The Australian Open It’s officially underway and there’s a lot of intrigue this year. Will GOAT training Carlos Alcaraz become the youngest male athlete to ever complete a Career Slam at just 21 years elderly? Will top-seeded Americans Coco Gauff and Emma Navarro bring home the title (not to mention a group of promising American tennis players who haven’t won in Melbourne since Agassi in 2003), or will flag-free Belarusian masher Aryna Sabalenka take the title? is that three? These are great questions, but they don’t address the biggest dilemma of all: where the hell is all the coffee?
Australia is one of the world’s greatest coffee-drinking countries (as they will no doubt tell you), and Melbourne is probably Australia’s most coffee-obsessed city. Flatties, muffins and toasties, whether they originate from the islands or not, are hotly debated, but it’s difficult to deny the fact that Australia has given these matters prominence. So when one of the most significant events of the tennis season takes place in the country – the first Grand Slam of the year – you can expect not only good quality coffee, but also a lot of it. But this is not entirely the reality for people visiting Melbourne Park.
As reported ReutersTennis Australia says there are 15 cafes on the 40-acre site, which works out to about one cafe per six acres. Let’s be sincere, these are debut numbers. The tennis courts at the Australian Open are probably the only such infrequent place in Melbourne. Add to that over 90,000 participants every day and it’s a recipe for disaster. Especially when inclement weather prevents any play that isn’t indoors – which is a common occurrence at this Slam – giving participants a chance to get out of their seats and wander around the field and, you know, get a quick caffeine fix.
One of the people interviewed said he had to wait over half an hour for a cup of coffeetakeaway type, not the “sit down and order” type that this country is famed for. 30 minutes isn’t outrageous. I once tried to buy literally everything at Roland Garros, a 30-minute wait for a coffee seems reasonable to me. This is shit, you have to wait. Still, another participant said it took them “a day and a half and a few miles of walking around” to find the coffee.
But this is Australia and the expectations for coffee are not the same here as elsewhere, perhaps second only to Italy in terms of vigor (maybe). This is the same country where Serena Williams famously asked for a shot of espresso mid-match (in case you were wondering, the espresso came from Northbridge Coffee in Perth).
However, all this bury the diode. The real question in all of this is who serves the coffee? On a digital tour of Melbourne Park, you can only find two of the 15 locations, both operated by Urban Cup, whose online presence is generally not effortless to search. So where – and who – are the remaining 13 places? Well, one of the sponsors of the event is none other than Luckin Coffee, a Chinese speedy coffee brand trying to challenge Starbucks. Do they serve other locations? And if so, does that mean coffee-proud Australians have outsourced their most beloved drink to a Starbucks knockoff?
If true, it would be the gravest of sins. And honestly, I’m not sure how any coffee professional in Melbourne can recover from such a setback. Sydney would never do that. I can almost hear Jack Simpson booking a moving truck.
