Single O is one of Sydney’s original coffee heroes—these guys have been championing and cheering caffeine in all its finer formats since 2003 and their pint-sized Surry Hills café was the spot where so much of Sydney’s coffee culture really kicked off.
While we might have embraced anything other than a frothy, watery cappuccino back then—the coffee scene has evolved a tonne, but Single O hasn’t skipped a beat here.
Off the back of the rise and rise of black coffee (which may or may not have happened when variations on milk got super confusing), Single O has gone and dropped a self-serve batch tap bar and built it into their Surry Hills flagship cafe.
Positioned at the front of the café, it's almost like a set of craft beer taps. You’ll be able to choose your origin— Nicaragua, Kenya, Ethiopia or Colombia—and pour it yourself, totally cutting out that time spent amongst a lumbering queue of dreary-eyed under-caffeinated commuters each morning.
The café’s had an expansion too, growing from a narrow spot with just four tables inside to a larger space for 35-40 people. It’s been redesigned by the legendary crew at Luchetti Krelle (who are responsible for interiors at Bopp and Tone, Manly Greenhouse and Nola), who have shifted the café’s take-away hole in the wall (Side Bar) inside and opened out the laneway wall.
Single O has also been leading the charge on a far more sustainable approach to coffee culture. The coffee pioneers have cut their single-use cup waste by 47% and their roastery runs on solar power. As well as this, chef Ben Hopkins' new sustainably-minded menu features local and sustainably-sourced ingredients. Testing the boundaries of breakfast is banana bread with vegemite butterscotch sauce and "croc-ettes" with crocodile and Japanese curry sauce.
To celebrate the reno and their awesome self-serve coffee invention, Single O will be dishing out free cups of batch brew on Wednesday 17 April, all day long. Just bring your own reusable cup, borrow one of the cafe's "loan-a-mugs" or sit in and sample.
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Image credit: Single O.