10 Years at Brunch Csfe

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y marked our 10 year association with the Brunch Cafe. This morning, we thanked Amanda & Ken & staff for their hospitality over the last 10 years. The Brunch staff made a cake for the occasion and provided muffins to the masses. The Branch gave the Brunch Cafe a signed photo of the YR team....something that will be displayed upon the walls of Brunch for many years to come! Below is the history of how we arrived at Brunch Cafe!
Chris Collins - YR President

Brunch Café, 2008 – 2018
In the early days of the Yarra Ranges Branch, Saturday morning coffee started at the coffee shop at the top end of Yarra Glen. After complaints from the surrounding traders about the loss of customer parking, the meetings moved to the pizza shop at the other end of town near the service station. That was OK for a while but the service and the food was getting worse and in the end the Branch moved to the Grand Hotel. That wasn’t too bad and was good for a while. But with more and more bikes coming, the parking was getting more difficult. Again, adjacent traders were complaining about parking. The car park at the rear of the Grand Hotel was not all that good either. And the quality of breakfasts was steadily declining. Eventually, the Hotel was sold and the new owners were not that keen to have us there anymore. The time came when they gave us six weeks to leave, then three, then one.

The committee at the time was already investigating alternatives and asked members for suggestions on where to go. For the short term we needed somewhere available immediately and Sandra Thorn suggested the Brunch Café. We went there initially as a stop gap while the committee compiled a list of all the suggestions provided by branch members.
We had a total of 22 places. We created a spreadsheet, listing all the criteria to be checked at each place, including distance to travel, access in, access out, parking (places and quality), available menu and prices. But the big thing was it had to be a place that was open, whether we were there or not. This would guarantee regular availability. Members Danny Morrison and Tony Ashton, got on the road and went to every suggested venue with their checklist and came back to present a full report to the committee meeting.

The only place that ticked all the boxes was the Brunch Café. So I had a meeting with Ken at the Café and we asked he would have any objection to us staying on permanently. We agreed on a 3 month trial and here we are ten years later, still going strong. It was also noted at one point that the Brunch Café, is in the demographic centre of the Yarra Ranges Branch catchment area. Of course, not everybody was happy, but even some of the objectors warmed to the place and became regular attendees.

Brunch Café has proved to be very popular and sometime in 2016/17 a record number of 102 bikes were counted in the car park on one sunny morning. I don’t think this has been surpassed at any stage over the last year.

There are many branches that are or would be envious of what the Yarra Ranges Branch has at ‘Brunch’ and we need to make sure we don’t make the mistake of leaving unless we have something MUCH better to go to. And that would be a tall order.

Henry Rokx
#28636 DM#45
National Secretary