Every community needs a corner café with heart, a place to come together and connect over good food, kicking coffee and conversation.
With the motto: Food Made with Love, Mio Piatto in Woodville Park is a true reflection of a warm and welcoming corner café. We caught up with business owner Amanda Ozcagli to discuss her journey in creating a café that is quickly becoming a local favourite.
Amanda’s passion for cooking and her community were obvious when we sat down at Mio Piatto to find out more about the path to opening her café.
An accomplished hair stylist for over 20 years, Amanda worked her way to becoming a Senior Stylist across well-known salons in Adelaide and Melbourne. This experience provided her with an appreciation of the value of building positive relationships with her clients. Listening, conversation and creating a warm and welcoming environment are all skills that Amanda attributes to her years in the beauty industry.
The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you are not going to stay where you are - J.P Morgan.
Working long hours as a Senior Stylist in one of Melbourne’s top hair salons, Amanda describes her desire to lead her life in a new direction. With a passion for cooking, Amanda often thought about starting her own food business. The big picture was to always to open her own café, however she knew she needed to take smaller steps to reach her goal. Amanda moved back to Adelaide, knowing she needed her support network of friends and family around to make her vision become a reality.
“When you do go into business, especially small businesses of any kind, you need a good support network. So I was really lucky to have a family around me, not only just to support with the children but also to taste my food and provide feedback… that gave me confidence to move forward,” Amanda said.
Amanda’s dream of opening her own café, didn’t happen overnight, rather it started from the humble beginning of running a small catering business built on the back of her reputation for her legendary Arancini.
Growing up in Adelaide’s western suburbs, she recalls that coming together around food was a family tradition, a way of life. They would bottle the sauces, preserve the vegetables, make the green olive oil and pasta, followed with an extended family feast. Food was very much an all hands in experience and this tradition very much lives on in her business today. Coming together to connect around food isn’t just a business for Amanda, it’s a way of life.
Starting with catering for family and small corporate events, gave Amanda the opportunity to try different recipes and gain feedback to build her confidence. She explains how slowly, her business grew, as did her reputation for making delicious traditional Italian specialties started to get noticed. Hiring out a small kitchen to keep up with the ever-increasing clientele, Amanda decided to take the next step, establishing a stall at the Wild Heartmarket in Port Adelaide. She would cook during the week and sell her fresh delicious Italian produce (including her legendary Arancini) at the weekly market, and over the next two years slowly established regular customers and a name for making delicious food.
Amanda describes the hard work setting up a temporary retail outlet each week: "Every Sunday I would set up, bringing fridges, freezer blocks, microwave and everything to keep there so it was physically a lot of work," she said.
Using social media to build her following, Amanda reveals how her experiences as a hair stylist gave her the creative acumen to market her business.
The next step was to realise her vision of opening her own café. Raising a family, Amanda knew she needed to stay local and be close to home to juggle both family and business. She describes how she scouted for years for somewhere suitable, however the timing was never right. With the synergy of the community she knew and grew up within, she approached the previous business owner quite a few times before she was able to take over the site She had a gut feeling that the location and community of Mio Piatto was exactly where she wanted to open her corner café.
Amanda’s husband Ali helped establish Mio Piatto, whilst juggling his other job, and was instrumental in making Amanda’s dream a reality. So much so, that he is now working in the business full time and is equally passionate about making their business a success.
Amanda describes how she wanted to create a positive space: “In any business it’s all about the experience and how you can make a difference in someone’s day, even just through a friendly smile,” she said.
Given the food industry has changed with the saturation of cooking shows, making cooking more accessible, Amanda explains that her vision was about creating an experience and a meeting place for locals where they can feel welcomed with comforting fresh food.
This recipe for creating a positive local café has paid off as Mio Piatto has seen a growing and evolving clientele, particularly with young families that have moved into the area. As Amanda highlights, it’s not just locals that have found out about this little gem:
“Locals come here weekly and they know each other, they meet here on certain days, bringing their work colleagues, social groups and friends here - wanting to show off their local café… like they are proud of their area…its very flattering,” she said.
“It’s really lovely to see the community support my business and bring people from all over Adelaide.”
