Bean there? Join us at our favourite café

We’ve found that almost a third of our work comes from having coffee with people. With the COVID-19 vaccine rolling out and transmission case numbers remaining low, meeting in person near our city office has become possible in Melbourne again. So we wanted to have an analytical look at the choice of local cafés.

The closest café, on Exhibition St and a 3-minute walk from our front door, is 65 Degrees. We like it because of the science communicated by its name, which refers to the ideal temperature for frothing milk (much cooler and the foam will be unstable, much warmer and the flavour changes). Google rates it as 4.3 stars. The coffee is fine and the café is a quiet place for a meeting.

A couple of doors further, and a couple of decimal points higher on Google (4.5 stars) is Decoy. This café is a nice place for lunch, the coffee is fine but it can be a bit noisy downstairs – if we can get a table upstairs, it’s more suitable for a meeting.

Around the corner on Little Lonsdale Street is the League of Honest Coffee, which as the name implies takes its coffee seriously. Also rated at 4.5 stars on Google, it serves a casual lunch and single-origin coffee – in a large bowl if you need it.

Then across the road on the corner of Little Lonsdale and Exhibition Streets is Trunk, which has a rating of 4.1 but provides a nice outdoor area for a coffee or other beverage, and a more substantial lunch.

While 30 per cent of our work starts with a coffee meeting, about 0 per cent of our work has come from not meeting people. So let us know if you’d like to meet for a coffee or lunch and discuss science communication. We’d love to hear about your work while further testing the local cafés.