After over 15 years building a beloved Melbourne brand, Axil Coffee Roasters has opened its first Sydney café in Surry Hills — a 50-seat flagship that doubles as a wholesale hub. It’s a strategic move: showcase Axil to local café owners while fine-tuning a new, customer-friendly ordering flow powered by Square.
What you'll learn
- Why Axil picked Surry Hills and how it thinks about new markets.
- The exact tech changes Axil made with Square — and why they protect bar flow.
- How competition culture and direct trade shape Axil’s everyday coffee.
- Practical takeaways for cafés expanding beyond their home city.
Why Surry Hills, and why now
With no shortage of places to get coffee in Surry Hills, it does beg the question: why an area that’s already well served? For co-founder David Makin, the dynamics of the area was a big drawcard.
“We were setting up and the locals are stopping and talking to us about when we’re opening and everyone’s excited… It’s very friendly and very open, and I think it’s going to match very well with our style and the way we run our stores,” says Makin.
An area like Surry Hills has a reasonably consistent foot traffic across the seven days. And to be successful in hospitality, you need that spread of business across the whole week. You can’t just be busy on a couple of days. So I think that’s where Surry Hills will work quite well.”
David Makin → Co-founder, Axil Coffee Roasters
But it’s not just the local vibes, the shop is also set up as a “showroom” for wholesale partners to taste the product, meet the team and understand Axil’s approach.
Culture first: service you can feel
Asked what makes Axil special, Makin doesn’t hesitate: “To be honest, it is the team. We have a group of people that’s really passionate about coffee, but we’re all so really into customer service and engagement.” It’s deliberately simple: greet people warmly, learn the names of regulars and create a good experience.
“If you are a friendly server, you can get away with anything. You can make mistakes the customer’s like, ‘Oh, that’s all right.’ But the minute that you are a bit abrupt or you’re a bit rude with the customer, then you’ve got no room to move.”
Competition DNA → everyday consistency
The Barista competition scene is no stranger to Axil. Makin himself is a five-time Victorian Barista Champion, two-time Australian Barista Champion, and World Barista Champion runner-up. And even though Makin’s competitor days are behind him, the spirit is carried on through his team. Axil’s Jack Simpson won the 2025 World Barista Championship, following podium finishes in 2023 and 2024, while Anthony Douglas claimed the world title in 2022.
But what does this highly technical and specialised side of coffee mean for consumers and wholesale buyers? For Makin, it’s about knowing what’s coming next and staying at the forefront of making coffee.
“We look now with the coffee machines, we all weigh how much coffee we’re putting in. We all weigh what comes out. That was first done at the World Barista Championship like 12 years ago, and then now it’s ingrained into everyday life in most cafes around the world,” says Makin. “The barista competition is forged in the future of what coffee can be, and so by participating in and being part of it, we ensure that we can keep adapting and be relevant to the market.”
The tech shift: serving faster without losing the Axil feel
As Axil scales its retail and wholesale operations nationwide, tech that serves their various needs is imperative. Square’s powerful technology helps streamline service and deliver a faster, more connected customer experience. Each piece of hardware plays a role: Square Register powers counter service, Square Handheld enable quick tableside ordering, and Square Kiosk in high-traffic locations such as Melbourne Airport help cut wait times. Together with integrated Loyalty and Marketing tools, everything runs on one platform, connecting every Axil venue and in-store customer touchpoint.
With Square, Axil are able to offer:
-
Order-ahead via Square Online for pickup ordering
-
Self-order on Square Kiosk, with multilingual interfaces to simplify ordering
-
Printed order stickers. Axil’s takeaway workflow depends on stickers on cups (not paper dockets) to separate dine-in and takeaway orders. “Now what happens if you are in your office and you order a takeaway latte, it will print to a sticker printer and our staff will peel the sticker off, stick it on a cup, it goes on top of the machine, and then that way we can keep those dine-in orders and takeaway orders distinctly separated. It makes it a lot faster and makes sure that we don’t make errors.”
-
Unified loyalty across every location. Points are earned on coffee, food and retail. “You can accrue those points either just to grab a free cup of coffee when you get to those points or you can accumulate them and you can use them to buy bags of coffee or to book barista training sessions.”
A lot of the tech that comes with Square is going to really allow us to give some better customer service and better interaction.’
David Makin → Co-founder, Axil Coffee Roasters
Market strategy: one flagship per city, wholesale first
With 16 locations across Melbourne, Makin is cautious about expanding too quickly in new cities. “If you open too many stores, then some of the cafe owners see you as a competitor as opposed to a supplier,” says Makin. The plan: one flagship in Sydney, then a similar play in Brisbane to anchor local wholesale.
As for the future of Axil, Makin says there’s a plan but things always shift. “We always have literally 50 different things on the whiteboard in the office we’re trying to do,” says Makin. “But we ebb and flow depending on what we get offered. We do tend to have a bit of a plan, but we move and change that plan depending on what comes up and what we’re offered.”
What this means for operators
- Design tech around your bar flow. If a feature introduces errors, push for a workflow-safe alternative (Axil’s sticker-printing is a great example).
- Let customers order their way. Offer order-ahead and kiosks where they reduce queues; keep counter service warm and personal.
- Make loyalty bigger than coffee. Reward across categories and tailor earn/redeem rates to drive the right behaviour.
- Don’t flood a new market. A single, best-in-class flagship can power wholesale growth — and goodwill.
