It’s light, bright and in Maria’s own words, a touch glamorous. The Vibe sits on the corner of Paradise Street, it’s a big yet inviting space, it’s somewhere you can go to fill both your belly and your soul.
The passionate team at The Vibe do things properly, all with a fantastic style and approach. This is reflected in their menu, it’s colourful, inspired and nourishing.
Maria’s enthusiasm and courage to do something different is clear, so it’s safe to say how excited we are for her to be serving Adams + Russell. We sat down for 5 minutes to find out more about life as a plant based café owner.
What made you decide to open a coffee shop?
I was living and travelling around Melbourne. I had jobs in cafés where I learnt to make coffee, they had a big vegan food scene over there and I loved that. I moved home because I missed my family, but I wanted to bring that passion I’d found in Australia home with me.
My dad went vegan because he wanted to change his path, we teamed up and created The Vibe during the second lockdown in November 2020, we opened for takeaway only for 2 weeks. It was our dream.
You call it brave, I call it crazy. We show people by example and create dishes people can’t say no to, that’s how our menu is designed. We want vegan food to be accessible.
What’s your coffee based drink of choice?
A flat white with oat milk. Minor figures oat milk, our gorgeous Single Plantation coffee. I love that it’s Fairtrade, I want to support ethical practices and women in business. I swear you can taste the love in it, it’s made with love.
What’s your favourite menu item?
That’s a difficult one. We’ve put our menu together from our favourite things. At the moment, it’s the Green Soul Bowl. It’s Thai green curry broth, rice noodles, pak choi, edamame and topped with crispy tofu. It’s super healthy, super tasty, satiating and satisfying.
You use our Honduras Women’s Co-operative. What’s inspired this choice?
Honestly, we were going to go with someone else. Fairtrade was really important to us and they sadly couldn’t offer that. A family friend then recommended a meeting with Andreas, we loved the coffee and we loved the machine and equipment. It was a friendly and manageable package.
We fell in love with the coffee and we couldn’t turn it down. We love the coffee and the relationship we have with you. We look for consistency and I just don’t see us changing it anytime soon.
Although it might be quite nice to have a guest roast in the future.
If you could do it all again, would you approach anything differently?
The only thing I would do is accept more help from the beginning. I tried to do so much on my own because I’m a perfectionist, I wish I’d let go a bit more and shared the load.
Finally, I love the interior. Did you have a concept in mind when designing it?
We love the Bohemian style of interior but we wanted something different, just because we’re vegan doesn’t mean we don’t want somewhere nice to go. We wanted a look that was polished with a touch of glam. It makes us feel good and we want to make other people feel good too.
