This article is reproduced by kind permission of the Daily Mercury Mackay. The story is by Sarah Crawford (sarah.crawford@dailymercury.com.au) and the photo is by Tony Martin (050308/144).

Van runs on coffee aroma

Workers can smell Doug and Kerry Kelly in their mean bean machine before they pull up outside various offices around Mackay. The aroma of espresso coffee, brewing in the back of their van, lures them out.

Mrs Kelly said they are usually greeted at their numerous stops by a grateful group hanging out for a caffeine pick-me-up to keep them going through the working day. "There are lots of women when we pull up who say 'Dougie, I have been waiting for you all day'," she joked.

Mr and Mrs Kelly hit the road in their franchise coffee van Cafe2U six weeks ago. They are the sixth van in Mackay to break into the growing mobile coffee market, Mr Kelly said.

Doug and Kerry Kelly are brewing up a storm in their new mobile coffee business, Cafe2U

"Coffee is a new popular culture in Australia; it's a great business to get into," he said.

Although brewing coffee brings in the dollars, Mr Kelly said what they were really selling was convenience. "People are generally lazy; we go to some clients where there is a coffee shop over the road. Convenience is definitely the commodity - our lifestyles these days are so busy," he said.

Mr Kelly comes from an 18 year background in car sales while Mrs Kelly is a hairdresser by trade. Coffee is new to both of them, but an intensive one-week training course on the art of espresso making set them straight. The Cafe2U franchise cost the couple about $100,000 to set-up, Mr Kelly said.

"It's good to to into a franchise because they have already built up the name for you; it takes the risk out of it, and being on the road means we aren't stuck in a lease for business space, he said.

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