Sustainability is a word on everyone’s lips right now, but it has been a nearly decade-long mindset for Two Before Ten managing director Chris Dennis.
As one of the biggest proponents of sustainable cafes in Canberra, Dennis is best known for transforming an abandoned shopping village into a bustling community hub with an on-site cafe, roastery, beehives, fruit trees, expansive vegetable garden, and industrial composter.
“I’ve embraced the role business can and should play in pursuing and promoting sustainable practices,” Dennis says. “That often comes at a cost to business, so you have to proactively make a decision to forgo some profit to make the world a better place.”
Read on to learn about Two Before Ten’s sustainability practices including its farm, how that translates to the plate, the cafe’s recycling practices, how it supports the community, and where Dennis hopes to take it next.
How the farm came to be
Dennis ended the lease on a small city cafe in 2014 and purchased an old shopping village in Aranda, which had been vacant for almost two decades. That fundamentally transformed the cafe from a profit-driven coffee and gourmet sandwich shop to a neighbourhood hub that prioritises caring for the planet, its customers, and the wider Canberra community.
Diners are surrounded by an abundance of life and natural beauty from the moment they arrive in Aranda.
Garden beds line the walking paths, extending seamlessly into the car park. Rooms dedicated to mushroom growing, fermenting, and oil recycling sit along the boundary fence.
Flowering native plants are interspersed among bee hives and fruit trees. A rotating vegetable patch sits adjacent to a fragrant courtyard herb garden and a flourishing grapevine.
Today, the 400-meter-wide farm is looked after by the 20 chefs that work across all the cafe’s locations.
Supporting a growing ecosystem
The farm now provides year-round produce to Two Before Ten’s eight locations citywide and 10 Yards Bar. Menus are designed around seasons, and more than 70% of the food is vegetarian with most dishes available vegan on request.
The Aranda cafe’s signature ’shrooms on toast is a medley of farm-grown mushrooms with garden greens, housemade thyme labneh, and pickled red onion on Three Mills Bakery rye sourdough.
Vegetarians will appreciate the zucchini burger with pickled slaw and beetroot ricotta made from leftover steamed milk used by the cafe’s baristas. This is also whipped into vanilla ricotta and served with pancakes or fruit toast.
For meat eaters, there’s Two Before Ten’s pure Aussie kangaroo burger (kangaroo meat is considered the most sustainable meat in Australia), an Asian-inspired free-range chicken burger, and a Reuben toastie with housemade sauerkraut. All burgers and toasties come with a seasonal garden salad or chips with herb mayonnaise.
How the cafe’s practices support the environment
Growing, preparing, and serving fresh produce on-site drastically reduces Two Before Ten’s food miles and single-use packaging. Once produce is harvested and washed, it’s packed into large, reusable containers and delivered straight to the kitchens. The containers are then thoroughly cleaned and reused for future harvests.
“We try to make sure all our packaging is recyclable or compostable, including our takeaway coffee cups, lids, and retail coffee bags,” Dennis says.
The cafes have colour-coded collection bins for customers to return those items and for staff and chefs to collect green waste and coffee grinds.
Two Before Ten was one of the first restaurants in the city to install an industrial composter onsite in Aranda in 2022. Packaging materials and coffee cups are composted alongside food scraps, coffee grounds, and garden waste and then added back into the gardens as compost.
The cafe processes about 20 tonnes of waste each year and develops about 4 tonnes of compost. That’s roughly equal to 2.5% of the overall volume of the soil in the gardens, according to Dennis.
Dennis recognises that not every cafe has the space or resources to install an industrial composter, but believes that every restaurant can take a small step. “Start by identifying what your customers are willing to support, and then determine what feasible measures you can take to reduce waste and lower your carbon footprint,” he says.
Relying on and giving back to the community
Two Before Ten’s Aranda project relied heavily on community support and continues to be a collective effort of dedicated suppliers, customers, and staff.
This has inspired the cafe to pay it forward through a range of sustainability initiatives.
Home gardeners are encouraged to ask for free coffee grounds, which are packed in bags made from recycled paper and lined with 100% compostable corn-based film.
Each cafe operates a produce-exchange program where anyone can trade excess fruit, herbs, or vegetables from their home gardens for coffee or produce from the farm.
In addition, the farm team shares its sustainability knowledge in small-group workshops covering topics such as fermenting, butchery, cheese making, and sourdough baking.
What comes next
Two Before Ten’s success in Aranda enabled it to open cafes in Canberra City, Brindabella Park, Greenway, Barton, Dickson, Gungahlin, and Majura.
Next up, Dennis hopes to debut two more locations of the cafe and a sourdough bakery and cafe in the Murrumbateman wine area just outside Canberra. After that, he will set his sights on regenerative farming, an increasingly popular practice that relies on composting, minimal or no fertilizers, and enriching the soil. “[That] would keep us busy for quite a while,” he says.
He hopes the cafe’s rapid rise will encourage even more businesses to follow suit. “[I] hope to see a broader uptake across the industry of basic sustainability measures including sourcing locally and using recyclable and compostable packaging,” he adds.
Melissa Woodley is a passionate food writer who is currently eating her way through Sydney and exploring as many new cuisines as possible. Follow her on Instagram @sporkdiaries.
