Frankly Speaking: The art of small business hospitality

I’ve been thinking about it recently and if there’s one phenomenon that I’ve been missing from my childhood, it’s the unannounced drop-in.

Throughout my younger years, there would more than often be a mysterious knock at the door in the early evening. From my vantage point on the couch I would peer down the hallway towards the glass front doors, trying to decipher the shadowy figures through the leadlight windows.

Someone would answer it, a joyful greeting would go up and the mystery of who tonight’s guests were was revealed.

What would follow was a careful and well-practised hosting tradition.

My cultural background is Greek and we (of course) have a word for this practice — we call it philoxenia, which roughly translates to “love of strangers”. It’s not a practice that is simply held for those we know and are related to, but much deeper than that.

Being a good host and exhibiting philoxenia is a source of pride and even more so, family honour. It’s why if you meet a Greek for the first time, you’ll often be invited in for coffee and you won’t leave without a bag of lemons or some homemade biscuits under your arm.

When I think about what has drawn my family and me to opening Two Franks, I reflect back on these fundamental years of watching my parents and grandparents host in their own homes.

It was a seamless and well-trodden dance. Coats and bags would be taken and hung with care as our guests would be lead down the hallway to the lounge room. In the meantime, my sister and I would have silently conducted a head count and brought in extra chairs from the dining table to ensure everyone had a place to sit. The guests were placed on the comfortable couches, the adults of the home had the dining chairs and if there was nowhere else, the kids would be sat on the floor.

Water was immediately brought out, followed by mezze, or snacks. Without even asking if the guests were hungry, we would bring out plates of nuts, dried fruit and Greek biscuits. The complexity and effort of the mezze would depend on how long the visit lasted. There was almost an internal clock where mum would quietly slip away into the kitchen and what seemed by magic, plates of olives, dips, fresh bread, homemade pickled vegetables, sardines coated in olive oil and feta cheese cut into fork-friendly squares would start to appear.

If the conversation lingered, the fry pans would come out and a meal would be prepared as we gathered around the table for an impromptu dinner party. Wine was always offered and water glasses were never left to be empty. It always amazed me how as a kid I could open the fridge and find nothing I wanted to eat and yet my mum had a way of turning its contents into a three-course meal without a worry.

As the evening wound up, with stories about relatives near and far shared, coffee and dessert would be offered, a signal to all that the evening was approaching its end. Even so, with jackets and bags applied and numerous hugs and kisses, the evening would continue on, sometimes up to an additional hour, as the conversation carried on down the hallway and out into the garden.

With our guests finally departed (always beeping a final goodbye as they drove off), we would start the clean up, each of us restored and rejuvenated by the deepening of our family connections, excitedly chatting about what had occurred throughout the evening.

For some reason, whether it’s busier schedules or being less physically connected in a more digitally connected world, the unannounced drop in seems to be becoming more and more rare.

I wonder now whether our Australian love of cafe and restaurant culture is because when done well, we get the best parts of experiencing our own version of philoxenia.

I love being greeted at a cafe with a warm welcome and a quickly poured glass of water. I love when you get an unexpected snack with your drink at a bar, just because that’s the hospitable thing to do. I love when the hairdresser takes my coat and bag and hangs it with care and when they put a treat-sized chocolate on the side of my latte.

When the doors to our cafe open, there are many things I have learnt from my own experiences that I want to bring to the local community.

An old boss once said to me: “Treat your business like your living room — when someone walks into your home, you greet them, you are interested in them and you always say goodbye when they leave.”

I hope I can achieve more than this, and it doesn’t feel like ticking tasks off a list.

Instead, I hope Two Franks feels like an extension of the house we grew up in across the street, where we constantly look for opportunities to create surprise and unexpected delight, where customers leave each visit feeling like they’re stepping out of yiayia’s kitchen and the conversation still lingers down the street.

Spreading joy through food and good conversation — what could be a more honourable pursuit in life than that?

Chryssie Swarbrick is a writer, small-business-juggler and mum of two. She is currently documenting her adventures in opening a cafe, Two Franks, opposite her childhood home.