Vacation Coffee

The counter at this Melbourne specialty coffee roaster runs on house-roasted beans, FETCO filter and a pastel CBD room built for quick coffee without the lecture.

House roasts, natural process lots and FETCO filter

The coffee program is the reason to cross the CBD for Vacation Coffee. The house roasts in Melbourne and talks plainly about its preferences: medium roast for espresso, medium-light for filter, with a particular liking for naturally processed coffees. That gives the bar a clear shape rather than a rotating mystery. Foreshore Espresso, Back Beach Espresso, Road Trip Espresso and The Weekender sit beside single origins such as Costa Rica Hermosa Tarrazu, Ethiopia Gara Agena and limited lots like Indonesia Sulawesi Yolan Tirta Typica. Espresso has been built around a white powder-coated La Marzocco Linea and Victoria Arduino Mythos One grinders, while filter has been brewed on FETCO rather than turned into a slow ceremony. The point is consistency, sweetness and enough clarity for the origin to show, without making the person at the till feel as if they have walked into an exam. The bar came in at #100 in the 2026 World's 100 Best Coffee Shops list.

A tall CBD room that keeps the queue moving

The room does a lot of the work before the first shot is pulled. Vacation Coffee's Exhibition Street branch is high-ceilinged, bright and deliberately playful, with floor-to-ceiling windows, rounded edges, 1950s pastels and the Miami-ish colour language the brand has used from early on. It is a counter-service café with a heavy takeaway rhythm, most of the trade leaving the building, but it is not just a hatch. People do stay. The height of the room, several metres of it, stops the morning queue from feeling cramped, and the big windows give the bar a sense of air that many city coffee counters lack. This is the useful version of a designed café: the colours soften the room, the bar keeps moving, and the coffee remains the main event.

Order filter first, then the chicken jalapeño sandwich

Start with the filter if one of the single origins is running through the FETCO. Vacation Coffee's own roast style makes most sense there: medium-light, sweet, balanced and made to drink without fuss. If espresso is the move, Foreshore Espresso or Back Beach Espresso are the safer first calls because they show the house blend side of the program. Food is more than a token case beside the till. Earlier menus brought in pastries from Noisette and Cobb Lane, then added sandwiches, muesli, avocado with seeds and sprouts, and peanut butter with banana and black sesame. The named order is the chicken jalapeño grilled sandwich, the one that has followed the café into award write-ups and regular conversation. Pair it with filter when lunch is close; take the espresso if the stop is short. Beans and brewing tools sit on the same shelf, so the bag you take home is part of the café rather than a side business.