Interview with Ems and Tenzin from Boneless Café

Ems and Tenzin graduated from the Vegan Chef Training in 2016 and have created a legendary café called Boneless in Bermagui, NSW, which turned 6 recently. 

They have not only opened a café but they also roast their own coffee. The café quickly became popular and now has created a fabulous community around it. 

In this interview they talk about what it takes to run a popular café, a whole lot about their coffee roasting business and share a scrumptious recipe. 

Check out Boneless Café next time you are in Bermagui,  you won’t be disappointed. Their food is definitely sensational.

Check out their website here 

https://www.bonelesscafe.com.au/

https://www.instagram.com/bonelesscafe/

Check out the vegan chef training here 

For full show notes go to www.veets.com.au/18

Hope you enjoy this episode. 

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Follow Veet on https://www.facebook.com/VeetKarenVegancookingandnutrition/

Have a sensationally delicious day.

Love Veet 

Transcript

Veet – Welcome. 

Tenzin 

Good to be here. 

Veet

I just thought we could start by, if you'd like to tell us about Boneless, this awesome cafe that you have created.

Ems 

We run Boneless Vegetarian Cafe. It's on the South Coast of New South Wales in a beautiful town called Bermagui. We've had the business, we're coming up to our sixth birthday this week. 

Veet 

Yay, congratulations. 

Ems

Thank you. And we also have a little roastery in there as well. So yeah, roasting our own coffee, which has been a new venture for us. 

Veet

That's exciting. I love watching the reels that you do on socials about the coffee roasting. It's incredible what you have to do. - 

Ems

Thank you. Yeah,  Tenzin is the mastermind behind that. 

Tenzin

It's a very in-depth process for sure. 

Veet

I enjoyed watching the slurping. And listeners, you'll have to go over to the Boneless Instagram page. Oh, is it on Boneless, that one, or it's on? 

Tenzin

Yeah, I Think I shared it to both of them. 

Veet

Right, yeah, great. And have a look what I'm talking about.  Very important part of the process. Yes, so slurping the coffee. Well, now everyone will be wondering what we're talking about. So maybe you can tell us what slurping the coffee is. 

Tenzin

(laughs) - So when you taste coffee, you do a thing called cupping where it's a universal way to taste coffee. 

So you just grind coffee, put it in the bottom of this little bowl and then fill it up with water. The reason you do it this way is there's no real way of making a mistake in the brewing process. 

Like, for example, with espresso, there's a million ways to ruin that shot of espresso if you haven't done it all really perfectly. Same as basically every other way of brewing coffee, but this way it's literally just grind it, put it in the bowl, fill it up with water, and then clean it up. 

And once you've done that, you get these soup spoon type spoons, and you just scoop out some coffee and slurp it. And the reason you slurp it is it just sprays the coffee through your mouth and through your tongue to get a really, kind of, clear flavour profile of the coffee. 

So it's similar to like wine, you know, when you drink wine and you kind of swish it around your mouth and you suck air in. If you haven't done that before, it's a really interesting way of, yeah, you get so much more of the flavour. 

Veet

Oh, fantastic, fascinating. I didn't know you did it with coffee until the other day. And what inspired you to start your own cafe? 

Tenzin

Um, I think we, we both got to a point in our lives, like we've been doing hospitality for, since we left school, and we've been travelling, doing snow seasons. I was snowboarding, kind of non-stop for about 10 years, working hospitality while I was doing that and then, when it got to a point of finishing that, it was like, okay let's move on to the next chapter in our lives. 

We didn't really have any education or any other career paths but we both love food and  that was when I gave you a call because I was just kind of looking for that next thing and all I was really inspired in besides snowboarding was food. It was vegetarian and vegan food. 

And yeah, once we started the course with you, I think a lot of your encouragement probably played a big role in it. You were constantly telling us that we needed to open up our own cafe. And then working with you after and kind of, I feel like that dipped our toes into what it would be like, running a business. And then when we kind of were living on the Gold Coast and decided to move back down to Bermagui and just felt like the right time to have a crack, with lots of support from family and friends and you, kind of encouraging us and telling us that we would be able to do it. 

Ems

Yeah, it felt like a natural path for us. 

Tenzin

I guess like with most things in life, it just kind of organically led ourselves into this wild venture. 

Veet

I love that you followed it, that you did it because you've also really changed the way of cafes in Bermagui too, I think. It's yeah, it's, from what I remember going to Bermagui, like it's such a, it needed something like your cafe there and a lot of towns are having similar cafes, but not the same because this is a vegetarian cafe. And just what you said about, you know, remote, about working with me, I remember when you, I'm like most people who know me, I'm a really good cook. But when Tenzin and Emily came and worked on my retreat, a lot of the retreat participants who'd been there before, they're like, "What's changed? The food's even better." 

