A regional cafe serving Tuscan-style deli sandwiches found unlikely internet fame and attracted long lines of customers happy to wait an hour for a quick feed.
Caffe al Lago in Gungahlin, located about 20 minutes from Canberra’s CBD, only opened in July but it’s already an institution in the local area.
Owners Dragan Petreski and Natalija Petreska decided to open the viral Italian sandwich joint after honeymooning in Italy and falling in love with the food they ate in Florence.
Dragan told 9news.com.au he’s a third-generation baker and it’s the unique schiacciata bread which helped them bring in customers from around the territory.
“Every kind of marketing is good, especially right now with social media, but I think if you don’t have the right product, it can be just a temporary hype,” he said.
“For us, it’s been a pretty stable thing. It’s really helped with our business.”
The initial hype, buoyed by gushing videos from foodies online, led to customers snaking around the block and waiting close to an hour for their takeaway sandwich.
This caused Dragan and Natalija to sell out almost every day and has now helped them hire more staff to keep up with demand.
“If you can wait for a pizza, why shouldn’t we wait for a sandwich?” he laughed.
“We have reduced the waiting time now, there were really, really long lines and between 45-50 minutes for a sandwich. Now, it’s been 10 and 20 minutes.
He added: “The best feedback when we opened was people coming to the kitchen and telling me, ‘this was worth waiting for, we are going to be back’.”
Weekends and lunchtime on weekdays are the busiest times, particularly when local Park Run participants flood the cafe on Saturday mornings.
Caffe al Lago only has six sandwiches on the menu plus a morning breakfast sandwich.
Prices range between $16.90 and $19.90 and are big enough to share between two people.
Dragan and Natalija wanted a smaller menu so they could really focus on nailing the recipes.
“Simple is best,” he said, “we want to keep it small for now.”
They want to keep Caffe al Lago at just one location for now – but in Italian it means ‘cafe by the lake’, so they aren’t opposed to opening one near Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin.
The couple are happy to serve a regional, non-metro area like Gunghalin with a little taste of Italy.
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