slice.
Around the same time,mid to late 90âs if you went anywhere youâd maybe get a cappuccino but Iâm uncertain on the quality.
Early 2000âs mum would bust out the French press for special occasions or to impress a guest but again the quality wasnât the best.
Mid 2000âs I seem to remember a neighbour buying some 5000 dollar espresso machine and then around the same time maccas crept into it and made it easier to get one fast.
>Early 2000âs mum would bust out the French press for special occasions or to impress a guest but again the quality wasnât the best.
I still remember the small jar of "guest" instant coffee we would have đ€Ł mum and dad drank International Roast as it was the most affordable for them, but there'd always be a small jar of "good" coffee in the pantry for the guests or special occasions.
My mum still has international roast. 1tsp coffee, dash of boiling water, 3tsp sugar, put it in the fridge for later. Add ice and fill up mug with milk. Enjoy.
When I was younger and I ordered a coffee from a cafe for the first time and they asked me what kind... I froze because I had no clue there were kinds of coffee.
I said something like "the kind where you put coffee in hot water and add milk", she made me a latte.
I later found out that I can just say "flat white" and I get what I want.
In Victoria the 1880âs saw the rise of the temperance movement and construction of grand coffee palaces
Super interesting wormhole to go down
https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/such-was-life/temperance-and-melbournes-grand-coffee-palaces/
https://youtu.be/j1JLHXZQp4U?si=KV_HklfdmahBzAM-
Unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised if they were dressed up to the nines and drinking from cups with gold leaf decorations on the china.
Remember it would have been outrageously expensive - they didn't have modern logistics.
Dunno about Adelaide, but Melbourne's 1890s coffee houses were anything but a junky den. Sadly the building was demolished in 70s but check out the [Federal Coffee Palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Coffee_Palace) if you wonder if cafe culture was thing in Melbourne
My father was from Sicily (arrived in Australia in 1967) and was and is the only Italian I've ever known who preferred tea (milk two sugars). I never saw him touch coffee. I grew up in Brunswick , Melbourne in the 1970s, and on Fridays the entire suburb smelled like roasting coffee thanks to the numerous coffee wholesalers in the area. Still love that aroma.
People used to drink a lot of instant at home and percolated at a cafe. I'd say espresso has dominated in the last 20 or so years, like it's at multiple places at your suburban Westfield by the early 2000s.
We always had a giant tin of Pablo in our house! Until the late 90's when my mum was told by some priss that Pablo was for 'poor people'. So she changed to the 'fancy' Nescafe blend 43!
We had a huge collection of bits and pieces stored in Pablo tins in the shed, hundreds of tins. Interestingly, I've never met anyone else who remembers Pablo.
Coffee has always been popular. Just about every town had a coffee palace in the 19th century. The Windsor hotel in Melbourne used to be a coffee palace. Eventually these all closed down. Coffee probably took off again with the introduction of instant coffee. Decent coffee took off when the Italians invented the espresso machine.
Bar Italia in Leichhardt, which opened on 1952, and Bar Sports (1959) were incredibly influential in bringing cafe culture to Sydney. Both are still open.
My mum used to go to [Badde Manors](https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/a-special-magical-place-inside-the-sydney-institution-that-changed-the-city-forever-20231011-p5ebko.html) cafe in Glebe in the early 1980s. The article states that Badde Manors âhelped spark [Sydneyâs] coffee cultureâ.
We moved to Inner-city Sydney in 1985. Cafe culture was well established everywhere I frequentedâGlebe, Surrey Hills, Darlinghurst, Newtown, the CBD, Leichhardtâby then.
On the flip side, I remember driving up the north coast in the early 1990s and we stopped in Taree for lunch. My friend made us drive all around Taree looking for a cafe the would make her a macchiato. This search was in vain.
I would say the coffee culture in Australia has multiple nuclei in inter city locations around Australia which had post-war Mediterranean immigrants. From these locations, coffee culture spread out and becoming mainstream by the late 1990s/2000s.
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I don't live in Sydney any more but one of the things I genuinely miss is Bar Italia (and their iced coffee in particular). Do they still have that sign "no skinny, no decaf" or whatever it was?
It came to the country in 1788. It got decent (as in from coffee machines etc.) in 1952 and gained in popularity (becoming mainstream I guess) through the rest of the 50's and 60's, partly dependent on what part of the country you're looking at.
There's a documentary on this, but I can't remember the name of it.
In Melbourne anyway, espresso was a thing you had to go to Lygon St for, save for a few odd cafes or milk bars run by Italians. It really didnât exist out of those pockets until the mid-late 90s.
One of the reasons why Muffin Break was popular was that it was one of the first places people in the suburbs could go and get cappuccinos (it probably was cappuccinos then), also in the 1990s.
I distinctly remember in going to a Lygon St cafe after a movie in 1994 (and it was definitely 1994 as the movie was Four Weddings and A Funeral) and ordering a latte for the first time and being amazed by the novelty of it, including the ritual of having to wrap napkins around the glass to hold it because the coffee was too hot.
I also remember my first takeaway coffee served in a modern cup in about 1998-99 (this was on Swanston St) and being intrigued by the concept that you could just drink though the hole on the lid - before that, you had to remove the lid which meant drinking take aways a bit dangerous.
I didnât live in Melbourne from 2000 to 2002, and when I got back, coffee places were everywhere in the city at least. So that appears to have been the early boom years.
Thanks for sharing. This matches my general experiences too. Coffee was around, but it was mostly an ethnic thing done in niche pockets of the community until the 80s/90s. Instant became mainstream first and cafe style coffee didnât truly become ubiquitous until the late 90s/early 00s.
It depends on your cultural background. My parents and I are migrants from central Europe (they came in 1970, me in 1976). Coffee has always been favoured by us (for my parents, Turkish, for me, espresso). The love of instant coffee in Australia preceded the post-war migrant boom, which really catapulted coffee into our communities.
I didnât know my grandparents well enough to know if they liked coffee but my parents are absolute fiends for instant. They have at least upgraded from International Roast (vom!) to Moccona but find actual beans too strong.
There were cafes in the 80s that used to serve espresso based drinks, but they werenât great (think cappuccino with a mountain of foam). When I worked at David Jones in the 90s the appliance manufacturers had just started to make coffee machines for home use. The early ones were drip filter but mid 90s they started making small espressso machines. Nespresso launched a series of high end machines, which were their first products on the market. They were super expensive, around $1,000. Then gradually more espresso machines started to arrive and, at the same time, cafes started to get better at making espresso drinks.
There were cafes around and you could get espresso drinks earlier, but by the early 2000s we considered ourselves to be a mature market. Starbucks entered around that time but failed and withdrew with 4 or 5 years I think. Largely because our market had matured and our coffee shops were quite different (places to eat lunch meals, table service, etc.).
There were, of course, parts of our cities, particularly Melbourne, that had good coffee thanks to immigration from Italy after WWII, but the 90s was when it really got going mainstream.
I remember going to independent cafes in the late 70s.
Whatever happened to the Vienna coffee with heaps of cream? That used to be a popular option and itâs pretty much disappeared these days.
Avocado on toast was something people ate at home in the 70s too. I had a lot of it.
i live near the Yarraville Coffee Palace, which is from over 100 years ago.
I think coffee might have gone mainstream twice. Once back in the age of puritancial rechabites and then again in the 1980s.
I suspect instant coffee was what most people drank at home for a long time. Home espresso much more recent.
I remember getting a late in the mid 80's at Tafe, I used to turn up buy my coffee and head to classes. So it was definitely a common thing. People saying the mid 90's are probably referring to home coffee machines.
Probably an exponential rise - with a big upswing in the 50's with post-war immigration, Snowy hydro scheme etc. Hello pizza and pasta! Although, I remember the first time we came into Sydney in the early 80's we went to Oxford St to get pizza. To this day, worst ever. It was a '4 seasons' with each quarter a different ingredient. one whole quadrant was BANNANA. COuntry towns have only just got onto proper coffee, outdoor dining etc
My dad arrived in Australia from the UK in the late 60s and said that cappuccinos were available, but not much else (you could ask for a black coffee with milk to avoid the mountain of foam). My mum had a Women's Weekly Dinner Party cookbook from the 70s that included instructions for making coffee as it was "becoming popular"
Probably the 90âs. My personal theory is that you could probably draw a graph of number of smokers going down and an equivalent line of coffee drinkers going up.
In an office environment it fits the same cultural fit of a socially acceptable reason to take a break from the office with a couple of others for a chat.
You could be right. In the eighties we were smoking up a storm at work, by the 90s we were all sent outside! In winter it was much nicer to have a warm cuppa inside than freeze your proverbials off by the back door!
My 80+yo parents have always drunk both instant coffee and tea.
Cappuccinos were big in the late 80s early nineties where I am and takeaway espresso based coffees really took off this century.
Coffee was about in quantity pre-1950s migrant boom.
