Goodfolk Cafe, Bardon - part of the community
Goodfolk Cafe, Bardon is a welcoming community hub committed to quality, local food, sustainability, and inclusivity. Find out more and how Council's Business Hotline helped them.
Every community needs places where people feel welcome and comfortable to enjoy conversation, creativity and connection.
The team at Goodfolk Cafe, Bardon have created a cafe committed to quality, local food, sustainability and inclusion.
“A cafe should be like the fireplace of a community or a home away from home where people can gather, share and contribute. So, I get a lot of satisfaction from doing that,” owner Adam Murphy said.
Creating a point of difference and pride
Adam said that he focuses on 2 things to create the type of business where everyone is welcome. The first is delivering quality, local food that Goodfolk make in-house as much as possible.
“Everything from our pickles, our jams, chai syrup, chocolate powder, cakes and relishes are all made in-house. It is a point of pride and a point of difference. We only make food that we know tastes good and is good quality.
“We triple taste test everything and do staff events where we taste the food blind to make sure that the quality is there and the flavour transfers through.”
He says the second element is staffing.
“Making sure that you have staff that can deliver a great service is important but 90% of the recipe lies with me to create a workplace community where staff are shown appreciation, encouragement and are respected.
“Then they enjoy turning up to work and when they give that excellent service to customers, it is genuine, and they mean it."
Sustainability is a focus
Sustainability also plays an important part in the Goodfolk mix.
“We’re lucky to have a large, beautiful garden at Goodfolk, and so we’ve inherited the stewardship of gardening and reflect on those practices and take responsibility for the big picture. It starts with composting and worm farming to circular recycling and making sure that we’re not sending too much to landfill.”
As well as providing fresh, local produce, the garden has also become a focus for building community. During school holidays they invite children to come and plant seedlings in the garden.
Council's 24-hour business helpline
Adam said that he has made great use of Brisbane City Council’s 24-hour Business Hotline on 133 BNE (133 263).
“We’ve found the Council hotline to be really useful with a variety of issues from contacting environmental health officers to zoning issues or parking issues. It’s a really helpful point of contact if we’re having issues with a whole range of things.”
Brisbane business support
Council's 24/7 Business Hotline helps support Brisbane businesses. For more information, visit our Business page.