“We might have been the first coffee shop in Australia to even put two people on a machine in around 2003 – there was such demand.” “People could and would wait up to 20 minutes for a coffee from Cibo Rundle Street,” he says. Mario says it was almost one year to the tick of the clock that marked the point Cibo Espresso coffee went from a trickle to suddenly flooding the streets of Adelaide.
“Still,” says Maria, “we just didn’t know if it (Cibo Espresso) was going to survive… There was such a push-back from customers.” Head barista at Cibo from 2000 – 2008, Maria Munari, recalls a postcard Cibo Espresso created to educate customers about the rationale behind this “new coffee” method. “In that first six months it was a struggle to educate people about why we were serving coffee as anything less than scalding hot” ~ Mario Paglia Every change the fledgling business made was designed to improve the customer’s coffee drinking experience by presenting the natural sweetness of the dark liquid and velvet texture of perfectly folded milk. “In that first six months it was a struggle to educate people about why we were serving coffee as anything less than scalding hot and also the style of service was completely different… people didn’t necessarily like having to get up to collect their coffee or have their names called out loudly on Rundle Street,” he says with a wry grin.Ĭibo sought to move away from inch-high foam on cappuccinos and bitter, over-extracted coffee.
“Adelaideans were used to drinking hot tea and hot Nescafé,” says Mario. It wasn’t deemed “good coffee” by all though. He says it was a huge relief to have good coffee on the street. Current owner of the Rundle Street shop, Mario Paglia, remembers being one of the coffee shop’s earliest customers. With a lease that dates back to 1999, Cibo Espresso represents the beginning of Adelaide’s ever-expanding love affair with the syrupy brown liquid.
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