Opening a cafe is a big step for anyone but when you’re a self-taught cook and former boilermaker, it’s even gutsier. Luckily, MasterChef Australia 2023 winner Brent Draper has never shied away from a challenge, and in March this year, he and his wife, Shonleigh, opened their first cafe in Yeppoon, Queensland. “We bought an old cafe that’s been here for 20 years with the same menu, same clients, same everything,” Brent says.
Drapes Deli focuses on deli favourites, baking focaccia in house and doing six or so different sandwiches a day. “We do a ‘rubes’ on a toasted milk bun and umami fries – they’ve got this umami-packed mushroom powder and tomato powder on them,” Brent says. “We cold-smoke the mayo and pickles and elevate the food as much as we can in a small town.” The team also has its own coffee blend and specialises in trending drinks like a tiramisu iced coffee.
If opening one cafe wasn’t enough, Brent and Shonleigh have already opened a second restaurant – Bowlo – specialising in ramen.
Here are the lessons from Drapes Deli that Brent is bringing to the new venture.
We’ve created something unique by not hiding anything. Instead of putting tarps up on the window and shutting up until opening time, we put a Story on Instagram every afternoon about what we’d been doing. We put everything up, including the pipe that I hit and the water that went everywhere. Everyone was invested in the journey of building Drapes Deli, and now they think of it like their own.
We created urgency by only doing 80 focaccias or a hundred sandwiches a day. People were missing out, especially at the start, and it created this ‘I’ve got to get down there quick to get it’ mentality. We’re doing the same thing with Bowlo and only do ramen from 5-7. We’ve got a little bell that we ring for ramen – it’s just finding some fun little things people can get involved with.
We work hard to create a sense of community. The community took to Drape’s Deli with open arms and really got behind it and we’re flat out every day – 11 o’clock comes around, and there’s a lineup out the door. As soon as anyone walks in the door, our head barista, Emily, is already making their coffee and she knows everyone’s name. It’s those little things that make people feel seen.
We use social media now to engage with customers. We give options to our community: ‘ we’re thinking of two different sandwiches, what do you want to see?’, and we put up the new drink of the week and the first three or four orders the next morning are that drink. It’s really amazing.
Everyone is on each other’s side in the hospitality business in a small town. If the town’s thriving, then each business is thriving and instead of being competition, we all work together. For example, if we don’t have any print roles we just ring another business and they’ll bring them down.
Finding staff, especially in a rural town, has been hard. Luckily Yeppoon is classed as rural for backpackers so they can do their 88 days here but you’re still turning over staff. Having good staff training systems has been essential. I’m very lucky that Shoinleigh is an absolute wizard at everything I’m not and everything is systemised really well. At any moment, a staff member could grab the manual and know exactly what to do or find a recipe.
I have a lot of trouble stepping away. You get a bit of a name being on MasterChef, then all of a sudden you’ve got this pressure that everything has to be 110% otherwise it’s pulling your name down. I had trouble getting past that and letting anyone else cook my dishes. But I got sick and was forced to have a day off – everything ran smoothly so I realised maybe I’m not needed every minute. Also, the missus was telling me to pull my head in and let it go!
I like that it’s all a bit of a challenge. If it’s challenging me, I know a lot of other people will think it’s too hard to do in this town. I feel like we found a hole in the market, and it’s hard to find that in a big city. We’re lucky here.
