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Cirelli Coffee opens roastery and cafe in refurbished squash courts

Having outgrown its small warehouse roastery at Welland, Cirelli Coffee Roasting Co has established a new home in a former squash centre at Allenby Gardens, serving up Nonna-made zeppole and boutique house-roasted coffee.

Feb 09, 2022, updated Feb 09, 2022
Cirelli Coffee founders Emily Iona and Frank Cirelli at their new Allenby Gardens roastery and cafe. Photo: Ben Kelly.

Cirelli Coffee founders Emily Iona and Frank Cirelli at their new Allenby Gardens roastery and cafe. Photo: Ben Kelly.

Looking out from inside the conservatory-style seating area at Cirelli Coffee’s new premises, it’s hard to miss the logo of the world’s most ubiquitous doughnut franchise staring back at you from across Port Road.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, in that everything about the family-run Cirelli Coffee Roasting Co goes against notions of mass-production – particularly their “famous” hand-made zeppole.

All coffee roasting equipment is out on display, and business owners Gianni Cirelli and his partner Emily Iona are often floating around to chat with visitors.

On Saturday mornings, Gianni’s mother Tina Cirelli (aka “Nonna Zeppole”) is on deck from the early hours to whip up a fresh batch of the Italian pastry.

Previously located at Welland, Cirelli’s new café and roastery opened on January 4 within a newly refurbished building that still holds clues to its squash centre past.

Gianni and Emily have extensively renovated the interior with an inviting modern feel that is unexpected given the façade still has its vintage look.

A town planner and developer by trade, Gianni first started roasting coffee at home in 2011.

Just a hobbyist back then, Gianni never had plans to launch a business.

“We had a friend who used to roast amazing coffee. I really loved his coffee, but he gave it up and we couldn’t find anything to replace it,” says Gianni.

“I decided I would start roasting and went out and bought a little coffee roaster, and we made some modifications to our garage.”

Gianni began roasting for friends, family and personal use – his late father Frank was the taste-tester.

“I source beans that have thick, chocolatey and natural sweetness to them,” says Gianni.

“It really comes through in our coffee and people can taste it.”

Things snowballed when Gianni and Emily started supplying retail bags of coffee beans to Queen Street Grocer and the Corner Store at Semaphore (now closed).

“We started stocking both of those stores with half a dozen bags,” says Gianni.

“One day, the Corner Store ran out of coffee for their machine so they threw our beans into the hopper and people started complimenting them on the coffee, so by default we started supplying them.

“We started picking up more customers, simply through word of mouth.”

Gianni was still working part-time, roasting coffee at home on Saturday mornings, but this, too, started to escalate.

“I started having to roast two or three times a night until about 1am and it was just too much. We decided we needed a bigger machine.”

In 2013, they purchased a bigger 15-kilogram machine and moved into a small warehouse at Welland.

“It was still sort of a hobby, the doors were closed and I was only roasting in there on a Saturday,” Gianni says. “I could get in there and roast for half a day, do all of our orders and get back to my normal job for the rest of the week.”

Each Saturday, Frank would help Gianni in the roastery, while Emily would help deliver orders.

Gianni had no intention of serving customers from the Welland roastery, as he didn’t want to impact nearby cafés he was supplying. And yet, people still found him.

“People just started coming in on Saturdays. Somehow, they tracked us down, probably from talking to the cafés,” says Gianni.

“We were an underground coffee roaster because I was still working full-time and I didn’t really want anyone to know we were there.

“We tried to fly right under the radar, but when the Queen Street Grocer closed, people realised we were less than a kilometre away.

“It was really odd, people started coming in and we didn’t even have a coffee machine.”

They added a commercial coffee machine and Gianni’s mother Tina started baking treats to sell to customers.

“Dad would make us lunch, and then if people came around lunchtime, we were giving them our food. It became a little gathering. It grew from there.”

With demand growing, Gianni and Emily purchased a 60-kilogram roaster, which sat in storage for the past couple of years as they searched for a bigger premises.

After an arduous search, the couple secured the former Port Road squash building in 2020.

It was most recently used as office space with a suspended ceiling – which they gutted – but still had two functioning squash courts out the back. Gianni has converted them to storage space.

“We get many local customers coming through who say they used to play squash here,” says Emily.

“We’ve asked people to give us photos but we haven’t seen any yet.

“At Welland, people loved watching us roast, so we’ve aimed to recreate that experience here.

“It is really important for us to show the roasting process.”

A viewing platform, where squash spectators once looked down onto the courts, now provides a birds-eye view of the roastery.

The next step is the completion of an in-house 48 Flavours gelateria.

Since the launch of the new location, Gianni has cut back his full-time day job to three days a week to focus on the business.

Already supplying many cafés and businesses around Adelaide and anticipating further growth, Gianni is preparing a larger roasting machine for operation.

“It’s all been through word of mouth. We don’t have any reps and that’s been the best way,” he says.

Having never held aspirations for operating a large business, Gianni says the company’s ethos won’t change.

“A lot of the bigger guys are giving away free umbrellas and stickers for café windows, and you almost don’t even know what the café is called because it’s got the coffee roaster’s flags everywhere,” he says.

“We don’t do that. People will find out who we are when they taste the coffee.”

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