The City Extra Story
Since 1986 we have served over 19 million customers. If Australia has a population of only 21 million does that mean there are only 2 million left to discover City Extra?
It is now over 24 years since Steven Duff & I peered through the windows and visualised an exciting new restaurant to fill the vast open space left by The State Bank when they moved out of 301 Church Street Parramatta.
After opening on May 9th 1986 - the only 24 hour, 7 days a week restaurant in the area - it quickly became a favoured meeting and eating place for the people of Parramatta and surrounding districts. We've served over 4,000,000 people there since then!
18 months later we were duplicating the concept at Circular Quay. Dennis Higlett moved from being an independent director to join us as a third working director & we opened at Christmas 1987 in time for Bicentennial celebrations. In Week 5 alone - Australia Day week - we served over 11,000 people!
Many of the things that were on the menu in the early days are still the favourites and the quantities consumed over the nineteen years are staggering!
Way over six and a half million cups of coffee, 4,000,000 plus of those being cappuccinos. Have our prep cooks really made more than 3,887,592 giant bread rolls? 350,000 litres of freshly squeezed orange juice must account for an orchard of oranges. After serving more than 400,000 bowls of pumpkin soup we are beginning to believe that someone out there likes it! The list goes on - more than a million pancakes, 2,000,000 glasses of Coke, six hundred and fifty 44 gallon drums of iced chocolate, and well over 900,000 milkshakes!
Makes me tired just thinking about it! Luckily, we've had some wonderful long serving staff to do all this. Several members who started on day one are still with us - Michelle started at Parramatta as a waitress and is now the Manager - well done Michelle. Mark Ilitch started over twenty years ago and is now manager at Circular Quay. Rick is in there rolling those rolls and taste testing that pumpkin soup - thanks and keep up the good work. Brad, Anupam, Matt, Therese, Rima, Natt, Yazid, Anthony, Asad, Mickey, Mamum & Nick have all been in there for the long haul too. What would we do without all of our wonderful staff?
Jeanne Villani
|
|