Because you guys really know how to flavour food so well. So yeah, so I'm so glad you have a cafe and you're sharing that food with people. - Thank you. - Yeah. Oh yeah, and we talked a little bit about the coffee part of your business. And why did you decide to branch out into doing your own coffee roasting? 

Tenzin

Um. Yeah, I've just totally fallen in love with coffee. A little bit before we opened up Boneless, we were doing a little hemp smoothie bar at the back of my parents' shop, and I've always loved coffee, but I never really went down that rabbit hole at all. And then we couldn't really get a good coffee in the little town of Tilbur, which our smoothie bar was at. So we're like, well, let's just get our own coffee machine. And, you know, in my head at that point, just as easy as that, we'll just get a coffee machine and we'll just start making really good coffee and realized pretty quickly that that's not how it works. So yeah, I guess that's basically where I started. And then I met a guy named Tim Manning who owns a coffee roastery in Canberra called Red Brick Coffee. 

Ems

Shout out to Tim. 

Tenzin

Yeah, shout out to Tim at Red Brick Coffee. 

Everyone go and check them out. 

My brother has a vegan cafe in Canberra, Sweet Bones, and they were using his coffee too. So I tasted his coffee and had that, like, moment of like, wow, this is so delicious and this is and basically just nagged him and hassled him until he decided to come down and give us some coffee. And because we, you know, we were using no coffee. It wasn't any good business sense for him to kind of help us at that point. 

His mom also actually lived in Burma at the time. So it, Bermagui is just like 10 or 15 minutes away from Tilba, where our smoothie bar was. 

So, yeah, I was able to talk him into it. And when you came down, that process just kind of began. 

And I basically have been obsessed with it ever since, obsessed with kind of improving and trying to get coffee to taste as delicious as it can. 

And then once we opened Boneless and, you know, I guess like three years of running Boneless and really working on just brewing coffee and making, you know, espresso and filter and stuff like that for the cafe and doing that as good as we could. I got to a point, as I'm kind of always searching for the next way to improve whatever I'm doing. 

Yeah, I guess roasting coffee was inevitably the next step. 

And Tim, again, who was, I was buying coffee off him at that point, is such a good guy that I had this conversation with him and he, we just had our first kid and were looking for, yeah, how we can kind of improve the cafe and take it to the next level. And he had been in a very similar situation and someone had helped him at that point. So he said, yeah, if you buy yourself a coffee roaster, I'll come down and teach you how to roast coffee and give me all the kind of contacts to get the really good quality green coffee and yeah and then from there it's just been an unending search. 

Veet

That's fabulous and I know you you do it well, you do everything well. So That's great. And just recently I saw on your social, on your Instagram page, Anna it came up on another social page for Bermagui about the cup system you've got going. 

Tenzin

So 1st of December last year, we, us and I think five other cafes in Berma, basically all of them bar two, decided to get rid of single use cups. 

Veet

Isn't that amazing? 

Tenzin

Yeah, I was going through this process and we have a FOGO system in our council, so they come and pick up all the compostable materials and take it to a composting facility. So yeah, I guess naively and through kind of lack of communication from the council, we all just thought like we can just get all compostable packaging, compostable coffee cups, all this stuff and then we've got a compostable bin, it can all go in there. 

And then we learned that none of that stuff can get composted. They just don't have the facilities to, basically nowhere in Australia has the facility to compost that stuff. And it's much more expensive. So we're all kind of paying a premium price for stuff which was just going to landfill anyways. 

And then yeah, I thought, okay, well, let's go back to recycle it, recyclable coffee cups and realise that all of them are going in landfill too, because they can't be recycled. And it was just pretty disappointing, I guess. 

Like there's running a business, there's lots of... It's hard to be perfect, you know, as far as, especially environmentally, when you're running a cafe, you just kind of... Any business really, right? Yeah, absolutely. You have to drive your car to work every day and like, you know, you're always just kind of trying to do your best and I feel like, when you get to various things, you're like, okay, that's about as good as I can do that. I'm gonna leave that and then look elsewhere and see how we can kind of improve there. And once that was really kind of came to us that that wasn't working, it was how do we, what do we do, what like what's the next step. 

And basically just as I was going through that process, my friend Birdie, who is managing one of the other cafes, came to me with this Good Cup company, which is from Mullumbimby actually. 

Veet 

I had no idea. Oh Mullum needs to adopt this scheme. 

Tenzin

Yeah. So yeah, he said, look, we're thinking about doing this. What do you think about it? 