The experience at Mio Piatto has expanded with Amanda working on local events. Earlier in 2021 local businesses pulled together to apply for the City of Charles Sturt shop local and live and local grants to establish a local artisan market outside her café, where on a Saturday morning, local artists set up pop up stalls (florist, jewellery, skincare) providing locals the opportunity to shop local as well as increase customers. She is supportive of other local producers, as she feels it’s important to back other local businesses.
It's clear from sitting down with Amanda that she is bursting with ideas and full of positive enthusiasm for her business and community.
We asked Amanda how her business had been impacted as a result of COVID-19
“For some, during Covid, going to their local café, may be the only face they see for the day. It was important to keep smiling and create a positive environment.”
Despite her business not being able to be open as usual, Mio Piatto was providing takeaway coffee, cake and take-home meals, which created a huge demand.
“I provided takeaway meals and some people came in and bought everything as they wanted to help me stay open. One man came in every day to buy his takeaway meal and you could tell it was an important part of his day. Without that support I’m not sure I would have made it through Covid.
“After lockdown, people continued to ask for take home meals, so I’ve incorporated that into my future business plans – a take home range of food – people are always asking if they can buy my oils, my chutneys and so it follows for me to expand this idea and brand my own produce.”
Amanda highlights the need to be adaptable in business, explaining how she adapted her business to suit community needs and was surprised how they rallied around her to support her business during a hard time.
“My locals that were always supportive became more supportive. It was super amazing, people just kept coming in, consciously saying we want to make sure your business is OK.”
Despite the difficulties, it was her community and customers that kept her business going; local health and business staff coming in regularly for their coffee run.
“I was overwhelmed by the local community support, it was very emotional for me to see how the community supported me, and I would not have been able to stay open without their support. I’m very grateful for their support.”
Inspired to expand her business, given the high demand for her take home meals and produce, Amanda understands there is local demand for her food outside of Mio Piatto.
“People’s lives have changed, with more people working from home, not travelling and wanting to support local businesses, so it’s a time for me to develop my retail aspirations and create more experiences for my community.”
We asked Amanda to provide some top tips for people who are thinking of starting their own café/food business:
- Start small: Follow your goal, one step at a time and learn as you go – always have the main goal in sight but taking it one step at a time will save you a lot of stress and build your confidence.
- Support network: Have a good support network around you, it's invaluable – owning a business is a lot of work and having support is an important element in surviving and being successful.
- Patience: It doesn’t happen overnight but sometimes it’s important to find the right location, idea, or whatever that might be for your business, don’t rush the process.
- Model what you want in your staff: Hire staff that reflect how you see your business. I wanted a friendly warm welcoming place for people to come and enjoy my food, so I hire people who reflect these qualities and I always try to model that behaviour as a Manager.
- Make it workable for your lifestyle: Create a workable business that fits around your lifestyle – for me it was my family - that way it’s much easier to love what you do even during the hard times. People will surprise you with their support.
With a successful corner café now established we asked Amanda; what’s next?
Amanda explains her next step is to hire more staff so she can add a small retail element to the café with a longer-term vision to create the Mio Piatto brand. In keeping with her vision of fresh wholesome food, Amanda is determined to keep her retail capacity small scale, describing that she doesn’t want to dilute her flavours by going into mass production.
With the success of the local artist market earlier in the year, Amanda would also like to develop more experiences for her community, to create another element for locals to hang out.
"There is strong community here so I have ideas to create more experiences, whether it be another market, wine tastings, live music, more outdoor seating and umbrellas, opening more hours, cooking demonstrations…or even an Arancini food truck, there are many ideas floating around in my head at the moment. I feel really positive about the possibilities," she said.
"It’s just now for me, finding the time and the right staff so that I can focus on these new areas."
We asked Amanda if there are any areas, she would like to improve on to enable her to grow her business:
"Time for planning, I don’t have much time for that now running a small business as I’m so invested in the moment. I need to develop more trust to let go and free myself the time to dedicate to planning," she said.
Amanda is keen to follow up on other City of Charles Sturt grant opportunities to expand her business, potentially create the Mio Piatto retail brand and bring life to her ideas for creating more engagement for her customers and community.
The grants available to support businesses include: