Given Victoria’s state-wide obsession with coffee, it’s surprising that Daylesford, one of the state’s best known culinary hubs, was without its own coffee roastery before Brew Jays, a café, roastery and cocktail bar, moved into Howe Street last year. The surprise is not just that nobody spotted the gap in the market but also that it took a burnt-out hospitality veteran who’d moved out of Melbourne to take a breather from the industry to spot it.

Brew Jay’s co-owner Jeremy (Jay) Gaschk grew up in the region, started working in hospitality when he was 13 and ended up in Melbourne owning and running wildly popular venues like Easey’s, the train carriage burger joint on a Collingwood rooftop. But when he and his wife India, who worked alongside Jay and was pregnant with their first child, decided to step away from the frenetic pace of the industry and move back to Jay’s old stomping grounds, he presumed they were done with that chapter. So what reeled him back in?

“I think I was ready for it,” says Jay. “I’d had a healing time living back in my area, spending time with my family and working as a landscape mason. I was recharged by nature but was also feeling the strain of lifting a lot of stone and I thought: I wouldn’t mind going back to hospo and being warm and indoors. The allure of hospitality started to sing to me again.”

Coffee sung the loudest. Good coffee had been an obsession of Jay’s since he started working at Gloria Jeans at the airport (“I made millions of coffees”) before honing his skills in Melbourne’s perfectionist coffee scene. But Jay also thought there was a gap in the market for a bar and so Brew Jay’s hybrid business model was born.

“I suppose it’s a bit of a weird combination that might not work so well in the city, he says. “But in Daylesford it made sense to have this multifunctional space that could be many things for many people. We have two-year-olds here drinking babycinos and 90-year-olds coming in for coffee and cake, then, at night we get young people coming in for cocktails and to have a dance when we have guest DJs.”

There is a lot happening here –coffee roasting, retail selling of beans and coffee ground to order, a wholesale business that includes the Melbourne Exhibition Centre as a client, people using the space as a café and a cocktail bar – but it’s all tied together by coffee. 

Brew Jays’ extensive cocktail list includes a superb range of Espresso Martinis made with coffee brewed with the same techniques available to the café clientele. Some are made with traditional espresso, others with cold brew, filter and pour-over, perhaps mixed with spiced rum and hazelnut liqueur or tequila, cold brew and orange for a lighter less typical drink.

It’s certainly an original business – the five different coffee roasts are named after iconic lollies and made with meticulously-sourced beans, the menu features everything from bagels to nachos, the fitout is largely courtesy of India who has pursued her love of carpentry since moving into the region and it loves a late night as much as an early morning.

“Coffee’s obviously our passion and the main thing we do,” says Jay. “But Brew Jays is also about being part of the community in Daylesford. It started as a conversation with friends and that’s how we want it to evolve too.”