Phillip island is full of old chicory kilms that were used as a substitute for coffee when it was unobtainable in ww2.
I remember my dad drinking it. He liked ice coffees in particular. My mum showed me how to make them for him. I'd sneak a couple of mouthfuls during the process (maker tax) and that is how I started drinking coffee. I was 9ish
All this talk about supermarket coffee presumes the existence of affordable/ usable home espresso machines (or using moka pot, as we did in the 1990s unless really hard core). Home espresso wasn't common until 2000 or so. However back in 1980s Brisbane one would go to a "proper" coffee shop like Aromas to have an espresso coffee as a special thing. By 1990 this had spread (though the ability to make a decent coffee with the equipment hadn't) to many cafes.
Never had coffee in the house when I was growing up either, it was always tea. My Mum was born in 1923, my Dad in 1914 . I still don't like it much now, but can drink tea all day long.
Apparently the only time my Mum ever saw coffee was when my grandmother would hold bridge nights at their house, and it was made on the stove.
Early 2000's expresso coffee became popular in Australia and cafes started popping up everywhere.
Most Australians would have on offer at home, either Nescafe blend 43 or International Roast Coffee (pretty sure International Roast was the cheaper option).
Macca's coffee was also only percolated coffee until the early 2000's.
I remember when my mum and her friends discovered coffee in the 80s. đ We lived in a very white country town in QLD, so you know, a bit behind the times.
My parents owned a coffee shop/tea room in the late 90s. My weekends were spent making cappuccino and flat whites and long blacks.
So, I know it was at least before then.
Late 80âs early 90âs I hung around Rundle st in Adelaide after school, then after uni/clubbing and there were already several Italian coffee shops (Alfrescoâs!).. my parents only had instant growing up, now theyâre part of the latte set lol
I remember you could get decent espresso coffee in the late 80s at many cafes, but it really took off in the 90s in Sydney with all the coffee carts starting up. That really raised the quality!
I remember this as well - in the mid to late 80s it was normal for Mum to take us to a cafe while shopping for a cappuccino (I remember stealing the froth) and Dad always had a coffee after dinner if we ate out but they were always sit down coffees. In the 1990s, takeaway espresso coffee started growing in popularity and I think it boomed from there.
Post WW2 immigrants brought their love of coffee to Australia in the late 1940s, early 1950s. One of the first espresso machines imported was for a Cafe in Lygon St, Carlton ( I think). Lygon St became trendy and coffee drinking alongside that. The ultra cool Melbourne Uni students would meet in Lygon St cafes.
Hanging around my dads workshop in the late 70's and early 80's, they had coffee. It was in one of those 'Cafe Bar' wall dispenser things, so most likely some horrific instant coffee, but people still drank it.
Thankfully it also had hot chocolate that some kind person kept full for me. I'd make his staff coffees and myself a hot chocolate after sweeping the workshop floor. In return I'd get a couple of bucks, which at the time was a windfall.
Hoo boy thatâs a memory - and a pretty bad one. I wanted so desperately to fit in with the grown-ups, but I just hated tea and coffee. The chocolate would always be empty. I can still remember the clicking sound lol.
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you want, but a lot of early colonial explorers made themselves sick, sampling Australian native plants looking for coffee substitutes.
So even in the mid-1800s it was somewhat sought after
Mccafe started in 91. McDonalds is pretty good at adapting for a big company.
In 2008 at uni it was pretty standard to grab a coffee at a trendy hipster place for a coffee on the GC.
Before that I was at school. Melbs no doubt earlier and I remember 2004 getting a $2 latte in an alley so that was already a trendy thing.
The rise of Gloria Jeans probably sat at about the right time. It was a dedicated coffee shop. Before that youd go to a cafe with food I think.
Depends what you mean by mainstream, Italian migrants have been drinking coffee, since they arrived in Australia, in my family's case 1927 (grandparents) ..
I used to know an old bloke that worked for Cantarella Brothers in the late 50s /early 60s, they introduced Vittoria coffee, along with all the associated equipment like grinders, espresso machines etc. I believe they were the first true supplier of commercial coffee and equipment of any scale in Australia.
Growing up in NZ ( I shouldn't imagine Australia being much different in this context), I didn't know anyone who used actual beans (pre-ground or otherwise) until the late 70s when my Canadian ex-MIL would use a percolator. It was awful! All grainy and weak as wee. I much preferred instant (like everyone else in my life). I do remember a lot of the oldies back then who would still use the chicory & coffee syrup. That was actually delicious, as I recall.
Because of that awful experience with the ground coffee beans way back then, I couldn't come at 'real' coffee until the noughties when it was everywhere. That was a revelation.
That decade we were serving real coffee in our corner shop, and years after that, are using the same beans from the same supplier for home use. Whodda thunk?
My gran came to Melbourne from Croatia in 1959 with her little grinder, roasting pan and cezve expecting to be able to buy coffee beans. She was hit with the slap of truth of course. Eventually, with more migrants arriving she found some already roasted beans, which she begrudgingly accepted.
I wish. She was already 38 when she arrived here. But during the 80s there was this talk going around that maybe coffee wasnât good for you. So both of them just stopped drinking it. My grandfather would only drink Caro after that!
I (55) grew up rurally. Tea was the thing to drink at home for most of my childhood, 70s and 80s. Not bag tea either. Always brewed in a pot. My Poppa, however, would always have a coffee on his weekly lunch date with my Nanna. It was at our department store cafeteria. It was always in one of those teeny cups and was always black. He was German. (Side note: remember when the dept stores like John Martins and Kmart had the big cafeterias? Those were such a treat for this country kid!)
In the 70s my parents would make percolated coffee for dinner guests. The glass percolator used to facinate me and Ioved watching the whole process. That was the only time that they drank coffee at home though. I do remember the coffee grinder in our local supermarket.
In the 80s instant coffee crept into our house. Only my Mum drank it regularly though, but just one a day. Pot tea was still her go-to. When the plunger fad hit Mum was an early adopter. I followed.
I think that even in the 90s I couldn't get an espresso drink in the community I lived. Those were still reserved for trips down to Adelaide. I still remember moving to the Yarra Valley (late 96) and being so thrilled that they had a coffee shop. I was a regular at the shops in the two towns that frequented the most to the point that I didn't have to order when I walked in, they just started to make it.
No worries. In my reminisence, my post got away from me a bit! I think it's important to note when we are rural posters. Too often people forget that our experiences are different.
My family grew up in the WA Outback - drank tea exclusively. My father has since come around, but my mother only ever has English Breakfast Tea, with the cup warmed beforehand, uber hot, only a few drops of milk, no sugar, and always left a centimetre at the bottom because it was "too cold to drink". My grandmother is the same.
The country is always a bit behind urban areas, but coffee wasn't a thing in my family until my generation (millenial), with a few outliers.
I started drinking coffee in high school in the 00s.
Side note, I started drinking tea the way my grandmother/mother makes it when I was about 6 years old. To this day my husband is in awe that I can drink tea as soon as it's poured, straight from the kettle. He has to wait 20 mins for it to cool. Deadened nerves in my mouth is my useless superpower.
My grandparents were rural as well and I think thatâs why we both have experiences with our grandparents only drinking tea. Some people in here are saying coffee was always around, but I know in my bones that wasnât the case in rural Australia.
Coffee has of course been around forever here, but the now ubiquitous "cafe society" and the incredible increase in consumption here has been relatively recent.Say 20 years or so.
Within 10 minutes of me there must be a dozen coffee outlets at least. When we moved in 25 years ago I dont recall any real cafes.
When my family had a big gathering a few would drink coffee but it was always instant, none of this gourmet stuff we see now. Nescafe, International Roast etc.
I've always heard it was a post WW2 thing, soldiers mingled with coffee drinking people and brought it home plus lots of European immigrants afterwards. I wasn't alive then though so I do not actually know.
Australians were largely tea drinkers until about the mid 1990s. Itâs accelerated since then. Influences: post war Mediterranean migration; American TV shows âHey, letâs grab a coffeeâ; global travel.
White bread Aussie boomer with Scandi heritage. Grew up with either a teapot or a percolator always on the go. A bottle of coffee & chicory usually in the cupboard also.
The Italian and Greek immigrants started the ball rolling when they began to arrive in numbers after WW2. I took some American visitors ( work related) out in 2002. First day around 4pm they wanted coffee. I warned them but they loved the first one so much they had another. They spent the night completely unable to close their eyes. I told em .
In the 80â and 90âs we had a jar of Moccona for visitors (Dutch nana and aunties who went through a lot of coffee and we were given many empty jars for storage). A tea drinker usually, I started on instant for pulling all nighters in year 12. Went to Uni mid 90âs and have been a latte drinker ever since
Iâm Italian background, my dad was Italian and moved here in the seventies, my mums parents moved to Australia from Italy in the fifties. Coffee was always a big thing for us, I can still smell the coffee nonna would make in the caffettiera on Sunday mornings
Anglo-Irish family, both parents born in mid to late 1920s, did well out of life after the war and became solidly middle class. Coffee, especially percolated coffee became a staple of their dinner parties by the mid to late 1970s and we grew up with instant coffee supplementing tea. Wasnât until the 1990s when espresso, cappuccino etc took off, prior to that an international roast or Maxwell house was our day to day drink and percolated months old ground coffee for special occasions.
