It's been seven months since Jack Scheeren opened the doors to Bowie cafe on Hamilton's Beaumont Street and he's refreshingly honest about its progress.
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It's going well, but it could be better. It's a sentiment no doubt shared by many cafe and restaurant owners across our city.
"It's been up and down," he tells Weekender.
"We started out with a bang in November but after Christmas everything slowed right down. I don't feel that we have really established ourselves in the area yet so I've been doing a lot of pivoting, to be honest. I'm just trying to figure things out."
Scheeren grew up in Canberra and attended university but always loved the hospitality industry, so much so that at the age of 22 he opened a cafe called The Cupping Room with the Canberra-based ONA Coffee team.
"It did really, really well and we ended up opening four venues together," he says. "Then it ran its course and I visited Newcastle and fell in love with the place."
He and partner Kahlea moved to Newcastle in 2018, keen to open a cafe here. A year later he was working as a manager at Talulah in The Junction when the owner of 12 years, Garth Ashford, told him he was looking to sell the business. Scheeren jumped at the opportunity.
"We're going really well there, we're really established," he says.
"It's a different area, less sensitive to the current economic climate, unlike Beaumont Street. We've got customers who spend a lot more at Talulah, and we have built a really loyal following there."
At Bowie, Scheeren says he "wants to get the word out about our ethics and our focus on quality... what we're about". One pillar of the business is Bowie's coffee, roasted by his friends at ONA Coffee.
"I think people appreciate having refined, speciality coffee on the street," he says.
"ONA are not just roasters, they own the coffee farms themselves, working in partnership with the farmers. They're changing the game with the whole production line, helping growers grow better quality coffee and get higher prices for it, rather than falling into that commodity market."
If coffee is one of Bowie's pillars, a quality food offering is another. Scheeren has just changed the menu to take advantage of what's in season and "put a bigger emphasis on bringing in some lower price point options".
"We've redone all the toasties, we've dropped the more expensive burgers and put on some more rustic sandwiches," he says.
"We've got a really nice Cajun-marinated chicken sandwich on a fresh Baked Uprising sourdough roll with coriander slaw, avocado ranch and fermented celery, and also a jerk pork toastie with chilli pickled pineapple, rocket and coriander."
Scheeren is a fan of the braised white beans dish.
"We add herbs, tomato, onion and capsicum to the bean broth and cook it down to the consistency of a minestrone soup, served with some sourdough. It's a really warming broth, just so full of flavour and soulful."
Bowie's biggest seller is the sausage and egg muffin, made with "really good brown buttered sourdough muffins, our local butcher's spiced sausage patty, burger cheese and local organic eggs".
Bowie's third pillar? A sense of community.
"When I was younger I thought I had something to prove, but now I don't. I just want to enjoy my passion for food and coffee and cafes, the interactions with the customers, the relationships that you build. I'm doing what I love and not trying to conquer the world.
"I did a stint in Melbourne and it taught me what quality, timeless hospitality is all about ... no one does it quite like Melbourne."
