Beauty, bubbles and croissants: Mecca offers a taste of new megastore

Croissant queen Kate Reid and Mecca have teamed up to open a cafe in the beauty retailer’s new Bourke Street store serving croissants, coffee and champagne.

Mecca’s 4000-square-metre Melbourne megastore is finally opening its doors on Friday after the build was beset by construction delays.

The store includes a nail bar by Trophy Wife, a hair salon by Josh Wood, private treatment rooms for clinical skin care and its own hospitality offering, Cafe Mecca.

The idea for the cafe came about when interior walls in the 1930s building in the centre of Melbourne’s CBD were demolished revealing huge industrial windows overlooking Union Lane at the side of the store.

Maria Tsaousis, chief new concepts officer at Mecca, said: “Once we got up to level one and we saw those windows, we said, ‘We’re going to have to do something incredible here.’ It’s like a mix of raw Melbourne industrial laneway feel mixed with a sort of New York vibe.”

The typical Mecca store is only 400 square metres, so the 4000- square-metre Bourke Street site gives the beauty giant a lot more space to play with.

The interiors of the store are still under wraps as last-minute construction continues before the opening.

Tsaousis said the cafe and adjacent Atelier, which offers a place to get hair, make-up and nails done in under 90 minutes, would tap into the social side of beauty.

“Somebody made the comment, ‘Do you know what – the best part of going out is getting ready’, and we were like, ‘Oh, my god, that is so true,’” she said. “It is only natural that we would then also be making their experience even more incredible by offering them a glass of bubbles or something to nibble on.”

The bubbles are French champagne from Pommery, but otherwise Cafe Mecca is championing Melbourne producers, including coffee by Seven Seeds, tea by Love Tea, hot chocolate by Mork, caviar by Yarra Valley Caviar, crisps by Chappy’s Chips, madeleines by Madeleine De Proust and Lune croissants.

“We’re Melbourne based, that’s our heartland,” Tsaousis said. “We said, ‘Let’s look at who is the best in Melbourne, who is doing something incredible in the food and beverage scene’, and that’s how we came up with our partners.”

Reid said she “didn’t need to think for a heartbeat” when she was asked to be part of Cafe Mecca, even though her croissants are usually only sold in Lune’s stores.

“We don’t supply anyone,” she said. “It’s a hard rule at Lune that we don’t do wholesale, and it’s because we really want to curate the entire experience of our customers, from baking the product in store to the final moment of service. I think it really speaks to how highly I think of the Mecca experience, what [Mecca founder Jo Horgan] has created. It is truly world-class.”

Reid said that from a beauty, skincare and wellness perspective, Horgan was trying to achieve the same thing with Mecca that she was with Lune and croissants.

“It was clearly an exceptional opportunity for us to partner with a business that has been founded by a woman that I’ve looked up to for many years now,” she said.

Reid said she was a “huge Mecca fan” and spent too much money on Mecca products, earning her membership of its loyalty scheme, the Beauty Loop.

Dedicated Beauty Loop members can accrue points for the services they use at the new Mecca store, but not food and drink at the Mecca cafe.

Lune’s initial offering at Cafe Mecca will be limited to its classic baked goods, but Reid said she hoped to work towards bespoke products that were available only in that store.

There is also potential in the future for collaborations such as a croissant lip balm or body butter.

“There’s some really fun and exceptional things that we could work on together to bring to the public,” Reid said. “It’s just the beginning of something really fabulous.”