“It’s crazy: on the weekend we’ve got, between Happyfield and Happy Shop, 30-plus staff working,” says co-owner Chris Theodosi. “You’ve got both venues full, and you’ve got the wait-list going and everything’s working so harmoniously.”
“And it’s kind of like – how did this is all happen?”
Here’s how.
Sydney's Happiest Diner
The grounds for a friendship
The story of Sydney’s most influential café right now started at Sydney’s most influential café of back then: The Grounds of Alexandria. The Grounds and its CBD spin-off were – and still are – renowned for their highly stylised, maximalist venues with inventive fit-outs and creative menus. (Sound familiar?)
In the 2010s, as the rest of the café scene was being pulled towards sparse Scandi décor and Japanese-inflected minimalism, The Grounds went the other way with a more is more approach. To great success. And it was here at these brunch-as-a-destination cafés that Chris Theodosi and Jesse Orleans met.
“It all started at the Grounds,” says Orleans. “And we used to cross each other’s paths,” Theodosi says.
Orleans worked back of house as a chef, while Theodosi was running the floor. Eventually they finally got the chance to properly work together, at a Sculptures by the Sea pop-up. Carpooling there and back, they bonded over their love for hip hop, fashion, basketball, food and hospitality.
That was the start of the friendship that would eventually give us Happyfield.
Before long, as it so often does, they started chatting about what opening a place of their own might look like.
“It started with food,” Theodosi says. “So it was always back and forth about all the different items we’d like to eat that we couldn’t find in Sydney: pancakes, brekkie muffins, brekkie burgers.”
Orleans grew up in Toronto, Canada and saw Sydney had an itch for a North American style diner, replete with fat stacks of pancakes and streaky bacon, that wasn’t being scratched.
“Growing up as a kid, I was used to eating the pancakes that we have at Happyfield, and I couldn’t find it anywhere in Sydney,” he says. “The state of the Sydney pancakes scene before Happyfield was very different, it was more so ricotta hotcakes from the likes of Bill’s or thicker Japanese-style pancakes.”
I thought, let’s try and bring something that’s not available and different from the regular café culture here and hopefully it’s a hit.”
Jesse Orleans → Co-founder, Happyfield
“I think there’s pre-Happyfield and post-Happyfield in terms of the pancake scene in Sydney, thanks to this guy,” says Theodosi.
But even though their café had a menu, it still needed a home.
“We had to find a venue that fit everything we’d already put together,” Theodosi says.
Finding happiness in Haberfield
Nothing about Haberfield screams “cool new café.”
The inner-west suburb of just over 6000 people is about six kilometres away from the CBD, well away from heavy-hitting café neighbourhoods like Surry Hills or Newtown.
The quiet, mostly residential area is a traditional enclave of the members of Sydney’s Italian-Australian community, many of whom came in the latter half of the 20th century and have stayed put since. It’s not uncommon to hear Italian words and phrases being lobbed around on the main shopping strip on Ramsay Street. And nearly every business – from the cheese shops and bakeries to the delis – is geared towards a Mediterranean palate.
In other words, it’s not the first place you’d think to open a big American diner. And it wasn’t for Orleans and Theodosi, either. But when fate comes knocking, sometimes you’ve got to answer it.
“It fell into our lap in a way,” says Theodosi. “And one of the first things we noticed about the suburb was that it felt a little bit like a country town, it kind of drew us in.”
“It’s a heritage suburb that’s got a lot of character,” Orleans says. “It’s mainly old-school Italian, European – everybody seems to know each other.”
But locals didn’t know the pair. And they were sceptical about what Orleans and Theodosi were cooking up, in the middle of Covid, behind the covered-up windows.
“As it got closer to opening, some people would stop us to talk, and there were mixed reactions,” he says. “You’d have ‘What are you opening? I hope it’s Mediterranean’ and then you’ve have younger families who were a bit more excited.”
“There was definitely some fear being put into us by some of the locals.”
“For sure,” Orleans says. “First business, you just never know.”
