Guy Grossi drinks espresso, but most Melburnians like to add milk. Find out your suburb’s most popular coffee order

Melbourne prides itself on its coffee culture, and a deep dive into our preferred coffee orders tells a story about changing tastes and demographics.

Almost uniformly across Melbourne, the most popular coffee order is a latte.

The exceptions to this are East Brunswick in the inner north, where the most frequently ordered coffee is a flat white, and Doncaster East and Tyabb in the east, where a cappuccino is the top order.

Grossi Florentino at the top of Melbourne’s CBD has been brewing coffee for Melburnians for 96 years. Restaurateur and chef Guy Grossi says coffee culture has changed a lot over that period.

“I remember having my first cappuccino in Lygon Street,” he says. “It was a much different experience going for a cup of coffee back then, it was just all about your drink, and there were a couple of pinball machines off the back of the cafe, and it wasn’t very fancy or anything.”

Latte lovers

Grossi says the experience of going for a coffee is much more sophisticated these days.

“People are not just treating it as a drink,” he says. “They’re treating it as a catalyst for socialisation. ‘Let’s catch up for coffee,’ that sort of thing.”

The coffee orders at Grossi Florentino are reflective of those in the CBD more broadly, with lattes the most ordered caffeinated drink, but Grossi says he’s a traditionalist and prefers an espresso or piccolo.

“I think cafe lattes are popular because if you use good milk as well, it’s not just about coffee,” he says. “It’s also about really good, rich-tasting milk that tastes like milk is supposed to taste and holds the flavour of the coffee.”

Cappuccino curve

Coffee preferences get more varied when you look at the second-most popular coffee order, which shows a clear divide between Melbourne’s inner suburbs, where the flat white is preferred, and the outer suburbs, where cappuccinos reign supreme.

Data from Square, which provides technology to cafes, restaurants and coffee shops, collated by The Age, shows a cappuccino curve around Melbourne.

The data is based on tens of millions of cups of coffee sold at businesses using Square in the greater Melbourne area.

The curve where cappuccinos, with a sprinkle of chocolate on top, are the second most popular order, starts in the west in Williamstown, goes across to Sunshine West, Keilor, Roxburgh Park and Bundoora, then to Camberwell, Malvern East, Brighton and Sandringham.

The cappuccino curve is reminiscent of the Red Rooster line in Sydney which bisects the city, with almost all Red Rooster fast-food stores located in Western Sydney, and the goat’s cheese curtain in Melbourne, with goat’s cheese dominating the menu of inner-city cafes.

Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher, co-founder and research director at The Demographics Group, said the urban fringe for secondary coffee orders was strict cappuccino territory.

“That might be explained by older demographics living there,” he said. “These older cohorts might’ve started ordering fancy coffees in the 1990s when cappuccinos were the fanciest white coffee order in town.”

The further out you go, the more likely you are to encounter a “mugaccino” (cappuccino in a mug).

Flat white territory

In contrast, in inner-city suburbs like Albert Park, South Melbourne, Footscray, North Melbourne, South Yarra, Richmond, Carlton, Fitzroy, Hawthorn and Alphington, a flat white is the second most popular order.

The flat white, a single espresso shot topped up with stretched milk, also beats out cappuccinos as far north as Keilor Park, Glenroy, Reservoir and Eltham.

“The inner suburbs and some relatively young growth corridors are dominated by secondary flat white orders,” Kuestenmacher says. “That can be explained by a relatively younger cohort living in these suburbs. They were too young during the 1990s cappuccino craze and were only introduced to coffee culture when flat whites were a thing.”

Brunswick East is the one suburb in Melbourne where the flat white is the premier coffee order. Michael Allen, owner of Core Roasters in Brunswick East, says his customers are well-informed and passionate about their coffee.

“I get a lot of different, more interesting questions from a lot of people, like they know what they’re doing a lot more,” he says.

Core Roasters sells around 250 beverages a day. Coffee costs $5.50 at the cafe and roastery housed in an old warehouse in an East Brunswick backstreet.

Allen puts the dominance of the flat white in the area down to the strong coffee culture.

“There is a higher concentration of roasteries around here, so it is a very different game,” he says.

Allen says residents in Brunswick East are “a really interesting mix of people”.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data for the suburb shows what was once an industrial area is now dominated by young, highly educated residents with a median age of 33, compared to the national median of 38, and with 51 per cent tertiary educated compared to 23 per cent of the broader population.

“There are heaps of students and lots of, honestly, really well paid tech professionals around here as well,” Allen says. “There’s a heap of new apartments, then the other side of the street is a lot of people that have been here for 40 years.”

It’s enough to tip the balance in favour of the flat white.

The magic epicentre

Despite all the hype about magics, the off-menu coffee order beloved by coffee geeks, the number of people buying them in Melbourne is relatively low.

A magic is technically a double shot of ristretto (a coffee shot more potent than an espresso) accompanied by a three-quarter flat white.

Square’s data shows the epicentre of Melbourne’s magic ordering is the bayside suburb of Cheltenham, where around four per cent of all coffees ordered are magics.

This is followed by South Melbourne, Monash University, Port Melbourne, Brighton East, Bonbeach, Mentone, Beaumaris, Glen Iris and South Yarra.

Builder Ben Sheppard orders a magic most days at Ottimo in Cheltenham and says it’s his preference as “I’m not a big milk drinker.”

“The magic is the perfect ratio of milk to coffee to still get the milk in the coffee.”

Ottimo is owned by Larnce and Sarah Leigh, who say they serve up to 20 magics a day at the cafe tucked away in an industrial part of Cheltenham.

Larnce Leigh says he’s been drinking magics since the late 1980s and has been bemused by their sudden surge in popularity.

“Hospo people drink it because we need strong coffee,” he says. “It’s been an industry thing for many, many decades, for years.”

He attributes Cheltenham’s love for magics to a relaxed attitude among residents.

“Cheltenham people are lovely family people, they are not too stressed,” he says. “They gravitate to things that are cool and modern.”

Australian Bureau of Statistics data for Cheltenham shows there are 6569 families among its 23,992 residents.

Cheltenham residents are highly educated, with 34.6 per cent holding a bachelor’s degree or above, compared to 26.3 per cent of the general population.

They are also relatively well off, with a median household income of $1919 a week, compared to $1746 for the general population.

However, Leigh thinks part of the magic’s appeal in Cheltenham is that it is made up of less milk and more coffee for image-conscious residents who are watching their calorie intake.

“Another reason people drink magics in Cheltenham is because they are bayside, they go down to the beach, and they want to look good,” he says.

However, Leigh points out that, just like in the rest of Melbourne, the latte reigns supreme even in magic-loving Cheltenham.

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