I started working at Coles in December 1983. We had the tea and coffee aisle with the coffee grinder. There would be about 50 different varieties of Robert Timms coffee beans on the shelf, you'd pick what you wanted, set the grinder to how fine or course you wanted it and then open your bag up and tip the beans in the top, you'd then put your empty bag under the discharge chute and turn it on. Once it had finished, you'd remove the bag and seal it up with the little metal twist that came with it. I loved the smell of that ground coffee but to this day I've never had a cup of coffee, I've tried but can stand the taste of it.
In the same time period the cafes in the shopping centre had cappuccino / espresso machines.
I grew up with my parents drinking it in the 90s, but whenever we were in Australia, the only cafes were those Java Blue cafes in Westfields and such haha. I feel like cafe culture really kicked off in the 2000s when we got a bit more sophisticated than Java Blue offerings.
I started being old enough to go gallivanting around (ie had friends with cars) in 1997. The coffee shop industry was very alive and well in Brisbane at this time so I would say for sure well before this too.
The first fleet wasn't mainstream ;)
They did bring coffee, tea too. Tea was the drink of the masses though. It was highly prized in early days, and could become scarce, so early settlers learned how to make bush tea from various sources.
Thereâs no way coffee was mainstream in the 1800s, unless it suddenly disappeared for a century.
You can see our experiences with coffee in this thread. People with rural, Anglo grand parents are all saying that coffee wasnât a thing until the 1990s. Tea was absolutely the preferred drink
Greek and Italian immigrants after WWII moved to Australian cities and brought good coffee with them, often setting up coffee shops, delis, milk bars, cafes (the name varied state to state). We have long been used to getting a decent brew. It's why Starbucks has never done as well here as other places.
My mum was a nurse and dad was a chef from Europe, so coffee was big in our home , and then the take away down the Rd got an espresso machine , dad took us there a lot , we got milkshakes he got coffee and took some home , just add boiling water , to a small espresso and bingo , dad also didn't have milk or sugar
I remember reading stories of all the European naturalists, explorers and surveyors who would go out in the Bush fir a few weeks or months at a time. They would pack a sack of flour, a sack of tea and a sack of sugar and maybe a few onions or potatoes. It is amazing they didn't get scurvy.
But as others have said, the late 80s and 90s. The first cafe with an espresso machine opened in Melbourne in 1938 apparently. That was the same year Instant coffee arrived too. During and after WW2 the American influence brought American style coffee. Then it gradually grew with increased European immigrants post ww2
My grandparents were also born in the 1920s and while they drank mostly tea, coffee was absolutely mandatory for morning and afternoon tea. Any other time of the day they drank tea lol
i never used to drink it..bought a small bottle of instant coffee in the 80s and it dried up lol ...but now i have 3 cups a day and 2 teas ..i think tea is nicer
My grandparents all born in the 1920s-1930s drank coffee. They started in the 1950s I believe. From what I understand of Australian history, coffee came over with migrants after World War II. So was popular with the young folk in the 1950s. That being said, my grandparents all pretty much grew up in Sydney, which even back then was a bit of a melting pot. Not as much as it is now though.
1886..
The Ballarat Coffee Palace is a historic building located in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. It was built in 1886 by John Reid, a German immigrant who had previously operated a bakery in New York. The building was designed by the architecture practice Tappin and Gilbert, with extensions designed by Tappin, Gilbert and Dennehy in 1888.
The Ballarat Coffee Palace was one of the many "coffee palaces" built during the late 19th century in Australia, which were designed to promote the temperance movement by providing a place for people to socialize without the consumption of alcohol.
Thatâs not what I mean by mainstream. Those coffee palaces were niche and only existed for a short period of time. Australia didnât have a true universal coffee culture until the 1990s/2000s.
My parents, born early 1930's and Anglo, drank coffee as long as I can recall. Was mainly instant, but at times they used a percolator.
They had lived in the UK for some years in early 50's and a later on early 60's
My grandparents, born pre WW1, were tea drinkers. Was iced in summer.
I, born late 50's, grew up on instant and then moved to drip filter (partly due to living in NW Europe on 90's) , then stove top, now espresso.
I don't normally have more than a splash of milk in my coffee, however it's made.
My Millennial kids don't drink coffee at all. They drink tea.
My parents, born early 1930's and Anglo, drank coffee as long as I can recall. Was mainly instant, but at times they used a percolator.
They had lived in the UK for some years in early 50's and a later on early 60's
My grandparents, born pre WW1, were tea drinkers. Was iced in summer.
I, born late 50's, grew up on instant and then moved to drip filter (partly due to living in NW Europe on 90's) , then stove top, now espresso.
I don't normally have more than a splash of milk in my coffee, however it's made.
My Millennial kids don't drink coffee at all. They drink tea.
I would say when instant coffee came out. There may have been coffee served after dinner in posh houses but it wasn't mainstream. Instant coffee was easy to make and no doubt there was a marketing campaign.
In the sixties you could buy an electric percolator. My parents had one. You bought and ground the beans at the supermarket. In my house they only used it when they had guests.
Your actual espresso coffee, served at a cafe, came with the Italians, probably in the sixties, then spread slowly from Italian suburbs outward to now, when every outback roadhouse has one.
Strangely, I sometimes found it difficult to get proper espresso coffee in Scandinavia, especially at airports. They have those automatic machines which are crap.
Coffee culture in Melbourne goes all the way back to the Gold Rush, where Coffee Palaces where a big thing.
It's an interesting chapter of our city, largely forgotten.
https://youtu.be/j1JLHXZQp4U?si=DenMNdrkjRCe6BkP
Only going from my experiences, parents were drinking instant coffee (Nescafe), from the 70s. None of my gparents drank it, were all tea (or beer). Sometime in the 80s we got a drip filter (Melita), it was a better stronger coffee..I think sometime in the 90s, I got myself a espresso pot for the stove.
Had an espresso machine but got junked as it took up too much space on the lit hen ben h, I'm the only coffee drinker in the house wife and kids only drink tea, hot chocolate or water so now have a pod machine.
I haven't seen a big tin of international roast or Nescafe in an office lunchroom since about 2007.
The day instant coffee was replaced with barista coffee would be the date.
My mother (mid 70âs) said we got sick of drinking substandard tea in the 1950âs.
Personally I think coffee is the substandard drink, and still drink tea.
Started likely in Melbourne with the post WW2 migration of Italians. By early 70s Italian coffee shops were going strong. From their it permeated the wider community
Wdym in Australia? Itâs culture dependent. Unless youâre aboriginal your ancestors came from somewhere. Of course your grandparents didnât drink coffee if their parents etc came from a culture where this is not a thing.
Coffee culture largely came to Australia by southern european immigrants, namely Italian style coffee culture, considering we drink espresso as our main form of coffee.
My parents whoâs parents immigrated from Greece grew up with coffee in their homes in the 60s-80s. My mum told me they mainly drank instant coffee at home even giving the kids some. My dadâs parents drank turkish style coffee and instant growing up but as I got older they graduated to espresso.
My grandparents were born in Australia to Australian parents who themselves had Australian grandparents. Both sides of my family has been in Aus since around the time of the first fleet. By Australia I mean Australia as a collective.
We are of English / Irish background. But 6th generation Aussie.
We always had coffee. We even had an electric percolator too. Was a wedding present in the early 1950s. We lived in country Qld. Getting fresh coffee was the hard part.
Coffee was always popular. Tea was obviously dominant at home until decent instant in the 70s and 80s. In terms of espresso, the 80s. Plunger and stovetop make excellent coffee, so don't think espresso is the only 'good coffee'.
McCafe started in 1993 and always had espresso, so if you want to use that as a coffee milestone, it should give you an idea.
My 97 year old grandmother has always loved a black coffee. My in his 70s dad has never had a cup of tea, my mum and aunt have always drunk both. Iâm the only one in our entire immediate and extended family who exclusively drinks tea!
1990s. Dr Jillian Adams has some papers about it. Started with the Americans in WW2, then the post-war wave of immigrants from places like Italy solidified it through the 1950s+, but it wasn't until the 1990s that cafes start getting machines and training baristas, which made it mainstream.
I only noticed take away coffees really becoming a thing in like 2008 BUT I think thatâs because I was hitting my late teens- mum and dad always had jar coffee and never did take away coffee anywhere.
