“We’re maxed out in Fitzroy,” says Lune founder Kate Reid, but a second city store and glass-walled “cube” will boost pastry production.
If you thoughtLune’s colossal Fitzroy flagship could churn out a respectively colossal number of croissants, just wait until you hear how much production power its new city store has.
Dubbed “Maxi Lune”, it’s set to open on Saturday, January 31 on the corner of Lonsdale and Spencer streets, beneath the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the west end. It’s got a similar overall footprint to Fitzroy, but double the pastry potential: “easily” more than 6000 a day.
“We’re maxed out in Fitzroy,” says Lune founder Kate Reid. “We have to say no to [popping up at the Australian Open] every year because we just don’t have the capacity.” Two years in the making, Lune Lonsdale “allow[s] us to get more croissants to more people”.
Compared to Fitzroy, there’s double the cold storage for raw pastry (“the thing that actually determines [output] capacity,” says Reid), and 50 per cent more kitchen space.
The new location is the brand’s fourth in Melbourne, joining queue-attracting siblings in Fitzroy, Armadale and Russell Street in the CBD, and four interstate offshoots, in Sydney and Brisbane.
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And its style is unmistakably Lune. The first thing that strikes you is the vastness, which has become synonymous with the brand since its “gallery-esque” Fitzroy warehouse store opened.
Designed by local studio In Addition, the 418-square-metre shopfront and production site has soaring ceilings, a sprawling concrete bench laid with one of each pastry, and its signature glass-walled “cube” where you can peer in on the pastry being laminated – centimetres away from an inside bench seat, or through a huge window from the footpath. It’s also got the most seating of any Lune store, with room for 50 people.
From opening day – when Reid will be on site in her chef’s whites – her team will be baking pastries fresh throughout the day, offering a chance to get them still warm.
That includes the bestselling almond croissant and the second-bestselling traditional croissant, as well as monthly specials and Lune Lonsdale exclusives. The first of which, a collaboration with Melbourne chip brand Chappy’s, is a salty-sweet twice-baked croissant filled with “choc chip” frangipane, priced at $15.50 and served with a packet of chips you’re encouraged to stuff inside the pastry.
Recently introducing a new head of development role is helping Lune get even more experimental with flavours and fillings, but Reid hasn’t lost sight of the plain croissant at the core of her business. Nearly 14 years in, “While people think we focus a lot on just creating new products, we spend a lot of time trying to push the quality of our classics,” she says. “At the heart, it’s the classics people want … and I just want to be the benchmark for that.”
Once daytime trade is firing on all cylinders at the Lonsdale Street store, Reid has ambitions to keep it open after dark. “I think the Melbourne CBD is ready for a space like this,” she says. “Imagine people sitting here at 8.30 at night on a Friday having a pastry.”
Lune Lonsdale opens on Saturday, January 31.
Open breakfast and lunch daily
670 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, lunecroissanterie.com
