LOCALS Brecken and Jo Curtis opened The Branch Café recently, after feeling the desire to create a contemporary hangout space for locals.
The pair have emphasised that this will be a café “by locals, for locals”, with plans to stay open during the summer months after the tourists go.
The Branch Café menu will bring a little bit of city into the country and is situated on 105 Eagle St.
The Curtis’ have been in Longreach for around 16 years, and it was their vision to do the building justice and take it back to its original aesthetic.
“The town is quite transient, and we wanted to create a really beautiful place for the locals; we wanted a really beautiful place to go and eat,” Mrs Curtis said.
“We wanted something completely different; no wagon wheels, no whips.”
“Look at it, it’’s beautiful — everything we do here is homemade, and our coffee is what they serve in Brisbane; we want the latest, the greatest,” she said.
“Lots of people have tried doing a café [in this building], but we’ve built it to be sustainable; we don’t want it to just be here for two or three months.”
The couple purchased the building late last year as an office for Mr Curtis’’ agricultural financial advisement business, Agrisprout, which is located on the top floor.
“We’ve always loved the building; so, when we bought the building, we thought we should do something cool with the lower floor,” Mrs Curtis said.
“[The cafe] is something so that I can also be involved more too.”
Mrs Curtis said the café will be beneficial to the community which she said was lacking but also deeply loves.
“I think we’ve managed to make a beautiful place for people to come and hang,” she said.
“We’ll need to learn how to balance family life and work.
“We have four small children, but we’ll need to work that out as we go.”
