Danks Street Depot
local, seasonal and sustainable since 2002
however.....
After 11 years, 1.2 million poached eggs, 980 000 cups of coffee, 10,152 chicken sandwiches, jobs for 283 people, we’ve held just 1 philosophy: to serve the best local, seasonal & sustainable food available. The time has come though, for Melanie and I to close our chapter on Danks Street Depot Waterloo.
We have achieved many great things in our time here, but all good things musc come to an end. This decision was not made lightly; it has come after much consideration and hard work by many people. We were hoping to pass the reins onto someone else, but that was not to be, so instead we are simply closing the doors on the 3rd of February and will be working towards finding a new owner for our much beloved café.
Right now, the main focus for us is Danks Street Depot’s outpost at the airport and some much needed family time.
After that, I plan to focus more upon all of those delicious and beautiful food-related projects that I have not been able to get to because I have been busy running a business! There is so much to do, so much to see, so much to write about and with this new lease of life, I plan to hit it head on! And though I am not ready to tell exactly what I am doing just yet, I encourage you to continue to open and read this newsletter!
It is a really strange thing to consider life without Danks Street Depot, both of our boys have grown up here and it’s as much a part of their lives as we are! So many of our loyal customers have become family to us, and we have loved seeing the same faces over the years and gotten to know them.
Danks Street Depot is so full of love and life and so leaving it no easy thing, Speaking for myself, while I am really excited about the next bit of life I know there will be more than a few tears as I turn the stoves off for the last time.
Melanie and I would like to thank all of you who have played a part in our little café in Waterloo. We would like to thank you for believing in us when we chose to open a café in the middle of nowhere. We would like to thank you for trusting us with a daily changing menu and being patient with us in the early years. We have loved seeing the same faces return year after year, people who had their 30th birthday then returning for their 40th, and people who, when you met them were newly pregnant, then coming years later in with a 7 year old child in tow!
It is an amazing time in the food industry right now. When we first talked about ‘sustainability’, only a handful knew or cared. Now, it’s so wonderful to see the level of awareness in the public space. 10 years ago, we launched the Greenpeace chef’s charter as well as the True Food Guide for GM food, held sustainable seafood dinners and discussed the merits of nose to tail.
We worked tirelessly towards celebrating agriculture, local food and the farmer with taste workshops well before anyone even thought it important! We have been composting for years and have planted many a vegetable and seed in various parts of Sydney. Our 10-mile dinners were celebrating urban agriculture even before the term ‘locavore’ was heard. We committed to Australian only produce in 2004 and only sold wines from NSW from 2005 – we did this because at the time we knew how fantastic, delicious and talented our local produce and people were and we could see that there was a problem where people were continuously looking of shore rather than celebrating their home grown heros.
I say these things, not to claim we did it first, but to say how honored I am, that our team and most importantly YOU, our customers, allowed us to celebrate left field ideas and trusted us that we were onto something worthwhile. We’ve worked hard, but you’ve been there the whole time to support us. For this, I will always be grateful.
Our parting words are these: even though we have at times become political and ethical, we have always tried to make sure that every time you walked through the door, be it for a muffin or your wedding reception, that it has been REAL and HUMAN! We have always tried to show you the love and respect that we have for great produce, we have always tried to engender a sense of pride and ownership with our staff, knowing that they were delivering to you our dear much loved customer the tastiest food we could find on the day.
Eat well!
Jared Ingersoll
