4 Things to Know About a Cafe with 45 Venues

Piccolo Me have created the universal cafe.

Big call, I know, but it’s true.

You see, they’ve managed to craft something in which everybody can find something to like. The menu is varied without feeling bloated. The fitout is somehow both sleek and comforting, bright and cosy at the same time and I can’t figure out how they’ve done it! 

It is hospitality alchemy.

And it’s for these reasons that Piccolo Me have enjoyed so much success in their growth. Wherever you are in the Greater Sydney area (and even Melbourne, the ACT and Wollongong), you’ll never be too far away from their doors.

I had to see for myself what makes Piccolo Me so damn popular and so I made the trip to their Auburn location (location number 43 which is a staggering number for an independent business), to meet with the El Hachem family.

Destiny

“Dad came to Australia with pretty much nothing”

The El Hachem family history—and by extension, Piccolo Me’s history—is a familiar story. You arrive in Australia and, for varying reasons, find yourself working in hospitality. For some, it’s a stopgap, something to keep the lights on while you find something else to do. For others, like the El Hachems, it’s the beginning of something truly life changing.

Charlie: “So my earliest memories was growing up in dad’s donut shop. Dad came to Australia with pretty much nothing, and he threw himself into hospitality.” 

How does hospitality have this ability to drag people in? Whether it’s the satisfaction of creating something which brings joy to the community, or the immersion into local social fabric, it ensnares you, whispering sweet nothings into your ear until you succumb to its charms and realise that this was your calling all along—this was your true destiny.

Charlie: “To be honest, I’ve studied, I’ve done all the things that we were supposed to do—what our parents wanted us to do—but me and Roy found ourselves back in the game and we haven’t looked back.”

Breaking bread

“Why do we need four baristas on the coffee machine?”

From working in their dad’s doughnut shop, Charlie and Roy took the leap and went out on their own, opening the first Piccolo Me in 2012.

It began life as a small espresso bar in Sydney’s CBD and it was here that Charlie and Roy began to impose their own brand of hospitality onto a public unprepared for such welcoming arms. Because in a world so focussed on the bottom line, the El Hachems bucked the trend, seeing that there is more than one road to healthy profits.

Charlie: “We were one of the first cafes in the city that was mainstream selling piccolos. Every lunchtime at one of our restaurants in the city, everyone would come and have a piccolo with us, and we wouldn’t charge them for it, but it was just a way to break bread.” 

But a warm welcome and a lunchtime yarn aren’t enough to keep the people coming back. The product also needs to be the best it can be, something Charlie and Roy knew. Their offerings had to be tailored to their target demographic, and in Sydney CBD that meant a focus on coffee was paramount.

This was a new age.

Charlie: “I guess we went from like, Western Sydney or, you know, those old school cafes into the CBD where it’s all about crema, it’s all about latte art. Dad’s like ‘why do we need four baristas on the coffee machine? I used to do this by myself!’”

Viral

“We got a lot of hate mail.”

One thing Piccolo Me is known for is its viral creations, but they’re more than a simple gimmick to get their reels onto everyone’s feeds. Instead, they’re a physical representation of the positive energy which oozes from Piccolo Me’s very core.

Charlie: “In our office we have this whiteboard, and this whiteboard was in Roy’s bedroom. So this guy would go to sleep, wake up in the middle of the night, draw the idea on the whiteboard, and go to sleep. And. And that’s how a lot of the viral things came.”

Roy: “I think it helped that I didn’t have any food education, so I didn’t think like a chef. So the Cheeseburger Croissant, for example, a chef wouldn’t be doing that.”

The Cheeseburger Croissant feels like it was a watershed moment for Roy’s whiteboard creations. There is nothing more satisfying than listening to a person who has created something wonderful, talk about how their wonderful creation caused outrage amongst a collection of people. I could feel the secondhand pride pulsing through my veins.

Charlie: “We got a lot of hate mail. We made the international media. We actually had people from France emailing us and messaging us, ‘sacrilegious, how dare you put this meat on that pastry!’ And they got a photo of Roy, he’s smiling his big cheesy smile, and they’re like, ‘who the hell is this Australian? What does he think he’s doing to our croissants?’”

Roy: “‘And the worst thing about it is he’s actually proud of his creation!’” 

Roy was kind enough to make me a Cheeseburger Croissant to try. It was glorious.

This isn’t to say that every viral creation from Roy’s whiteboard is a great idea, business-wise. There are some missteps, but they take them in their stride.

Roy: “So we created a Nutella fried ice cream. We went viral for doing a little small ball, then obviously I went a bit overboard and created the world’s largest one kilo fried ice cream ball. And then I made a competition out of it. So I had a challenge where someone would come in and finish it within ten minutes and have a (free) shake.”

Me: “And does anyone finish the one kilo ice cream?” 

Roy: “Oh heaps! And they finished it in about a minute.”

Charlie: “(Laughing) We lost a shitload of money on it.”

Global

“This is just pretty much the tip of the iceberg for us.”

With so much success, it’s hard to see the limit for Piccolo Me and the El Hachem family. They now have multiple businesses under their umbrella company, FABE, including 45 Piccolo Me locations (at the time of writing, it’s almost definitely more by the time you read this), and when I ask them about the future, they speak with an enthusiasm and hunger that my energy levels can barely comprehend.

Roy: “More franchises, definitely. International expansion is on the cards for us (too). We need to Piccolo of the world!”

Charlie: “So we’re gonna be looking at finding entrepreneurs and founders. If they’ve got that little bit of spark, we want to come in with our systems and help them grow and fast track them on their journeys. You know, speaking about what we do also reminds us why we came into the business.” 

Roy: “And how proud we are of our journey. To get where we are today and not give up. This is just pretty much the tip of the iceberg for us.”

All of this should sound like music to your ears (or read like music to your eyes?), because Piccolo Me has created an incredible blueprint for the modern cafe, complete with high quality, consistent products.

And if they succeed in their quest to ‘Piccolo the world’, then that’s the kind of world I think we’d all be happy living in.