They were even warned off by friends who knew the area better than them.
“They were like, ‘Are you sure you want to open in Haberfield?’” says Theodosi. “We had been looking for venues for two years, so when we finally found Haberfield, it just stood out to us so much.”
So they picked an area they never expected to. But if you want to do something extraordinary, you have to do out of the ordinary things.
And the building itself sealed the deal.
“It really jumped out to us,” Orleans says. “We always wanted that old-school dinery kind of vibe. And you see it, it really looks like it could be a pub, or somewhere in LA, Toronto or Chicago – it’s just really iconic.”
With the lease signed and their future in Haberfield sealed, Theodosi and Orleans set about doing the fit-out for their dream diner themselves. But next they needed a name to tie it all together.
Pancakes with a smile
“Prior to even having a venue, we had a name which wasn’t Happyfield,” Theodosi says. “We had a logo, and we had a mascot, which did end up being the mascot.”
But that smiling pancake mascot would go nameless for a while, until Theodosi’s wife saw the building.
“The first time she saw it, she said ‘You’ve got to call it Happyfield,” he says. “And me and Jesse were like ‘No way.’”
“We hated it,” says Orleans. “We wanted to be gritty, a bit rough around the edges.”
“But eventually we both came around,” Theodosi says. “And because we already had yellow as part of the theme, it was like ‘We should ramp up the yellow.’”
Salt shakers, coffee cups, the coffee machine, the ceiling, the menu covers – every square inch of the place was fair game for the sunny yellow treatment. And none were spared.
Happy, yellow and pancakes – it’s pretty easy to create a cool brand out of those three things.”
Chris Theodosi → Co-founder, Happyfield
That care and consideration for the small details laddered up into one cohesive, greater whole.
All that was left to do was open the doors and see if their gamble would pay off.
It did.
“We opened with a bang – that doubt went away very quick,” Theodosi says. “First day was like wildfire and thankfully it hasn’t slowed down in five and a half years.”
“They were liking the vibe, eating and enjoying the pancakes.”
Orleans was right to listen to his gut that Sydney had an appetite for his style of pancakes. Within the first few days, complaints started coming in that Happyfield was too busy. But once locals had a taste, they were sold.
“They were sceptical at first, and then a few months passed and they started coming in with their families, their grandchildren,” Theodosi says.
“We won them over,” says Orleans.
These days, thousands of customers come to Haberfield each week just for Happyfield’s pancakes, brekkie muffins and hash browns.
But the crowds were hungry for more, and in late 2025, Theodosi and Orleans gave it to them, with Happy Shop.
Sydney's Happiest Diner
The perfect spot for a Happy Shop
As the hype and acclaim for Happyfield continued to grow, capacity and wait-times became an issue. It was temporarily resolved when they expanded next door with The Happy Room, which added some much-needed seats. And adding reservations helped, too.
But they were band-aid solutions. As wait-times started to balloon out to two-hours, Theodosi and Orleans knew it was time for Happyfield to get a new sibling in the same neighbourhood.
That’s Happy Shop, a few doors down. It’s a takeaway-focused spinoff, with its own menu inspired by the best daily specials to come out of the Happyfield kitchen.
“If customers have travelled here and we tell them it’s an hour-and-a-half wait, it’s not a good experience, they might never come back,” Theodosi says. “Now they can go to Happy Shop instead, while they wait, they can still enjoy the suburb, we can spread the love a bit.”
Nearly six years on from opening, Happyfield – and now Happy Shop – have transformed Haberfield. And changed Sydney’s breakfast preferences in the process. Not bad for a couple of friends who bonded over basketball on their drive into work.
It doesn’t feel like we created this. It’s pretty surreal to be honest.”
Chris Theodosi → Co-founder, Happyfield
“I think it’s because we’re in here every day, we’re still in the thick of it ,” Orleans says. “We haven’t got a lot of time to just sit back and appreciate everything.”
“But it’s crazy, it definitely doesn’t feel real.”
