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.
I am in the process of staging some delicious and beautiful food-related projects that before now 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 the 6th sense newsletter when it hits your inbox!
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 rejoiced 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 off 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.
We have at times become political, we have tried to make sure that when you walked through the door, be it for a muffin or your wedding reception, that it has been REAL and HUMAN! We have 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. We will always continue to stay true to these core principals through our work
Eat well!
Jared Ingersoll
