Dean's story

Merlo Coffee has been serving premium freshly roasted espresso coffee for 25 years. Dean Merlo’s story is a classic tale that began when his father immigrated to Australia from Italy in 1958 bringing with him Queensland’s first espresso coffee machine to be used in his, soon to be famous, Milanos restaurant. 

 

Working part-time in the restaurant gave Dean the foundations of true Italian bred passionate customer service that today is a corner stone of the Merlo Coffee experience.  

 

In the years that followed, Dean made a monumental leap from Barrister to Barista that changed Queensland’s coffee culture forever.  A Solicitor by profession he saw the opportunity for a CBD espresso coffee bar, similar to those he had frequented in Europe and New York. Dean knew the combination of Brisbane’s weather and increasingly cosmopolitan population was perfect for the European coffee concept. This led to Dean successfully lobbying the Brisbane City Council to permit street-side dining in the late 1990’s.

 

The rest is history, Dean and the Merlo Coffee team has since grown to become Australia’s leading independently owned and operated coffee roasters with 16 company stores in addition to supplying more than 1,500 cafés and restaurants around Australia and shipping coffee online throughout the world.