Melbourne Roastery Special · No. 01
By MELB NOTE Editorial Team · Visited 11 September 2026 · Photos from the visit · Not sponsored
The short answer
Axil Coffee Roasters Hawthorn is the brand’s original café, at 322 Burwood Road, open since May 2011 and now a dining space, retail shelf and coffee-training area together, with the roastery and head office separately at 48 Lynch Street, also in Hawthorn. Two of its baristas have won the World Barista Championship: Anthony Douglas in 2022 and Jack Simpson in 2025.
Set against that record, I wanted to know whether an ordinary flat white and batch brew held up. I ordered the Seasonal Espresso flat white and that day’s batch brew, and came away thinking the everyday cups mattered more than the trophies.
A roastery series that starts with two world titles
Melbourne has no shortage of cafés doing good coffee, and chasing “good coffee” alone as a category doesn’t get you very far into the city’s coffee culture. Understanding it properly means also looking at who’s roasting, what relationship they have with growers, and how that thinking actually reaches the cup a customer is handed. This is the first stop in a series visiting Melbourne roasteries directly, and it starts with Axil Coffee Roasters.
Axil leads with two world titles: Anthony Douglas won the World Barista Championship in 2022, and Jack Simpson won it in 2025. So my question was simple: at a roastery with that record, what does an ordinary flat white and batch brew — not a competition drink — actually taste like? This visit, on 11 September 2026, was my attempt to check. It wasn’t sponsored.
Hawthorn is where the story starts
Axil’s story starts in Hawthorn. According to Axil’s own materials, the 322 Burwood Road site is the brand’s first store and flagship, opened in May 2011, founded by the couple Dave Makin and Zoe Delany. Café and roastery originally shared the one space; today it runs as a dining area seating more than 50, alongside a retail shelf and a coffee-training space, while the actual roastery and head office sit separately at 48 Lynch Street, also in Hawthorn.
The entrance carries the Australian Barista Championship record prominently, and walking further in, the retail shelf, the bar, the training space and the trophy display follow on from each other without much separation.
How Axil describes good coffee
One thing Axil emphasises officially is trading directly with producers. Since every roaster sets its own bar for what “direct” means, the stated terms matter more than the label: Axil describes visiting farms at harvest time to negotiate prices with producers, paying at least 25% above the Fairtrade minimum price at the time, sending a green-buying team to assess coffees at the farms, and working with producers it considers environmentally and socially responsible.
Something else worth noting is the distinction Axil draws between using the same beans and keeping the same flavour direction. A blend such as Seasonal Espresso holds onto its intended flavour profile while the beans making it up change with each new harvest, whereas single origins are rotated specifically to show differences in origin, variety and processing.
On the shelf the day I visited sat Heavyweight Espresso, Pelé Espresso, Seasonal Espresso and a rotating single-origin filter coffee. Everything from an easy daily espresso through filter coffee that shows off a single origin’s character to competition-grade coffee sits under the one brand.
If I had to sum up Axil’s direction in a sentence, it would be this: a roastery trying to close the gap between the coffee people drink every day and the coffee it puts forward at world competitions.
What the competitions left behind
It’s hard to talk about Axil without the barista competitions coming up. What matters isn’t the trophy count so much as what the competition record shows about how the team defines good coffee and the barista’s role in making it.
At the 2022 World Barista Championship, held in Melbourne, Axil’s Anthony Douglas took the title; Axil’s own materials name the coffee he used as El Diviso, from Huila, Colombia. Jack Simpson then won the Australian Barista Championship three years running, from 2023 to 2025, and at the World Barista Championship placed third in 2023, second in 2024 and first in 2025.
Axil is clear that the 2025 win wasn’t a solo effort: the brand credits Jack Simpson, head of coffee Matthew Crowley, Dave Makin, Jamison Savage of Finca Deborah and Jhonatan Gasca of Finca Zarza as the team behind the competition coffee. What makes Axil more interesting to me is that this competition work doesn’t stop at a trophy case — it feeds back into the menu customers can actually order. The café menu I saw that day carried competition coffees, including Jack Simpson’s winning and runner-up World Barista Championship drinks.
Training, retail and service share one room
My starting question was simple: at a roastery that’s produced two world champions, what happens when you order a plain flat white? The Burwood Road café itself is less showy than that record might suggest. It reads as an older Hawthorn café with a contemporary space folded into it, with a retail shelf and a coffee-training area to one side.
Seeing training, retail and everyday service running in the same room made the competition results feel less like something that appeared overnight. While I waited for my order, I looked further into the space, including the equipment and trophies set further back. Through a window at the back is the training and display room, with trophies on a shelf above a bench of coffee gear.
Two cups, and what stayed with me
What I ordered on this visit was a Seasonal Espresso flat white and that day’s batch brew. I wanted the plain flat white before anything competition-related, on the thinking that it was the better test of Axil’s everyday cup.
Axil lists milk chocolate, panela and stone fruit for Seasonal Espresso. The first thing I noticed was the temperature: drinkable straight away, never too hot. What stood out most was the milk: velvety, dense and smooth rather than simply soft-foamed, with the espresso’s crema folded into the milk rather than sitting apart from it. In flavour, chocolate sweetness came first, followed by a sweet aroma suggesting purple fruit or stone fruit, and a very faint grassy, herbal note lingered at the end. That herbal edge wasn’t quite to my taste, but overall it was a very accomplished flat white.
On the filter shelf that day was an Ethiopia Banko Gotiti: apricot, yellow peach, baked apple and toffee on the card, Ethiopian Heirloom, washed.
My cup had a lively but light acidity, tea-like and easy to drink, with an apricot-like sweet-tartness upfront. As it cooled, a cooked-apple sweetness came through along with a light toffee, almost burnt-sugar impression. The finish ran a bit long and slightly drying, which isn’t quite my kind of finish.
Doing well in competition doesn’t automatically make an everyday flat white better: a world championship is an environment built to control variables for one cup, while a café has to serve many customers all day. That’s exactly why the Seasonal Espresso flat white interested me more on this visit than a more elaborate competition drink would have.
Two cups in, my impression was clear. Axil’s strength wasn’t exaggerating flashy flavours but showing its intended flavour direction fairly accurately in the actual cup. Winning at competition and consistently making good coffee day to day are different problems, but on the two cups I drank in Hawthorn that day, Axil had narrowed the distance between them. What stayed with me afterwards was those everyday cups, more than the trophies.
All photos are mine, taken on the visit.
Sources and scope
- Axil Coffee — Burwood Road
- Axil Coffee — About Us
- Axil Coffee — Coffee offering
- Axil Coffee — Sustainability
- Axil Coffee — Anthony Douglas, 2022 World Barista Champion
- World Coffee Championships — announcing the 2025 World Barista Champion
Scope: I visited on 11 September 2026. The history, direct-trade terms, blend and single-origin practice, and competition record come from the sources above (checked 16 September 2026); hours, menu and prices can change, so check Axil’s site before you go.
