In early 2020, Jake Cassar was a travel agent. You can imagine how that turned out. After refunding “an entire year’s wages”, thanks to COVID cancellations, he and his wife decided to pack the bags, get out of Melbourne, and move to the coast. They settled on Victoria’s seaside surf mecca, Torquay, where Jake promptly opened what’s become the region’s hottest sandwich shop/provedore/home of imported-and-hard-to-pronounce things: Mortadeli. “The name’s a play on ‘deli’ and ‘mortadella’,” Jake says. “We must get asked that five times a day…” Long story short: it worked. Despite a global pandemic and rolling lockdowns, Mortadeli generated some serious queues-round-the-corner buzz.
So what does it take to start a small business in regional Australia? Wait, let’s rephrase that: what does it take to start a successful small business in regional Australia? We sat down with Cassar to find out.NO ONE HAS ALL THE SKILLS
Mortadeli started small. It was Jake himself, one barista, and a part-time waitress, operating out of a little hole-in-the-wall space, just off Torquay’s main drag. At the time, Jake didn’t even know much about coffee. “It just kind of happened,” he admits. “It wasn’t really a plan. As a travel agent, I used to be in Europe two or three times a year, and then COVID came along. I thought, let’s just bring Europe to Torquay.” The point is, starting a small business will always involve risk and knowledge gaps. But neither of those are fatal. Jake had a nose for business, and he knew food (he trained as a chef before working as a travel agent). The rest he could learn on the run.
COMMUNITY IS EVERYTHING
Jake says the best thing about regional living, hands down, is the community. “It’s amazing down here,” he says. “No-one’s out to beat you. It’s not as competitive as the city can feel. For example, when we started, my coffee supplier was up in Melbourne, and there was something wrong with our grinder. I didn’t know what to do. Well, there’s this guy who runs a coffee cart around the corner, and he came and helped me out. Even though he’s technically a competitor!” Regional towns tend to have tight-knit small business communities, because they know that when the town succeeds, everyone succeeds. There’s also less competition in the country, which brings us to…STAFF WANTED. APPLY INSIDE.
The two hardest things about running a regional business, according to Jake, are staffing and supply. He wants to do fresh bagels, for example, but nowhere in Torquay makes them, and the Melbourne bagel shops aren’t going to schlep down the highway at 4am just for him. Everything else gets shipped from Europe, or sourced from local suppliers. The biggest challenge, though, is finding good people. “I would open 20 businesses tomorrow, if I could,” he says, “but staffing is so tough, I don’t think I could execute it. I’d need like 500 more of me.” If you’re going to go regional, Jake recommends getting your staffing right. Find good people, treat them well, and grow sustainably. Don’t overextend yourself – at least not without a killer team in place.PAPERWORK? WHAT PAPERWORK?
Jake says Xero has actually helped a lot with staffing, along with the barely controlled, day-to-day chaos of running a small business. “We have 12 staff now,” he says, “and they do everything through the Xero app. They can do their timesheets on there, everything goes straight to my accountant. I don’t really have to deal with that side of things.” When he started Mortadeli, Jake didn’t even have an accountant, let alone dedicated bookkeeping software. His coffee supplier (and close friend, Aaron Maxwell, from Everyday Coffee) was horrified. “Aaron’s best advice to me was to invest in this stuff, and do it early,” Jake says. “It’s tempting to cut corners and not spend money on bookkeeping and an accountant, but it saves you so much in the long run. There’s literally no paperwork now. We do everything on Xero.” WHAT’S MISSING HERE?
Jake reckons the key to succeeding in regional Australia is going niche. Giving the community something it doesn’t have, but that everybody wants. In Mortadeli’s case, that was hulking, Hobz-biz-zejt tuna sandwiches, fancy meatball subs, and seriously good coffee. “If I’d opened this in Melbourne, I don’t think we would have been as successful,” he admits. “This stuff’s everywhere in town. You’re the cool new thing for three months, then someone else comes along.” With city folk fleeing to the regions during COVID, Jake says small towns are gentrifying quickly, and the demand is there for stuff you usually wouldn’t associate with country Australia. Basically: don’t be afraid to push the envelope a bit. “A lot of the stuff I thought no-one would buy, they turned out to be our biggest sellers!”

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