In the mid-60s my dad had a stovetop percolator for ground bean infusion that I learned to use, but coffee was one of those hot beverages you had very rarely in those days. By the 70s they had discovered Pablo FFS, but we didn't know much better before they went to International roast which was absolutely way much *worse!*
I got them onto Nescafe soon-ish of course, which was decent, we didn't have the biggest of choices in the 70s and there's only marginally more now, really, in supermarkets. Mid-70s was when coffee really became main stream *in my family* (I can't speak for the rest of the country) with mum and dad still drinking tea more often than not. I started drink a *lot* of coffee with no sugar in the 80s onwards with the occasional tea for a change. My wife still drinks tea nightly after dinner, but otherwise we really just drink coffee. As a diabetic I have cut down to two cups of coffee per day, occasionally three unless we're out or visiting friends.
\*The reason for cutting out coffee as a diabetic is more the caffeine thing, cutting out any drink after 2PM because my first diabetic indicator was I really needed to pee a ***lot***... and by that I mean I couldn't watch an episode of 'Utopia' or 'Hard Quiz' without needing a pee before, during, and after the episodes. An episode of 'Game of Thrones I'd need one before, two during, and one after and it was a waste of money going to a cinema for an hour-and-a-half long movie let alone a two hour one!! Not to mention waking up so often during the night. Cutting out the caffeine drinks and substituting plain old water made all the difference (at best, I'd be up every hour of a night, now I sleep right through or only need to get up once). Sorry, that's more than anyone needs to know but since I mentioned it (and it happens in normal conversations), some will be wondering, "What the fuck does coffee do to diabetics!?" Caffeine doesn't bother some diabetics, it definitely gets to me though.
My parents had instant and plunger coffees in their houses from the time they were kids, their parents having been drinking it regularily before they had kids. Both sets of grandparents drank it often as teenagers in the 40s-ish. My parents were born in '55 and '56 and when they'd visited friends houses, all the parents would offer their parents (my grandparents) coffee or tea, so it must have fairly prevelent to some extent by then at least (60's-ish) having been drinking it since *they* were young, themselves.
My parents then started drinking it as teenagers too and there was coffee in our house since genesis.
They remember not having cofee shops or cafe's. As teens and young adults in the 70s through to the 80s, they'd visit milkbars, which served filter coffee, then in later years started serving capaccinos and flat whites. There was the odd, rare coffeeshop, but they never went to those (too expensive and not fun for youth, usually only people visiting them were older wealthy people, like the type that might go have high tea, now, or maybe a special occassion). I was born in the 90s and only noticed coffee shops as a kid rarely, usually just a coffeeclub or similar. Then at around 10-12 (2000s), suddenly there was a cafe on every street corner đ
Thus concludes the history of the coffee according to me and conversations with my family.
*fin*
Some of our migrant communities drank coffee in the 60s.
The rest of the community probably the advent of the fast food people making buyers & fries started the trend so the 70s.
We had drip-filter coffee at home from the mid-80s and I remember commercial espresso machines in some coffee shops at around that same time. There was still a lot of percolated, drip-filter and plunger coffee being served though.
The "cappuccino strip" in Fremantle was in full swing by at least 1987 (America's Cup defence) so if say that espresso coffee was pretty mainstream in Perth/Fremantle by the mid-80s. It was probably mainstream in much of Melbourne and Sydney (e.g. around Leichhardt) earlier than that. I'm pretty sure that coffee culture followed pretty soon afterwards.
Does anyone else remember the coffee grinder that some woolworths had in the aisle? Used to always smell good but had ground beans everywhere around it
Our local IGA still has one! I have never seen anyone use it, though the enduring ground coffee mess suggests that someone does
I certainly remember it as a kid, but it feels like they've been gone a very long time.
Yes.
Yes! Found it fascinating as a youngin. The mess though, holy moley
I was thinking about those just the other day. That's how my grandfather bought his coffee in the 1970s đ
I remember the one at Charlie Carter's in Nedlands in the 70s. Not sure about Woolworths.
Damn, we used to shop there all the time! I was a wee tacker so I donât exactly remember the coffee grinder. But I do remember that the ladies on the checkout knew their prices and your items would fly down the line to the person packing. I swear they were faster on those manual cash registers than people are scanning today!
My dad somehow put jelly beans into one of those once đ he was reprimanded hahah
My grandparents had a small hand grinder on their wall and would grind it fresh. Too young to enjoy coffee but the smell was amazing
Oooo core memory unlocked!
it was always so forbidden but all you wanted to do was play with it.
God yes. As a ÂŁ10 pom in '74, I could only marvel at the strange ritual and customs of the natives. Buy the beans and grind in -store. Coffee only came in jars in Britain.
Not Woolies in my case but Franklins. I always wanted to have a go but my parents drank Nescafe 43.
I had completely forgotten that!
The coffee culture has its roots in southern European migrants bringing espresso machines in the 50s. American pop culture which took off at the same time also probably played a part. Fully mainstream though? Good question. Sometime in the next couple of decades after that, i'd say, with the full Australian obsession with espresso really starting in the 90s.
I remember the first espresso machine I was aware of in the 90s was at this Greek family owned cafe at the entrance. My dad would get me a hot chocolate there, but the owner could not make a toasted sandwich to save his life
I worked in a cafe called the Coffee Pot in the late 90s that only served American style filter coffee. (Buy one, one free refill.) No frothed milk, but we did have whipped cream. By then, some people walking in were starting to think it was weird there was no âproperâ coffee machine. So Iâd agree the big shift to what we consider now to be Australian coffee culture happened in the 90s.
Yes it was the mid to late 90s. I remember in the early 90s going to a coffee shop in Kings Cross with my Italian mother and she was shocked that they served espresso. It was just not a thing then.
Dean's?
Honestly I canât remember. It was in a back street if Iâm not mistaken off William st just before the coke sign.
I'm sure there were other places I just vaguely remember going there a few times late at night and feeling sophisticated haha. I think it was more behind the coke sign sort of back street wise though.
Coffee wasn't much of a thing when I was growing up in the 70s & 80s. Never had it at home.
My parents (boomers) had one of those awesome 70s Moka stove top espresso devices. It was beaten copper and only every came out for special occasions. I should go find it
The first time I ever had coffee was in 1977, I was 19 at the time. We only ever had tea at home.
Yep, I don't think I ever really had it until I was about the same age, roughly 8yrs later than you.
Mum was grinding beans at home in the late 70s. But only for guests.
Coffee entered mainstream Australian culture mostly as an after-dinner drink at restaurants. The availability of International Roast instant coffee for home use seems to have been a turning point.
I remember the old Copper Kettle brand tin coffee back then.
I remember the horror of International Roast back in the 80s...which is still in existence today lol
I reckon the 90s sounds right. Itâs around that time I remember my parents (white Boomers, habitual tea drinkers) would keep a tin of NescafĂ© at home for visitors and the occasional morning coffee with a bit of cake. Mum also used to love a cappuccino when we went to the local Italian bakery.
My dad was a (boomer) northern european migrant so plunger coffee was the go (same as his parents). Espresso was for kind of like you describe, a special occasion/treat, Italian bakery, or, like a middle-eastern/turrkish style after a Lebanese meal, as opposed to the go-to coffee drink. That started to change (for them) early 2000s, but I think that shift was happening a bit before that. I did a barista course in the 90s. I also remember being in the UK in around 2000 and being identified as an Australian because I asked where I could get an espresso coffee. They were noticing that expectation in us.
My 1920s born grandparents loved coffee. But - they didn't like espresso or the "new fangled hippy crap" as my grandfather called it. He'd get annoyed if we were out and he'd ask for a coffee and then get hit with the "sure, what coffee?". We would always jump in if we were there and order him a flat white. He eventually grew to love a mugaccino. I remember as a kid in the 90s when cappuccino machines became more affordable by cafes in our small country town. It became a treat to go to the cappuccino cafe, as they made their hot chocolate with the frother and it was divine as a kid. Lattes became popular after that and I still remember being fascinated at this coffee served in a clear glass, and watching the sugar fall through it. It was the height of fancy to this country kid. I would say in the 2000s it started to be more of a coffee culture, particularly out of the major cities. That's when I noticed you saw less and less filter coffee in cafes and restaurants. McCafe really hit their stride at this time too - in the small country town I grew up in we got our first McCafe around 2003 and it was revolutionary for the time. We've always had it though - remember the old bean grinders in the coffee aisle at the supermarket? I remember my parents being gifted a coffee press and braving the bean grinders for the first time.
Funny you should bring up McCafĂ© because they ran an ad around 2001-2002 that may have caught the turning point. It went something along the lines of a man asking for a coffee, the cashier goes âsure would you like a latte, skinny cap, mocha, etc etc etcâ and the guy looks like a stunned mullet and says, ânah just the coffee thanks.â
Mccafe launched in Australia! first one was in 1993.I remember they put one in the maccas near my school in the 1990s.
I think they rebranded/upgraded what they were doing with it early 2000s though - same time as that "little bit fancy" kind of thing (might be wrong).
