Where your usual
feels like home.

Hi everyone — I’m Sophie, a Chinese mum living on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, running a little community café.

At thirty-six, I said goodbye to a stable career back home and — for a while — to my husband, my daughter and my parents, and came to Australia on my own on a student visa. I couldn’t speak English fluently, had no family or friends here, and no experience in business or hospitality. Employers would see my fourteen years of office work and still tell me, again and again, “No.”

But thirteen years on, my favourite word to hear is still: “Usual?” Because usual means they remember me, they trust me, and they’re happy to come back, again and again.

We prepare our food fresh every day — if we can make it ourselves, we won’t use anything pre-made. Everything we hand across the counter has to be something I’d happily serve my own family first. I came to Australia looking for a new home; thirteen years later, it’s this community that truly made it home.