Our Story
Market Lane Coffee is a specialty coffee roaster and retailer, born and based in Melbourne. We are dedicated to sourcing, roasting and making beautiful coffee, and we’re committed to doing so in a responsible, sustainable and respectful way.
Market Lane was founded in 2009 by Fleur Studd and Jason Scheltus. It's hard to fathom now, but at that time, finding fresh, in-season, traceable, high quality coffee in Melbourne (or Australia) was practically impossible. We wanted to help address that and, in doing so, ignite positive change in the industry by redefining what coffee was and could be, and to build a market for, and appreciation of, high quality specialty coffee.
We built our first shop and roastery in the wonderful, bustling Prahran Market. We fell in love with this location for many reasons, the most important being that it allows us to engage with a community of shoppers who are seeking out quality produce, and who care about seasonality and provenance.
We realised early on that we wanted to deliver Melbourne's best coffee experience and to do this, we needed to put all our energy into sourcing, roasting and sharing the very best coffee we could find. Our goal was to make these coffees accessible and exciting, easy to understand and appreciate, and simple to brew and enjoy.
From the beginning, we have been committed to quality, transparency, sustainability and using business for good. These principles have a real impact on the way we buy coffee, the people we work with, and how we run our business.
Today, Market Lane is still independently owned by Fleur and Jason, along with Jenni Bryant, who joined the business in 2010 and became a co-owner in 2019. The trio actively work in the business alongside an incredible group of friendly, caring, talented and passionate back-of-house and front-of-house team members.
Over the last decade and a half we have slowly grown to nine shops, each located in very special neighbourhoods in Melbourne – from Carlton to the Queen Victoria Market, South Melbourne to the ‘Paris end’ of Collins Street. In each of these locations, we have built meaningful, ongoing relationships with the area’s unique community, and we’ve made hundreds of beautiful coffees for thousands of wonderful customers.
Our roastery and headquarters is located in Brunswick East. We roast on a 45kg Probat, and take great care to preserve the quality and integrity of each coffee we feature, and highlight the most exquisite characteristics in each lot.
All our coffees are produced by dedicated farmers, many of who we have been lucky to work with, year after year. These producers’ talent, hard work and unwavering commitment to quality – and to supporting their local communities – blows us away every time we visit them and reinforces all the reasons we do what we do. It makes us even more determined to celebrate and showcase their coffees, and to tell their stories. We know our job is done when a customer gets excited to see a specific coffee on our shelves, or asks us when it will be back on offer.