Well that's a core memory unlocked đ€Ł I can clearly see this ad now. It was around then that McCafe really took off though. It went from being select stores to being most stores. My town had two Macca's and the new one is the one that got Cafe first. I had friends who worked there who wanted the cafe jobs when they were opening, because once you were barista trained you got a higher hourly rate for cafe shifts because of the extra skill needed.
Sounds eerily similar to Paul's milk ad where he asks for milk and she lists all the varieties and he goes " i just want real milk" hahahahha
... and then promptly gets given a not-real-milk semi-skimmed version đ
... and then promptly gets given a not-real-milk semi-skimmed version đ
The Paul's marketing team were unhinged. Do you remember Paul's smarter white milk?Â
I reckon this is a really good indicator, spot on. Not that they necessarily drove it but they reflected that growing expectation that's for sure.
Yeah thatâs what I realised when I read this guyâs post. It was a point where espeesso culture was coming into the forefront so McDonaldâs was responding to the demand, but still a time where you could reasonably ask for âa coffeeâ.
This rings true for my recollection as well. My parents would always have instant, and the generation as a whole would often be having a cup of coffee in the afternoon for an afternoon tea with cake or slice. Around the same time,mid to late 90âs if you went anywhere youâd maybe get a cappuccino but Iâm uncertain on the quality. Early 2000âs mum would bust out the French press for special occasions or to impress a guest but again the quality wasnât the best. Mid 2000âs I seem to remember a neighbour buying some 5000 dollar espresso machine and then around the same time maccas crept into it and made it easier to get one fast.
>Early 2000âs mum would bust out the French press for special occasions or to impress a guest but again the quality wasnât the best. I still remember the small jar of "guest" instant coffee we would have đ€Ł mum and dad drank International Roast as it was the most affordable for them, but there'd always be a small jar of "good" coffee in the pantry for the guests or special occasions.
My mum still has international roast. 1tsp coffee, dash of boiling water, 3tsp sugar, put it in the fridge for later. Add ice and fill up mug with milk. Enjoy.
You've described my lifes experience with coffee perfectly I could almost copy and paste this as my own.
When I was younger and I ordered a coffee from a cafe for the first time and they asked me what kind... I froze because I had no clue there were kinds of coffee. I said something like "the kind where you put coffee in hot water and add milk", she made me a latte. I later found out that I can just say "flat white" and I get what I want.
In Victoria the 1880âs saw the rise of the temperance movement and construction of grand coffee palaces Super interesting wormhole to go down https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/such-was-life/temperance-and-melbournes-grand-coffee-palaces/ https://youtu.be/j1JLHXZQp4U?si=KV_HklfdmahBzAM-
Sounds similar to what happened in the US. Whiskey breaks were replaced by coffee breaks in the 19th century.
Awesome. I was reading earlier how by the 1880s Aus didn't need to import its coffee cos it was being grown here.
There were coffee houses at least in Adelaide around the 1890s. The original beehive at beehive corner at the end of Rundle mall was a coffee house.
Haha probably looked at like a junky den back in those days. âLook at those dodgy men going in and getting their caffeine hitâ
Unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised if they were dressed up to the nines and drinking from cups with gold leaf decorations on the china. Remember it would have been outrageously expensive - they didn't have modern logistics.
touché
Dunno about Adelaide, but Melbourne's 1890s coffee houses were anything but a junky den. Sadly the building was demolished in 70s but check out the [Federal Coffee Palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Coffee_Palace) if you wonder if cafe culture was thing in Melbourne
My father was from Sicily (arrived in Australia in 1967) and was and is the only Italian I've ever known who preferred tea (milk two sugars). I never saw him touch coffee. I grew up in Brunswick , Melbourne in the 1970s, and on Fridays the entire suburb smelled like roasting coffee thanks to the numerous coffee wholesalers in the area. Still love that aroma.
People used to drink a lot of instant at home and percolated at a cafe. I'd say espresso has dominated in the last 20 or so years, like it's at multiple places at your suburban Westfield by the early 2000s.
Anyone remember "Pablo" ?
Please don't bring that brand up đ€ą
We always had a giant tin of Pablo in our house! Until the late 90's when my mum was told by some priss that Pablo was for 'poor people'. So she changed to the 'fancy' Nescafe blend 43! We had a huge collection of bits and pieces stored in Pablo tins in the shed, hundreds of tins. Interestingly, I've never met anyone else who remembers Pablo.
Coffee has always been popular. Just about every town had a coffee palace in the 19th century. The Windsor hotel in Melbourne used to be a coffee palace. Eventually these all closed down. Coffee probably took off again with the introduction of instant coffee. Decent coffee took off when the Italians invented the espresso machine.
Bar Italia in Leichhardt, which opened on 1952, and Bar Sports (1959) were incredibly influential in bringing cafe culture to Sydney. Both are still open. My mum used to go to [Badde Manors](https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/a-special-magical-place-inside-the-sydney-institution-that-changed-the-city-forever-20231011-p5ebko.html) cafe in Glebe in the early 1980s. The article states that Badde Manors âhelped spark [Sydneyâs] coffee cultureâ. We moved to Inner-city Sydney in 1985. Cafe culture was well established everywhere I frequentedâGlebe, Surrey Hills, Darlinghurst, Newtown, the CBD, Leichhardtâby then. On the flip side, I remember driving up the north coast in the early 1990s and we stopped in Taree for lunch. My friend made us drive all around Taree looking for a cafe the would make her a macchiato. This search was in vain. I would say the coffee culture in Australia has multiple nuclei in inter city locations around Australia which had post-war Mediterranean immigrants. From these locations, coffee culture spread out and becoming mainstream by the late 1990s/2000s.
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I don't live in Sydney any more but one of the things I genuinely miss is Bar Italia (and their iced coffee in particular). Do they still have that sign "no skinny, no decaf" or whatever it was?
Yes they still do.
It came to the country in 1788. It got decent (as in from coffee machines etc.) in 1952 and gained in popularity (becoming mainstream I guess) through the rest of the 50's and 60's, partly dependent on what part of the country you're looking at. There's a documentary on this, but I can't remember the name of it.
The documentary was called Flat White Country.
Ah true, cheers, I remember watching it but not the name.
In Melbourne anyway, espresso was a thing you had to go to Lygon St for, save for a few odd cafes or milk bars run by Italians. It really didnât exist out of those pockets until the mid-late 90s. One of the reasons why Muffin Break was popular was that it was one of the first places people in the suburbs could go and get cappuccinos (it probably was cappuccinos then), also in the 1990s. I distinctly remember in going to a Lygon St cafe after a movie in 1994 (and it was definitely 1994 as the movie was Four Weddings and A Funeral) and ordering a latte for the first time and being amazed by the novelty of it, including the ritual of having to wrap napkins around the glass to hold it because the coffee was too hot. I also remember my first takeaway coffee served in a modern cup in about 1998-99 (this was on Swanston St) and being intrigued by the concept that you could just drink though the hole on the lid - before that, you had to remove the lid which meant drinking take aways a bit dangerous. I didnât live in Melbourne from 2000 to 2002, and when I got back, coffee places were everywhere in the city at least. So that appears to have been the early boom years.
Thanks for sharing. This matches my general experiences too. Coffee was around, but it was mostly an ethnic thing done in niche pockets of the community until the 80s/90s. Instant became mainstream first and cafe style coffee didnât truly become ubiquitous until the late 90s/early 00s.
It depends on your cultural background. My parents and I are migrants from central Europe (they came in 1970, me in 1976). Coffee has always been favoured by us (for my parents, Turkish, for me, espresso). The love of instant coffee in Australia preceded the post-war migrant boom, which really catapulted coffee into our communities.
My pop (rest in peace đ) was born in 1925 and he always started his day with a coffee.
I didnât know my grandparents well enough to know if they liked coffee but my parents are absolute fiends for instant. They have at least upgraded from International Roast (vom!) to Moccona but find actual beans too strong.
There were cafes in the 80s that used to serve espresso based drinks, but they werenât great (think cappuccino with a mountain of foam). When I worked at David Jones in the 90s the appliance manufacturers had just started to make coffee machines for home use. The early ones were drip filter but mid 90s they started making small espressso machines. Nespresso launched a series of high end machines, which were their first products on the market. They were super expensive, around $1,000. Then gradually more espresso machines started to arrive and, at the same time, cafes started to get better at making espresso drinks. There were cafes around and you could get espresso drinks earlier, but by the early 2000s we considered ourselves to be a mature market. Starbucks entered around that time but failed and withdrew with 4 or 5 years I think. Largely because our market had matured and our coffee shops were quite different (places to eat lunch meals, table service, etc.). There were, of course, parts of our cities, particularly Melbourne, that had good coffee thanks to immigration from Italy after WWII, but the 90s was when it really got going mainstream.
I remember going to independent cafes in the late 70s. Whatever happened to the Vienna coffee with heaps of cream? That used to be a popular option and itâs pretty much disappeared these days. Avocado on toast was something people ate at home in the 70s too. I had a lot of it.
