Wide Open Road is a café and roastery in Brunswick. It has roasted there since 2009, has served coffee and breakfast to the neighbourhood for fifteen years, and is a “Melbourne specialty coffee roastery since the noughties”. Roasting happens on site in small batches, and the same coffee goes to the two cafés and to wholesale accounts in Melbourne, across Australia and further afield. Wholesale customers get a sample before they commit, training for their team and no lock-in contracts.

The Brunswick room is spacious and light-filled, with a produce-driven brunch menu kept “simple, thoughtful, and delicious”. It is walk-ins only, and the café takes event and venue hire enquiries. Upstairs is Bird, a small coworking space with private offices and desks. The second café is in Byron Bay, up a laneway near the centre of town, serving the same signature coffees and brunch alongside a selection of records, books, merchandise and Deadkooks surfboards.

The coffee is Wide Open Road’s own. The range has a café blend made for both black and milk drinks, a blend built for milk, a seasonal espresso blend named after the Wong Kar-wai film Fallen Angels, two filter blends, single origins that change with the seasons, a sugar cane decaf and Legacy, a series of limited coffees roasted to order in 100 g bags. Subscriptions, brew guides for V60, Chemex and AeroPress, and a cold brew concentrate made with the Yoshimi filter blend round out the online shop. The current retail range is listed below with the roaster’s own tasting notes.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Wide Open Road