Your Business: Recipe working for cafe entrepreneurs

Business partners Shawn Pope (left) and Jens Dalhoff met at McDonald's head office. Photo / Supplied

When you find a recipe in the food business that works, you perfect it and try to replicate it, whether you are McDonald's or Gordon Ramsay.

Five years after Melba Group director Shawn Pope and business partner Jens Dalhoff bought Cafe Melba in Vulcan Lane, they have six cafes in their group: Frolic Cafe, near Cornwall Park; Cafe Melba, Ellerslie; Cafe Melba, Takapuna; the Melba Espresso Bar on Queen St and the latest, Melba on Hardinge in the new Telecom building across from Les Mills in the city.

Melba on Hardinge came about thanks to a steering committee from Telecom choosing the cafe group - some of the members knew Cafe Melba from Vulcan Lane and liked the fact it did table service.

Once they got the contract for the Melba on Hardinge, Pope says he went to the "top guys" at Telecom, asking how he could help with catering for business meetings.

"I got a trolley and for the first week I was the catering guy," says Pope, whose background is 13 years at McDonalds, from crew to management, then opening up cafes for other people in Sydney and here.

He and Dalhoff met learning operations at McDonalds' head office.

Dalhoff consulted for Burger Fuel, among others, and then worked in finance, including Mike Pero Mortgages. Pope's wife Michelle also works with the business as chief finance officer and marketing expert.

Says Pope: "My focus is on the operations side of things, on the coffee and on the public side of Melba. Jens and I complement each other nicely as he has a long background in finance, so he's very strategic and organises all the deals."

You'd never know there was any connection between the cosy, hip Vulcan Lane Cafe Melba and the more corporate, sleek Melba on Hardinge - but you'll find the same popular honey and garlic chicken salad and the smoked salmon hash there, says Pope.

Even the artistic barista from Vulcan Lane, Adam Li, has been transferred to work his magic in the cafe's early days. "Cafes are an art and a science," Li says.

When deciding on a new cafe for the group, Dalhoff does the numbers. Bottom line, there has to be decent foot traffic, it doesn't matter how picturesque the location, and there has to be a gap in the existing competition.

At Melba on Hardinge there are 2800 Telecom and Gen-i staff working in the new building, then TVNZ and NZ Post nearby, as well as Les Mills.

The Cafe Melba brand is developing. Dalhoff says one of his proudest moments was producing their own coffee brand, which is served at the salubrious Sidart restaurant in Ponsonby. With three chefs, including Melba on Hardinge's head chef, Luke Elwin, Dalhoff is now planning a centrally based production kitchen.

The business partners, who have a 50/50 shareholding of the group, are not looking for big investors to come into the company, rather, they are after a kind of co-operative where talented, passionate staff are given the opportunity to take shareholdings in the business.

Each cafe needs to be tailored to the site, for the customer, says Dalhoff. He believes in the phrase,"localise not homogenise".

Takapuna Cafe Melba is run by a licensee couple, Bob and Sunny Zhou, and Ellerslie Cafe Melba's manager, Maria Loo, has just increased her shareholding in the business.

"With Cafe Melba in Vulcan Lane, I knew I had something special," says Pope.

"If we can help people grow in the organisation, we are creating something that was great and making it better, we are raising the bar in the industry."