And I straight away, it's a very scary thing to do, because your mind just goes straight to customers going to be upset and then they're just going to go to the next cafe. If you're not going to give them a single use card, then they'll go elsewhere and get it. 

Luckily, we have a pretty good community in Bermagui. 

I called my friend Tim, who runs Honour Bread, and he was going through the exact same thing as I was, like super frustrated with yeah, the FOGO system and compostable packaging and all that stuff. And I said, well, here's the system. And the system is great. It's like you pay $40 kind of subscription a month and then you buy all the cups for $3 per cup and then you just pass it on to the customer for $3 per cup. And then when they come back, that next coffee just goes in a fresh one free of charge. Or when they want to leave, they just get their three dollars back. 

Veet

I love it. I love it. That's what I envisioned that cafes would do. You know, it's so awesome. Yeah. 

Tenzin

And then once Honour  Bread,  Boneless and Mr. Hope, which are like three of the main kind of coffee places in Berma, all decided to do it with each other. It was really easy for the rest of their cafes to be like, yeah, we'll jump on that. And also you save a lot of money on buying single use cups. I think for our business, it's like $10,000 a year or something we would spend on them. 

Veet

That's crazy, isn't it? 

Tenzin

On coffee cups and stuff. So yeah, we all just decided to do it. 

Veet 

Congratulations on doing such an innovative system. I love it. Yeah. 

Tenzin

And it's been such a success. Like we've had basically nothing but super positive feedback from people. People are excited to be a part of it. It makes people feel better about their daily life. And I think it just helps our business just be more true to our ethos. 

Veet

That's fabulous. 

Tenzin

And also makes it clearer to everyone else about, like, what we're about. And yes, it's just been an absolute success. I really feel like there's potential for. 

Veet

Oh, I love it. I hope more places adopt it. That's fantastic. And just what's your favourite thing about running a cafe? Apart from the coffee. 

Ems

I think for us, it's the sort of the community and the culture that we've created. You know, it's been a long journey. Like I said, six years we're coming up to. But yeah, we just have an amazing team of people working for us and I think, just to hear from the community the impact we've had just on Bermagui has been, yeah, just an amazing journey for us. I think that's my favourite part. 

Tenzin

Yeah I think running a cafe if, you're doing it for completely selfish reasons, like money or personal success, it'll be pretty challenging and hard to do it for those reasons, long term, I think. And when you can kind of step outside from yourself and see the impact which you're having on your community and your staff and the planet, you know, those things, like really putting in the effort to grow those things is where the real satisfaction comes for us. 

Veet 

That's great. And I'll just, like, what's your best seller in the cafe or the thing you like to cook the most in the cafe? 

Ems

I would say one of our best sellers is our burgers. So we do a different style, crumbed tofu burger. 

Yeah, we have people that travel a good distance for that burger or they've tried it, live away and then three months later they're back and they're, you know, having that burger again. Yeah, I think that's probably one of my favourites. Yeah. 

Tenzin

Sure the burger is definitely one of the most popular. Our pancakes are super popular, like we do a vegan gluten-free buckwheat pancake, which is very popular, too. Yeah. 

Veet

How did the Vegan Chef Training help you with setting up your cafe. I know you mentioned it a little bit before about it giving you the impetus to set up a cafe, but how did it help. 

Tenzin

I think we just had a lot of tools in our arsenal to kind of hit the ground running straight away. Like we had recipes and techniques and all that, kind of up our sleeves. And as soon as we opened, we have, like, our kind of menu, like writing our first menu wasn't that challenging because we already knew, like, we can do this, which we know is amazing, this, this, this, this, and this, which is going to really wow people and impress. Because I think probably, you know, opening up the vegetarian cafe in Berma, a lot of people said, like, people aren't going to like it. They just want fish and chips. 

Ems

Like no one's going to eat vegetarian food. People have a preconceived notion of what vegetarian vegan food is going to be. And that was our experience when we moved to Bermagui too. It was like the same old veggie burger. There was no variety at all. 

Tenzin

Yeah. And I think that also, that kind of helps, you know, on some level, because it's like people don't believe that you can have even vegan mayo, a lot of people have no idea that you can do that. Or like cashew creams, or like all that kind of stuff, where just really making vegan, vegetarian food delicious to the masses, you know, like, and we've always said, like, we're not necessarily a health food cafe, which I think that's a lot what a lot of people say, like we use local good quality produce and stuff, but where I think for us it was more about, like, proving that vegan vegetarian food can be really delicious. 

