Meet Libby and Trisha, the new owners of Port Macquarie’s muchloved Social Grounds café. After years working in Brisbane’s fastpaced corporate world, the dynamic duo swapped suits for aprons and boardrooms for beachside brews, bringing with them a wealth of experience in customer service and a shared dream that started as a joke over coffee.
Social ello! Please introduce yourself and tell us how you came to call Port Macquarie home and become the new owners of Social Grounds? With us both having lived in Brisbane inner city and working in the corporate sphere for a long time, we were needing a change in our business lives and our personal lives. We worked together a few years ago and knew we made a great team, so we held this notion of moving to a small town, buying a café and making coffee all day. It was a bit of a joke between us until one day we said “let’s do it, we could actually do this”. We’ve been in the customer service industry for decades and knew we could create a lasting experience with both our customers 40 GREATER PORT MACQUARIE focus
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and with our team. Can you also introduce us to your team and their roles within the Social Grounds family? It does feel like a family because many of our team have joined us from doing work experience, or because they’re friends and family of existing team members. We have an amazing chef in the kitchen who is training up a young trainee chef, and we have our long term front of house team working with our customers. We feel truly lucky to be working with our dedicated and fun crew! Being fairly new to our region how important is local community to your