Panini favourite Pressed & Co has expanded its unique offering to Adelaide’s north, opening a second venue inside Tea Tree Plus at Modbury.
The café is the latest venture from Zayt & Zaatar co-owner Nedal Choujaa, who launched Pressed & Co’s flagship store with his wife Amber in Adelaide’s Myer Centre earlier this year.
Before committing to the new location, Nedal spent time watching the traffic moving through Tea Tree Plus. While the numbers were not initially as high as he had hoped, he believed the centre had plenty of untapped potential.
“I could see the bigger picture at the end of the day, and I knew this place would boom,” Nedal said.
Since opening, the store has done exactly that, quickly becoming even busier than its Rundle Mall sibling.
Customers are quickly getting use to Pressed & Co’s fresh paninis, soft pastries, protein balls, cinnamon sugar-coated zeppole and signature matcha on tap.
Nedal attributes the strong start to Pressed & Co’s distinctive menu and the fact that Tea Tree Plus had been without a café for more than a decade.
The café also sits near businesses including Revo Fitness and Strong Pilates, while a new Centrelink office is preparing to open nearby.
Nedal said the venue was filling a clear gap while giving shoppers good value for money.
“For example, our paninis are around $19 or $20. You could go somewhere else and pay nearly $15 for something much smaller. We’re giving people value for money,” he said.
“Our coffee is good, our paninis are good and our service is fantastic. We also have staff who know what they’re doing.”
Customer feedback has been glowing, with the venue’s limited seating proving to be its only major challenge so far.
“We can fit 24 people there, but Westfield came to us and said they want to add more tables and chairs,” Nedal said.
“We’ve done the unthinkable and brought a lot of foot traffic into the centre.”
The additional seating was not included in the original lease, but Nedal said Westfield approached the business after customers repeatedly visited and were unable to find a table.
Alongside Pressed & Co favourites such as its watermelon panini with feta, honey, nuts and mint, the Tea Tree Plus store has introduced several additions not yet available at the Rundle Mall venue.
These includes a larger breakfast menu, which will be served until 11.30am.
“We’ve also added frappes, smoothies and protein shakes, and they’re going nuts,” Nedal said.
Its colourful canned juices and iced drinks have also proven popular. Nedal initially ordered 10,000 branded cans but said the two stores had already used about 6,000 within their first 12 to 13 weeks.
Pressed & Co was more than a year in the making before its first venue officially opened, with the concept beginning to take shape during a holiday to Nedal’s home country of Lebanon.
During the trip, Nedal and wife Amber visited Deli Dough in the Lebanese city of Aley, where they found inspiration in its unusual fruit-based paninis, fresh menu and fast-paced service model.
The experience motivated the pair to bring something similarly distinctive back to Adelaide.
Pressed & Co’s menu now includes paninis made using slices of watermelon, rockmelon or pineapple in place of bread, alongside cold-pressed juices, yoghurt bowls, salads and options catering to gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan customers.
Its matcha-on-tap system is another key feature, using multiple nozzles to dispense matcha and milk at the same time and prepare drinks within seconds.
With the Modbury store already exceeding expectations, Nedal said the expansion is far from over, with the team currently in talks to open another two Pressed & Co venues next year.
Pressed & Co
Where: Tea Tree Plus, 976 North East Road, Modbury
When: open now
For more info, click here.
