Celebrating 17 years of Market Lane

Published on

04 Oct, 2026

This year, Market Lane Coffee turns 17. It’s been an incredible journey.

From the beginning, our mission was simple: we wanted to change how people thought about coffee – to source, roast and share the coffees we loved in a responsible way, and to celebrate the stories of the people behind them. We aimed to make great coffee accessible and exciting, and easy to brew, understand and enjoy.

Nearly two decades on, a lot has changed. The industry has evolved and grown, and we’ve grown with it. But much has remained the same, including the thing that gets us out of bed every morning: good coffee that’s good for everyone.

We opened our first shop in 2009, at the entrance to the Prahran Market. We installed a 5kg Probat roaster in the space and offered a menu of the most delicious coffees we could find. Our approach was simple and single-minded, and quite different from what others were doing in Melbourne/Naarm (and across Australia) at the time.

First and foremost, we wanted to spotlight and celebrate the producers and farming communities who had grown and processed our coffees. We did this by sharing as much as possible about the producers and their work, training our team to talk about them in depth, and providing postcards with each cup or bag of beans, detailing where each coffee was grown and what made it special.

From the beginning, pour over filter coffee was an essential focus – we brewed it to order, by hand, right in the middle of our coffee bar. The filter bar took up as much space as the espresso machine, and it sat next to buckets of freshly roasted beans, which we hand-scooped, weighed and bagged on demand. Serving in this way felt important because it sparked curiosity and conversation; people would see us brewing and have the opportunity to taste a fresh coffee before selecting beans for home.

Seasonality was also a focus from the get-go. Our offering (and espresso blend) changed throughout the year, and we wanted our customers to understand why this was important and worth celebrating. Our ultimate goal was to create “aha!” moments for curious customers – similar to those we’d experienced early in our coffee careers, when we started to discover and appreciate the unique distinctions between coffees.

Other details were also carefully considered. For instance, for our cappuccinos and flat whites, we found the most delicious organic milk being produced in Australia. At the time, third-generation farmer Simon Schulz was only selling his milk at a farmer’s market but, fortunately, we convinced him to supply it to us. If we were going to add milk to our coffees, we knew we had to love it and believe in its production process as much as we did our beans. We opted not to offer skinny milk (which was ubiquitous in cafes at the time) and made other tough decisions, too, like not having an extensive food menu, and limiting our choice of alternative milks and other beverages.

Coffee-tasting was also central to our focus in those early days. We wanted to give people the chance to experience coffees side-by-side, as this is one of the best ways to understand how things like variety, terroir and processing can impact a coffee’s flavour. So, at 10am every day, we offered free hour-long tastings in our tasting room, which attracted an ever-expanding, enthusiastic group of curious customers and baristas from across Melbourne. Everyone was welcome and we almost always ran over time, answering questions, talking in depth, and making lifelong friends in the industry.

Very early on, we were blown away by the Melbourne community, who embraced and encouraged us wholeheartedly. They visited us, drank, tasted and chatted about coffees – and they came back for more, often bringing friends. People tweeted, blogged and Tumblr’d (yes, it was 2009) and started to engage deeply with our coffees and what we were doing. That kept us going.

In 2011, two years after we opened our Prahran shop, we opened the doors to our second location, on Therry St opposite Queen Victoria Market. It was here that we first printed “We love to make coffee for the city that loves to drink it” across our window. The slogan was originally intended just for our opening, but it stuck, and soon made its way onto our takeaway cups as well!

Our Therry St space was significantly smaller than Prahran, with an intimate atmosphere that encouraged conversation. Two menus hung on the wall: one for filter coffees and the other for espresso. At the time, asking customers to choose the specific coffee they wanted to drink was unusual, and it prompted great exchanges as we talked people through our menu.
Inside this iconic shop, we printed a manifesto on the wall, which still rings true today. “We are not great multi-taskers,” it began. “We focus on only one thing: delicious high-quality coffee.”

In the years that followed, we slowly opened more shops in Melbourne, all attached to bustling markets and other vibrant food and community hubs – from Faraday St, Carlton to South Melbourne Market; from the city to Sydney Rd. Our growth was gradual and organic, driven by our excitement about serving coffee in neighbourhoods we loved, and by our desire to create opportunities for our steadily growing group of passionate team members.

Looking back 17 years later, we can see how much has changed in our business since we first opened. Our roastery has moved to Brunswick East, where we now roast coffee on a beautiful 45kg Probat. We’ve grown from a team of three to over 100, and we now have eleven shops dotted around the city (our newest opened in Fitzroy North in July).

And though we’ve grown in many ways, our focus and fundamentals remain the same. We’re as committed as ever to exceptional quality, transparency, sustainability and community – the core values that still inform every decision we make.

Most importantly, 17 years in, we’re still just as excited about great coffee. We still have those “aha!” moments while tasting and selecting coffees to share, and the same motivation and drive to deliver the most special coffees, from the most dedicated producers. And we continue to be moved by the way good coffee brings good people together.

Our relationships and all the communities we’re connected to through Market Lane still deeply inspire us, enliven our creativity and contribute to our evolution. So many people have helped shape who we are as a business. This includes all the people who have worked with us over the years; the team members who have so beautifully connected with and articulated our values and our vision, and who have generously contributed to Market Lane’s incredibly special culture. Some of our team members have been with us since the very beginning, others for over a decade. We’re forever grateful to all our team members, past and present, new and longstanding, for putting so much heart, care and passion into what they do. They are the fabric of Market Lane.

Our relationships with our coffee-producing partners have also deepened over the last 17 years. After every visit, we come away in awe of their dedication, hard work, innovation and unwavering commitment to quality, and to supporting their local communities. We remain more committed than ever to building a market and a name for their coffees here in Australia, and we take great pride and care in sharing their beans and their stories with our customers.

Closer to home, we’re so lucky to have the opportunity to work with quality-focused producers and talented creative people in Australia. It’s been so special to partner with and supply our coffee to some of the best cafes, grocers and restaurants in the country.

As we’ve grown, we’ve found new ways to formalise and deepen our commitment to responsible business practices. Becoming a certified B Corp has been a significant part of this, as has building meaningful, ongoing relationships with visionary non-profit organisations that do crucial work to make the world more just and equitable for future generations.

And then there’s you – our amazing community of coffee lovers. Since 2009, we’ve made countless coffees for our beloved customers, and roasted and posted bags of fresh beans to people near and far. We’ve been so lucky to form relationships with regular visitors in our shops, and to have built a community of engaged and passionate subscribers who brew and enjoy the coffees we send out to them each fortnight. It means the world to us to be part of people’s daily coffee ritual, whether in our spaces or in their homes.

Thank you for being a special part of this journey. It’s a huge honour to be part of, and to contribute to, the remarkable ecosystem that exists around specialty coffee, and it’s impossible not to feel incredibly proud of what we’ve all created together at Market Lane. There’s so much coming up that we’re excited for, and we can’t wait to see what’s next.

Looking ahead, we plan and promise to keep educating and sharing, and to do everything we can to ensure a sustainable and viable future for specialty coffee. And, of course, to do what we’ve done from the very beginning: opening our doors each morning to roast, brew, share, discuss, savour and celebrate the most special coffees we can find.

Fleur, Jenni and Jason
Market Lane Co-Owners

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