We often said vegetarian food for meat eaters you know, like it's, like, it's all full of flavour, it's filling, it's, you know. I mean at the moment we have a salad which is one of our best sellers at the moment too, but yeah, I think just coming out of the cooking course we had all those techniques ready to go. The foundations to create a really epic menu. Yeah, and then like we said before, the confidence through having those techniques but also I think you always just filled us with confidence that we would be able to do it and yeah that definitely played a big part. 

Veet

Oh yay, I'm glad I played a part in it. 

Ems

Huge. 

Veet

And just the last question before we move on to the recipe, which I'm really excited about, is, do you have any advice for anyone who wants to start their own food business? 

Ems

Yeah, I think as Tenzin mentioned a little bit earlier, if you're going into running a cafe to make money, I wouldn't recommend it. (laughing). There are easier ways to make money for sure. Yeah, I mean it requires a lot of time and energy and yeah, I think, just be ready for that and I think, it all just has to come from the heart and whatever you choose to do, just keep it really authentically you and don't do something that you think is just going to please the community or the people around you. I think that's why we've been so successful,is we've always kept it truly aligned to what we believe in and our ethos. 

Tenzin 

And what we want to eat. 

Veet 

Oh, that's beautiful. 

Tenzin

Yeah. And I think as well, just like we said before, do it for the right reasons. Like anyone, I think you see it happen so often that people are like, well, I'm just going to. I like food and I like coffee, so I'm just going to open up a place and do food and coffee. And especially now that things are a bit more challenging with businesses and stuff. It's like, yeah, figure out your niche, why you want to do it and how you want to do it and who you want to do it for as well. 

Veet

Beautiful. Yeah. That's what I  teach now in the training. I don't know if I did way back then, but it's all really about niching. So that's a great ending. Thank you so much. And are you happy to share a recipe with us all? 

Ems

Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's not so much a recipe, but I think what makes our tofu burgers, which we talked about earlier, so epic is, what we do is, we actually freeze the tofu and then defrost it before we cut it up and batter it and fry it. And I think by freezing it first, it changes the structure of the tofu and it gives it a little bit more sort of bounce and like a sponginess to it. It's very, very different to what, like, a firm tofu block would feel like. 

Tenzin

But what you're doing is freezing it, separating all the moisture from the solids in the tofu. So when it defrosts, it'll be like almost an ice block. 

You squeeze all the water out and it becomes like a sponge. And then you put the sponge back in whatever flavour you want it to be. So our burger, the flavours will change, but the kind of the style we do it, it's the same. So we'll put it back into a stock or a marinade or whatever. And then it sucks all that the whole way through it. So it's really flavoursome. It's not just like, you know, a fried bit of tofu with sauce which has flavour. And then the tofu is, you know, blended. Because plain tofu is basically flavourless. And that's why everyone has such a bad idea. 

Veet

Yeah. But by freezing it, you get much more flavour in it. It's interesting. A couple of weeks ago, I ran a free class for anyone who'd done the vegan foundation course and that was making chicken schnitzel the same way by freezing the tofu. It's such a great technique, isn't it? 

Ems

Yeah, it's a totally different experience and yeah, like Tenzin said, the flavour will penetrate the tofu so much better and yeah, you can make nuggets out of it, you can do schnitzels, you can do burger patties, like you can be so creative with it. 

Veet 

Absolutely, oh, so thank you. So that's the recipe and the fun cooking tip all in one. That's great. Thank you so much, both of you for being on the show and anyone who hasn't been to Boneless yet, including me, needs to get there. Thank you both. Thank you. 

Tenzin

Thanks for all the support along the way. We wouldn't be here without you. 

Veet

That's so lovely. 

Bye. 

Wow, what a fabulous interview. I just love the graduate chefs that have gone through the Vegan Chef Training and I just loved interviewing Tenzin and Ems and  had a big conversation with them after the interview.

What really shone through for me is how they've created such an incredible community in Bermagui and it's just not just a cafe, or a place to eat incredible food, but it's a meeting place for people and like-minded people and somewhere where people can go and get vegetarian food and every time  someone mentions the town of Bermagui, I say, oh, have you been to Boneless? And they say yes, or their family lives there and that they love going to Boneless and it's such a great community.

I think that's what Tenzin and Emily were trying to really express, that, you know, setting up a cafe, of course you need to make money, to make a living and to, you know, feed your family and to pay the mortgage, but it's a l lot more than that, it's creating a community and what a beautiful community they've created in Bermagui. 

So if you want to support them, go over and like their cafe on socials and all those links are in the show notes and when you're in Bermagui, or if you hear of anyone going to Bermagui, send them over to Boneless.

Bye for now. Have a sensational day beautiful listener.

With gratitude Veet