Sturt Street’s novel cafe

HAVING only just opened in August, Sturt Street’s Food Literature Café & Catering has already begun establishing itself as a café for good.

Owner Peter Carr said being able to finally welcome customers in has been a relief and the past two weeks have beaten their expectations.

“We didn’t really know what to expect because we’re a brand-new business, started from nowhere but we are definitely getting there,” he said.

“We operate under the idea that we’re champion affordable and home cooked food above all.

“It’s great being here on Sturt Street because other businesses attract a lot of customers to the area so that’s been good, especially the hairdressers either side.”

While being a café is the focus of Mr Carr’s business, he said his interests in literature are another main component of his venue.

“I study a Bachelor of Arts and Creative Writing so I love reading and writing and we thought, what goes better together than books and coffee?” he said.

“We get a lot of people sitting on the couches and having a read.

“We even have a library so people can borrow books for free and have them for two weeks on loan, which is good for us because they come back to return it.”

To cultivate the library and encourage his customers to read as much as possible, Mr Carr said he put a call out on social media for members of the community to donate any spare books they had lying around.

“We started off with mine and my families’ books that we didn’t want any more and then we thought we would put a shout out and we have got heaps, over 200, books being donated,” he said.

“People have been just dropping in two or three books and we always shout them a coffee when they come in doing that.”

Aside from the free library set up, the Food Literature Café is always on the lookout for different ways to be charitable and support its community.

When the business was takeaway only earlier in the year, Mr Carr said they had a donation bin set up to raise money for Ballarat Health Services.

“People came in and got a coffee and made a donation and we ended up making over $300 in a week for Ballarat Health,” he said.

“We’re also organising with the Soup Bus to take our end of day soups, toasties and other things that we have left over at the end of the day, which are still fine and would be a shame to chuck out.

“The café is a community based thing for us, to know that I can sell food and provide it for people is really rewarding because I believe if you’re able to be charitable, there’s no reason not to.”