Your dream corner store

In Australia, the corner store is a dying breed. You see old, empty milk bars everywhere boarded up with fading Pura Milk signage, usually across the road from primary schools, or converted into real-estate agents or hairdressing salons. Life changed, people got busier, we started ordering-in and driving-thru, and getting things from the supermarket. Cities and towns sprawled, and new suburbs popped up with newer, cleaner, more fluoro amenities. We shop in a different way now, with everything at our fingertips. The convenience of walking to the corner for milk and bread is a little old-fashioned when you can order a burger and chips on your phone.

There are lots of other reasons things have changed, too: print news is dying, smoking kills, and kids don’t hoon around the streets all day anymore with pocket money for a bag of lollies. But the thing that hasn’t changed is that human need for a sense of routine and connection. Hospitality means to welcome and look after someone with warmth and generosity.

On the corner of two suburban streets on the edge of the Geelong CBD, between the Barwon River and Corio Bay, and in the shadow of Kardinia Park’s big lights is Kilgour St Grocer. There’s an old photo of the shop that we’ve got on the wall, probably from the sixties, of when the building was a ‘cash store’ and sold Peters Ice Cream. We’ve been a milk bar, a fruit and veg’ shop, and a tuck shop. Now, we’re a modern mixed business, falling somewhere in between your fuzzy memory of a corner store (milk, bread, soft drinks, newspapers) and something informed by our modern sensibilities and ethics (obviously, we don’t sell smokes!).

We serve specialty, locally roasted and ethically sourced coffee, making hundreds of coffees a day for the people of south, east and central Geelong. We also sell sandwiches, cakes, kitchenware, cleaning products, flowers and groceries (bread, eggs and bacon). Almost everything on our shelves is either Australian-made and owned, small-batch, organic or handmade, and we try to keep the DIY spirit alive in everything we do. It’s organised chaos, a bit dusty, but it’s done with a lot of heart.

Excerpt from the little book we published with Somekind Press in 2020. Visit their website to read more!