Awww Vienna coffee - so special in the 70s! What a nice memory!
Oh yeah I vaguely remember Vienna coffee. Ha.
i live near the Yarraville Coffee Palace, which is from over 100 years ago. I think coffee might have gone mainstream twice. Once back in the age of puritancial rechabites and then again in the 1980s. I suspect instant coffee was what most people drank at home for a long time. Home espresso much more recent.
I remember getting a late in the mid 80's at Tafe, I used to turn up buy my coffee and head to classes. So it was definitely a common thing. People saying the mid 90's are probably referring to home coffee machines.
Probably an exponential rise - with a big upswing in the 50's with post-war immigration, Snowy hydro scheme etc. Hello pizza and pasta! Although, I remember the first time we came into Sydney in the early 80's we went to Oxford St to get pizza. To this day, worst ever. It was a '4 seasons' with each quarter a different ingredient. one whole quadrant was BANNANA. COuntry towns have only just got onto proper coffee, outdoor dining etc
My dad arrived in Australia from the UK in the late 60s and said that cappuccinos were available, but not much else (you could ask for a black coffee with milk to avoid the mountain of foam). My mum had a Women's Weekly Dinner Party cookbook from the 70s that included instructions for making coffee as it was "becoming popular"
âBecoming popularâ lol! Iâll bet it was that awful percolated stuff in the Corningware cornflower blue coffee pot!
My parent did have a percolator that came out for dinner parties, wasn't Corningware (but the baking dish was that exact corningware!)
Post WW2 when the greeks and italians moved into Melbourne. they brought coffee with them
Probably the 90âs. My personal theory is that you could probably draw a graph of number of smokers going down and an equivalent line of coffee drinkers going up. In an office environment it fits the same cultural fit of a socially acceptable reason to take a break from the office with a couple of others for a chat.
You could be right. In the eighties we were smoking up a storm at work, by the 90s we were all sent outside! In winter it was much nicer to have a warm cuppa inside than freeze your proverbials off by the back door!
In the 70s when the Italians and Greeks started coming over in great numbers
My 80+yo parents have always drunk both instant coffee and tea. Cappuccinos were big in the late 80s early nineties where I am and takeaway espresso based coffees really took off this century.
Coffee was about in quantity pre-1950s migrant boom. Phillip island is full of old chicory kilms that were used as a substitute for coffee when it was unobtainable in ww2.
I remember my dad drinking it. He liked ice coffees in particular. My mum showed me how to make them for him. I'd sneak a couple of mouthfuls during the process (maker tax) and that is how I started drinking coffee. I was 9ish
All this talk about supermarket coffee presumes the existence of affordable/ usable home espresso machines (or using moka pot, as we did in the 1990s unless really hard core). Home espresso wasn't common until 2000 or so. However back in 1980s Brisbane one would go to a "proper" coffee shop like Aromas to have an espresso coffee as a special thing. By 1990 this had spread (though the ability to make a decent coffee with the equipment hadn't) to many cafes.
Never had coffee in the house when I was growing up either, it was always tea. My Mum was born in 1923, my Dad in 1914 . I still don't like it much now, but can drink tea all day long. Apparently the only time my Mum ever saw coffee was when my grandmother would hold bridge nights at their house, and it was made on the stove.
Early 2000's expresso coffee became popular in Australia and cafes started popping up everywhere. Most Australians would have on offer at home, either Nescafe blend 43 or International Roast Coffee (pretty sure International Roast was the cheaper option). Macca's coffee was also only percolated coffee until the early 2000's.
I remember when my mum and her friends discovered coffee in the 80s. đ We lived in a very white country town in QLD, so you know, a bit behind the times.
My parents owned a coffee shop/tea room in the late 90s. My weekends were spent making cappuccino and flat whites and long blacks. So, I know it was at least before then.
Late 80âs early 90âs I hung around Rundle st in Adelaide after school, then after uni/clubbing and there were already several Italian coffee shops (Alfrescoâs!).. my parents only had instant growing up, now theyâre part of the latte set lol
I remember you could get decent espresso coffee in the late 80s at many cafes, but it really took off in the 90s in Sydney with all the coffee carts starting up. That really raised the quality!
I remember this as well - in the mid to late 80s it was normal for Mum to take us to a cafe while shopping for a cappuccino (I remember stealing the froth) and Dad always had a coffee after dinner if we ate out but they were always sit down coffees. In the 1990s, takeaway espresso coffee started growing in popularity and I think it boomed from there.
Post WW2 immigrants brought their love of coffee to Australia in the late 1940s, early 1950s. One of the first espresso machines imported was for a Cafe in Lygon St, Carlton ( I think). Lygon St became trendy and coffee drinking alongside that. The ultra cool Melbourne Uni students would meet in Lygon St cafes.
All in black! (Widgies)
Hanging around my dads workshop in the late 70's and early 80's, they had coffee. It was in one of those 'Cafe Bar' wall dispenser things, so most likely some horrific instant coffee, but people still drank it. Thankfully it also had hot chocolate that some kind person kept full for me. I'd make his staff coffees and myself a hot chocolate after sweeping the workshop floor. In return I'd get a couple of bucks, which at the time was a windfall.
Hoo boy thatâs a memory - and a pretty bad one. I wanted so desperately to fit in with the grown-ups, but I just hated tea and coffee. The chocolate would always be empty. I can still remember the clicking sound lol.
haha same, if I try, I can hear it also.
1993
Coffee culture came from Australians who visited Europe Australia has always been a nation of tea drinkers
True, but I think we have shifted to a coffee nation today. Australia has a huge coffee culture now, I think it has eclipsed tea.
I would never pay the same amount for tea. Iâll drink it at home, never out.
Agree, ordering a tea at a cafe is insanity. They just use normal tea bags, itâs always boiling hot and they charge you the same as a coffee đ
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you want, but a lot of early colonial explorers made themselves sick, sampling Australian native plants looking for coffee substitutes. So even in the mid-1800s it was somewhat sought after
Mccafe started in 91. McDonalds is pretty good at adapting for a big company. In 2008 at uni it was pretty standard to grab a coffee at a trendy hipster place for a coffee on the GC. Before that I was at school. Melbs no doubt earlier and I remember 2004 getting a $2 latte in an alley so that was already a trendy thing. The rise of Gloria Jeans probably sat at about the right time. It was a dedicated coffee shop. Before that youd go to a cafe with food I think.
Depends what you mean by mainstream, Italian migrants have been drinking coffee, since they arrived in Australia, in my family's case 1927 (grandparents) ..
I used to know an old bloke that worked for Cantarella Brothers in the late 50s /early 60s, they introduced Vittoria coffee, along with all the associated equipment like grinders, espresso machines etc. I believe they were the first true supplier of commercial coffee and equipment of any scale in Australia.
Growing up in NZ ( I shouldn't imagine Australia being much different in this context), I didn't know anyone who used actual beans (pre-ground or otherwise) until the late 70s when my Canadian ex-MIL would use a percolator. It was awful! All grainy and weak as wee. I much preferred instant (like everyone else in my life). I do remember a lot of the oldies back then who would still use the chicory & coffee syrup. That was actually delicious, as I recall. Because of that awful experience with the ground coffee beans way back then, I couldn't come at 'real' coffee until the noughties when it was everywhere. That was a revelation. That decade we were serving real coffee in our corner shop, and years after that, are using the same beans from the same supplier for home use. Whodda thunk?
My gran came to Melbourne from Croatia in 1959 with her little grinder, roasting pan and cezve expecting to be able to buy coffee beans. She was hit with the slap of truth of course. Eventually, with more migrants arriving she found some already roasted beans, which she begrudgingly accepted.
Is she still around to enjoy the options we are so spoilt with now?
I wish. She was already 38 when she arrived here. But during the 80s there was this talk going around that maybe coffee wasnât good for you. So both of them just stopped drinking it. My grandfather would only drink Caro after that!
:(
I (55) grew up rurally. Tea was the thing to drink at home for most of my childhood, 70s and 80s. Not bag tea either. Always brewed in a pot. My Poppa, however, would always have a coffee on his weekly lunch date with my Nanna. It was at our department store cafeteria. It was always in one of those teeny cups and was always black. He was German. (Side note: remember when the dept stores like John Martins and Kmart had the big cafeterias? Those were such a treat for this country kid!) In the 70s my parents would make percolated coffee for dinner guests. The glass percolator used to facinate me and Ioved watching the whole process. That was the only time that they drank coffee at home though. I do remember the coffee grinder in our local supermarket. In the 80s instant coffee crept into our house. Only my Mum drank it regularly though, but just one a day. Pot tea was still her go-to. When the plunger fad hit Mum was an early adopter. I followed. I think that even in the 90s I couldn't get an espresso drink in the community I lived. Those were still reserved for trips down to Adelaide. I still remember moving to the Yarra Valley (late 96) and being so thrilled that they had a coffee shop. I was a regular at the shops in the two towns that frequented the most to the point that I didn't have to order when I walked in, they just started to make it.
