Meet the family who run a cafe from their lounge room window

More than 15 years ago, when Julie Sullivan and Bryan McNeil’s children were smaller, he had the seed of an idea.

The couple could sell coffee and cake out of the lounge room window in Brunswick, Melbourne, capitalising on the swarming location of their home and her penchant for baking.

At the time, the council rejected the idea, and, as Sullivan reflects some 15 years on, “Bryan’s dream”, then, “was nothing but a dream”.

Fast-forward a decade and a half, and Sullivan opened that coffee and cake shop in the nook of her lounge room, but this time, her three children were on board, too.

“Fifteen or so years down the track my son, Christian, was finishing his bachelor of international business and thinking about his future, and wondered if we would reconsider the idea about the window. Our youngest daughter, Francesca, was also close to finishing her bachelor of public relations so we discussed the idea over a family dinner. Eventually, we all came to agree that with kids being adults now it just seemed like a wonderful opportunity and a great adventure for us to all share,” she says.

And, so, with a long-held dream starting to grind into reality, Capulus & Co was born.

Today, Sullivan, Christian, 25, Francesca, 23, and Paris, 27, run the cafe from that same living room window Sullivan bakes savoury croissants and sweet goods, and the others trying their hand as baristas.

There was about seven months between this conversation and the cafe coming to life, and this time, perhaps unsurprisingly, was full of council meetings.

“I think that at the beginning the council found it difficult to classify and determine what we were. Given that the business is running from our home, it should be classified as a home business,” Christian says.

“However, as we are also situated on a commercial road, rather than being just a home business it gave us the classification similar to any other local business on Sydney Road. Once the council visited the site, we were able to establish a way forward in opening up as cafe and ultimately the council loved our idea. We’ve been very fortunate that they’ve been so supportive throughout the whole process as it was both new to us and to them. I mean, how many coffee shops operate out of their lounge room window?”

Thankfully, the family says, the house didn’t need too much of a facelift to accommodate a fully functioning cafe inside.

“We didn’t have to change too much before opening. It was good timing really, mum and dad wanted to give the front facade a facelift before we’d even fully committed to the cafe,” Francesca says.

“Dad owns a plastering business, and they rendered the front, changing it from a dark charcoal grey to the clean off-white that we have today. They laid new marble tiles and pot plants on the front terrace, too. For the business, a local sign maker applied the Capulus & Co rusted signage to the front and a family friend built in the awning.”

Practically, they also needed to change the plumbing and electrical route at the front of the house and Bryan polished the plaster walls for a finishing touch. They also installed a curtain to separate the cafe and the living room.

Adding to the ease of the process were accommodating neighbours who had no issue with the house next door becoming a business. In fact, the family note how launching the business has united the neighbourhood.

“It has introduced us to our wider surrounding community. We’ve met so many locals that we hadn’t met previously and they’ve since become good friends to all of us. It’s been so much more rewarding than we could have ever imagined and what makes it even more special for us is when we watch our customers become friends with each other bonding over our coffee,” Sullivan says.

Living in the same space with the people you work with can’t be easy, but the family insist it’s a project that gets better each day.

“Every day can be different from the last. We’re all extremely flexible and work around each other. If someone has plans, or has picked up a shift at our other job or just wants a day off to rest then we just adapt – that’s the good thing about working with family and people you love,” Francesca says.