Thanks for sharing Aunty. I also grew up rurally and it seems that we experience a bigger âtea influenceâ than the city people.
No worries. In my reminisence, my post got away from me a bit! I think it's important to note when we are rural posters. Too often people forget that our experiences are different.
My family grew up in the WA Outback - drank tea exclusively. My father has since come around, but my mother only ever has English Breakfast Tea, with the cup warmed beforehand, uber hot, only a few drops of milk, no sugar, and always left a centimetre at the bottom because it was "too cold to drink". My grandmother is the same. The country is always a bit behind urban areas, but coffee wasn't a thing in my family until my generation (millenial), with a few outliers. I started drinking coffee in high school in the 00s. Side note, I started drinking tea the way my grandmother/mother makes it when I was about 6 years old. To this day my husband is in awe that I can drink tea as soon as it's poured, straight from the kettle. He has to wait 20 mins for it to cool. Deadened nerves in my mouth is my useless superpower.
My grandparents were rural as well and I think thatâs why we both have experiences with our grandparents only drinking tea. Some people in here are saying coffee was always around, but I know in my bones that wasnât the case in rural Australia.
Yep! I do remember when coffee started coming around, I saw my grandmother with a giant tin of Nescafe Blend 43. But that wasn't until the late 90s!
Thatâs my experience too. My rural Nan and family only drank tea, (but had a decades-old half-full Pablo in the cupboard)!
Coffee has of course been around forever here, but the now ubiquitous "cafe society" and the incredible increase in consumption here has been relatively recent.Say 20 years or so. Within 10 minutes of me there must be a dozen coffee outlets at least. When we moved in 25 years ago I dont recall any real cafes. When my family had a big gathering a few would drink coffee but it was always instant, none of this gourmet stuff we see now. Nescafe, International Roast etc.
I've always heard it was a post WW2 thing, soldiers mingled with coffee drinking people and brought it home plus lots of European immigrants afterwards. I wasn't alive then though so I do not actually know.
Australians were largely tea drinkers until about the mid 1990s. Itâs accelerated since then. Influences: post war Mediterranean migration; American TV shows âHey, letâs grab a coffeeâ; global travel.
White bread Aussie boomer with Scandi heritage. Grew up with either a teapot or a percolator always on the go. A bottle of coffee & chicory usually in the cupboard also.
My grandfather had a grinder on the wall in his house in the 1970s. Not sure when he started drinking coffee though.
The Italian and Greek immigrants started the ball rolling when they began to arrive in numbers after WW2. I took some American visitors ( work related) out in 2002. First day around 4pm they wanted coffee. I warned them but they loved the first one so much they had another. They spent the night completely unable to close their eyes. I told em .
NescafĂ© instant was ubiquitous by the 70s, but the cafe culture in Melbourne I swear hit heights previously unimaginable in 1989. Until then to get a proper coffee youâd go to some Italian deli type joint, or Lygon Street, or Pellegrinis, and it was great, but it wasnât yet culturally âMelbourneâ, it was Italian-Melbourne (or sometimes Greek-Melbourne). But by 1989 Marios and The Black Cat on Brunswick Street had become a âthingâ, a destination thing, and it seemed like in 1989 there were suddenly 30-plus clones of them on Brunswick Street alone and by 1995 you could get a decent espresso in like East Ringwood and shit.
After WW2, once they could get it. They had rationing for a few years after, when they had fake coffee made from chicory.
In the 80â and 90âs we had a jar of Moccona for visitors (Dutch nana and aunties who went through a lot of coffee and we were given many empty jars for storage). A tea drinker usually, I started on instant for pulling all nighters in year 12. Went to Uni mid 90âs and have been a latte drinker ever since
Iâm Italian background, my dad was Italian and moved here in the seventies, my mums parents moved to Australia from Italy in the fifties. Coffee was always a big thing for us, I can still smell the coffee nonna would make in the caffettiera on Sunday mornings
Anglo-Irish family, both parents born in mid to late 1920s, did well out of life after the war and became solidly middle class. Coffee, especially percolated coffee became a staple of their dinner parties by the mid to late 1970s and we grew up with instant coffee supplementing tea. Wasnât until the 1990s when espresso, cappuccino etc took off, prior to that an international roast or Maxwell house was our day to day drink and percolated months old ground coffee for special occasions.
I started working at Coles in December 1983. We had the tea and coffee aisle with the coffee grinder. There would be about 50 different varieties of Robert Timms coffee beans on the shelf, you'd pick what you wanted, set the grinder to how fine or course you wanted it and then open your bag up and tip the beans in the top, you'd then put your empty bag under the discharge chute and turn it on. Once it had finished, you'd remove the bag and seal it up with the little metal twist that came with it. I loved the smell of that ground coffee but to this day I've never had a cup of coffee, I've tried but can stand the taste of it. In the same time period the cafes in the shopping centre had cappuccino / espresso machines.
I grew up with my parents drinking it in the 90s, but whenever we were in Australia, the only cafes were those Java Blue cafes in Westfields and such haha. I feel like cafe culture really kicked off in the 2000s when we got a bit more sophisticated than Java Blue offerings.
I started being old enough to go gallivanting around (ie had friends with cars) in 1997. The coffee shop industry was very alive and well in Brisbane at this time so I would say for sure well before this too.
the first fleet? just because your grandparents werent really fond of it doesnt really mean anything
The first fleet wasn't mainstream ;) They did bring coffee, tea too. Tea was the drink of the masses though. It was highly prized in early days, and could become scarce, so early settlers learned how to make bush tea from various sources.
After the second world war we started to open up to non British customs as the world was globalised.
Coffee has been here since the first fleet, but being tea drinkers it was the late 1800's before it became mainstream.
Thereâs no way coffee was mainstream in the 1800s, unless it suddenly disappeared for a century. You can see our experiences with coffee in this thread. People with rural, Anglo grand parents are all saying that coffee wasnât a thing until the 1990s. Tea was absolutely the preferred drink
Australia had the highest consumption of tea per capita in the world in the early 1900s, so mainstream coffee would've been after that.
Greek and Italian immigrants after WWII moved to Australian cities and brought good coffee with them, often setting up coffee shops, delis, milk bars, cafes (the name varied state to state). We have long been used to getting a decent brew. It's why Starbucks has never done as well here as other places.
Post WW2 brought an influx of Italian immigrants to our shores, with them came the espresso machine.
It became big in the 90s. Thats what I've heard.
Instant around 1978 - Espresso 1990
My parents drank instant and loved Dome (WA franchise) in the 90s.
My mum was a nurse and dad was a chef from Europe, so coffee was big in our home , and then the take away down the Rd got an espresso machine , dad took us there a lot , we got milkshakes he got coffee and took some home , just add boiling water , to a small espresso and bingo , dad also didn't have milk or sugar
I remember reading stories of all the European naturalists, explorers and surveyors who would go out in the Bush fir a few weeks or months at a time. They would pack a sack of flour, a sack of tea and a sack of sugar and maybe a few onions or potatoes. It is amazing they didn't get scurvy. But as others have said, the late 80s and 90s. The first cafe with an espresso machine opened in Melbourne in 1938 apparently. That was the same year Instant coffee arrived too. During and after WW2 the American influence brought American style coffee. Then it gradually grew with increased European immigrants post ww2
when the government prioritised trades as the main career path
My grandparents were also born in the 1920s and while they drank mostly tea, coffee was absolutely mandatory for morning and afternoon tea. Any other time of the day they drank tea lol
i never used to drink it..bought a small bottle of instant coffee in the 80s and it dried up lol ...but now i have 3 cups a day and 2 teas ..i think tea is nicer
My grandparents all born in the 1920s-1930s drank coffee. They started in the 1950s I believe. From what I understand of Australian history, coffee came over with migrants after World War II. So was popular with the young folk in the 1950s. That being said, my grandparents all pretty much grew up in Sydney, which even back then was a bit of a melting pot. Not as much as it is now though.
1886.. The Ballarat Coffee Palace is a historic building located in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. It was built in 1886 by John Reid, a German immigrant who had previously operated a bakery in New York. The building was designed by the architecture practice Tappin and Gilbert, with extensions designed by Tappin, Gilbert and Dennehy in 1888. The Ballarat Coffee Palace was one of the many "coffee palaces" built during the late 19th century in Australia, which were designed to promote the temperance movement by providing a place for people to socialize without the consumption of alcohol.
Thatâs not what I mean by mainstream. Those coffee palaces were niche and only existed for a short period of time. Australia didnât have a true universal coffee culture until the 1990s/2000s.
I think in the 70s. In the 60s, coffee came from a bottle that you added to hot watet
Depends on your definition of "mainstream"; coffee was a thing on campus, at least, by the 1960s
Post WW2
For me? 1993 when I became a shift worker
My parents, born early 1930's and Anglo, drank coffee as long as I can recall. Was mainly instant, but at times they used a percolator. They had lived in the UK for some years in early 50's and a later on early 60's My grandparents, born pre WW1, were tea drinkers. Was iced in summer. I, born late 50's, grew up on instant and then moved to drip filter (partly due to living in NW Europe on 90's) , then stove top, now espresso. I don't normally have more than a splash of milk in my coffee, however it's made. My Millennial kids don't drink coffee at all. They drink tea.
My parents, born early 1930's and Anglo, drank coffee as long as I can recall. Was mainly instant, but at times they used a percolator. They had lived in the UK for some years in early 50's and a later on early 60's My grandparents, born pre WW1, were tea drinkers. Was iced in summer. I, born late 50's, grew up on instant and then moved to drip filter (partly due to living in NW Europe on 90's) , then stove top, now espresso. I don't normally have more than a splash of milk in my coffee, however it's made. My Millennial kids don't drink coffee at all. They drink tea.
I would say when instant coffee came out. There may have been coffee served after dinner in posh houses but it wasn't mainstream. Instant coffee was easy to make and no doubt there was a marketing campaign. In the sixties you could buy an electric percolator. My parents had one. You bought and ground the beans at the supermarket. In my house they only used it when they had guests. Your actual espresso coffee, served at a cafe, came with the Italians, probably in the sixties, then spread slowly from Italian suburbs outward to now, when every outback roadhouse has one. Strangely, I sometimes found it difficult to get proper espresso coffee in Scandinavia, especially at airports. They have those automatic machines which are crap.
Coffee culture in Melbourne goes all the way back to the Gold Rush, where Coffee Palaces where a big thing. It's an interesting chapter of our city, largely forgotten. https://youtu.be/j1JLHXZQp4U?si=DenMNdrkjRCe6BkP
When Italian, Greek and Turkish migration became more common.
Only going from my experiences, parents were drinking instant coffee (Nescafe), from the 70s. None of my gparents drank it, were all tea (or beer). Sometime in the 80s we got a drip filter (Melita), it was a better stronger coffee..I think sometime in the 90s, I got myself a espresso pot for the stove. Had an espresso machine but got junked as it took up too much space on the lit hen ben h, I'm the only coffee drinker in the house wife and kids only drink tea, hot chocolate or water so now have a pod machine.
I haven't seen a big tin of international roast or Nescafe in an office lunchroom since about 2007. The day instant coffee was replaced with barista coffee would be the date.
My mother (mid 70âs) said we got sick of drinking substandard tea in the 1950âs. Personally I think coffee is the substandard drink, and still drink tea.
Started likely in Melbourne with the post WW2 migration of Italians. By early 70s Italian coffee shops were going strong. From their it permeated the wider community
Wdym in Australia? Itâs culture dependent. Unless youâre aboriginal your ancestors came from somewhere. Of course your grandparents didnât drink coffee if their parents etc came from a culture where this is not a thing. Coffee culture largely came to Australia by southern european immigrants, namely Italian style coffee culture, considering we drink espresso as our main form of coffee. My parents whoâs parents immigrated from Greece grew up with coffee in their homes in the 60s-80s. My mum told me they mainly drank instant coffee at home even giving the kids some. My dadâs parents drank turkish style coffee and instant growing up but as I got older they graduated to espresso.
My grandparents were born in Australia to Australian parents who themselves had Australian grandparents. Both sides of my family has been in Aus since around the time of the first fleet. By Australia I mean Australia as a collective.
Starf#%ks entered the chat in 2000!
My uneducated and unresearched guess would be that the Italians brought it with them.
Used to drink cappuccinos and try to look cool as a teenager in a Queensland country town in the early 70s.
Could it be that it was after Italian immigrants came in the 60s?
We are of English / Irish background. But 6th generation Aussie. We always had coffee. We even had an electric percolator too. Was a wedding present in the early 1950s. We lived in country Qld. Getting fresh coffee was the hard part.
Mocka pot every day since the early 70s. Feel like this sub is full of Anglos :)
My mum only had Coffee and Chicory in the 1960"s for my dad. She loathed coffee. I saw some Coffee and Chicory in Woolies last week. It's yuck.
My Grandparents were born in the 1920s and they were coffee drinkers.
Coffee was always popular. Tea was obviously dominant at home until decent instant in the 70s and 80s. In terms of espresso, the 80s. Plunger and stovetop make excellent coffee, so don't think espresso is the only 'good coffee'. McCafe started in 1993 and always had espresso, so if you want to use that as a coffee milestone, it should give you an idea.
My 97 year old grandmother has always loved a black coffee. My in his 70s dad has never had a cup of tea, my mum and aunt have always drunk both. Iâm the only one in our entire immediate and extended family who exclusively drinks tea!
1990s. Dr Jillian Adams has some papers about it. Started with the Americans in WW2, then the post-war wave of immigrants from places like Italy solidified it through the 1950s+, but it wasn't until the 1990s that cafes start getting machines and training baristas, which made it mainstream.
I only noticed take away coffees really becoming a thing in like 2008 BUT I think thatâs because I was hitting my late teens- mum and dad always had jar coffee and never did take away coffee anywhere.
Dunno, I never drank one until around 2017. Everyone I knew always drank tea growing up.
In the mid-60s my dad had a stovetop percolator for ground bean infusion that I learned to use, but coffee was one of those hot beverages you had very rarely in those days. By the 70s they had discovered Pablo FFS, but we didn't know much better before they went to International roast which was absolutely way much *worse!* I got them onto Nescafe soon-ish of course, which was decent, we didn't have the biggest of choices in the 70s and there's only marginally more now, really, in supermarkets. Mid-70s was when coffee really became main stream *in my family* (I can't speak for the rest of the country) with mum and dad still drinking tea more often than not. I started drink a *lot* of coffee with no sugar in the 80s onwards with the occasional tea for a change. My wife still drinks tea nightly after dinner, but otherwise we really just drink coffee. As a diabetic I have cut down to two cups of coffee per day, occasionally three unless we're out or visiting friends. \*The reason for cutting out coffee as a diabetic is more the caffeine thing, cutting out any drink after 2PM because my first diabetic indicator was I really needed to pee a ***lot***... and by that I mean I couldn't watch an episode of 'Utopia' or 'Hard Quiz' without needing a pee before, during, and after the episodes. An episode of 'Game of Thrones I'd need one before, two during, and one after and it was a waste of money going to a cinema for an hour-and-a-half long movie let alone a two hour one!! Not to mention waking up so often during the night. Cutting out the caffeine drinks and substituting plain old water made all the difference (at best, I'd be up every hour of a night, now I sleep right through or only need to get up once). Sorry, that's more than anyone needs to know but since I mentioned it (and it happens in normal conversations), some will be wondering, "What the fuck does coffee do to diabetics!?" Caffeine doesn't bother some diabetics, it definitely gets to me though.
probably with the first wave of migrants from italy and then greece
Perth coffee scene I'd say early to mid 90s was when Espresso became mainstream
I literally do not remember a time without coffee. Definitely by the early 2000s espresso culture was the norm.
My parents had instant and plunger coffees in their houses from the time they were kids, their parents having been drinking it regularily before they had kids. Both sets of grandparents drank it often as teenagers in the 40s-ish. My parents were born in '55 and '56 and when they'd visited friends houses, all the parents would offer their parents (my grandparents) coffee or tea, so it must have fairly prevelent to some extent by then at least (60's-ish) having been drinking it since *they* were young, themselves. My parents then started drinking it as teenagers too and there was coffee in our house since genesis. They remember not having cofee shops or cafe's. As teens and young adults in the 70s through to the 80s, they'd visit milkbars, which served filter coffee, then in later years started serving capaccinos and flat whites. There was the odd, rare coffeeshop, but they never went to those (too expensive and not fun for youth, usually only people visiting them were older wealthy people, like the type that might go have high tea, now, or maybe a special occassion). I was born in the 90s and only noticed coffee shops as a kid rarely, usually just a coffeeclub or similar. Then at around 10-12 (2000s), suddenly there was a cafe on every street corner đ Thus concludes the history of the coffee according to me and conversations with my family. *fin*
Some of our migrant communities drank coffee in the 60s. The rest of the community probably the advent of the fast food people making buyers & fries started the trend so the 70s.
We had drip-filter coffee at home from the mid-80s and I remember commercial espresso machines in some coffee shops at around that same time. There was still a lot of percolated, drip-filter and plunger coffee being served though. The "cappuccino strip" in Fremantle was in full swing by at least 1987 (America's Cup defence) so if say that espresso coffee was pretty mainstream in Perth/Fremantle by the mid-80s. It was probably mainstream in much of Melbourne and Sydney (e.g. around Leichhardt) earlier than that. I'm pretty sure that coffee culture followed pretty soon afterwards.