Cafes Take Family Focus - Good Living - Tues 31 August 2010

  Child-friendly premises are a great way to keep adults happy, too, writes Harriet Alexander.

If parenting is the art of distraction, then so it goes for the restaurants and cafes that pretend to cater for children.

Those eating spots that know the value of a well-timed crayon are those that have the family market nailed, but many restaurants are taking the family-friendly philosophy further by providing entertainment that makes young customers more manageable and allows them to keep caffeinating and feeding the parents.

Bellagio in Waverley is one cafe that has increased business for itself since it started targeting families, offering free babycinos and building an outside play area with a cubby house, bikes and toys.

The owner, Scott Iliff, says the cafe is now busy for longer, with the usually quiet period between 9.30am and 11am now buzzing with mothers and prams.

Staff used to find that mothers came in for a quick coffee and then left when their children reached the limit of their attention spans. Now it is the children who need to be dragged away.

"It's been a great gimmick for us over the last six years," Iliff says. "Quite often on weekends the mothers will come in at 10 in the morning and have coffee and then lunch and then another coffee and they won't leave until 2pm."

The mecca for child-friendly eating is the Mean Fiddler in Rouse Hill. Its sprawling premises hosts ample room for prams, a playground, a PlayStation area and Sunday entertainment that has included a mad science show and kids' karaoke but may soon be replaced by a jumping castle and petting zoo.

A sushi restaurant in Maroubra, Kokoroya is also big enough to provide a children's playroom, an entertainment corner with cartoons, toys and colouring-in.

Even small cafes are going the extra mile for children. Love Grub in Alexandria has taken over a tiny grassed area next door and created a community garden with herbs, free for children to take home and learn that food "doesn't just come from a supermarket", owner Jacqui Stanton says.

Parents have also donated outgrown toys, bikes and scooters to the cafe to occupy the children while their elders eat.

Babycino's Cafein Hurlstone Park has a chest of toys, couches for breastfeeding and is about to introduce an "interactive workstation" with colouring-in equipment, which will make up for the loss of its cubby house due to safety concerns. Noise is kept to a minimum by the carpeted floor and the owner's emergency supply of Wiggles DVDs.

Barzura restaurant in Coogee recently renovated its premises at great expense to insulate itself against the squeals of children, which the managers believed was turning off mothers as much as it was driving away patrons who didn't have children.

"We're even more popular for the mums since then because they were sometimes a bit conscious of the noise [their children] were making," manager Dan Hampton says. "It used to be a case of, if you came and we were busy, you could hardly hear yourself think."

Now it is so quiet Hampton has had to buy a microphone for events involving speakers, because their voices do not carry to the other end of the room.

Sydney nanny Linda Metcalfe, who has watched the industry evolve in its attitudes to child-friendly eating in the more than 30 years she has been dining with children, still values healthy menus, small portions, early opening hours and high chairs in restaurants.

Crayons and paper tablecloths are a bonus, she says, but count for nothing if the simple things are not right.

"I think with kids you go for really quick service," she says. "And I love it when my kids get on first-name basis with the waiters and the coffee vendor, so they get to know the people and [the staff] get to know you, and it's really fun when you go in."

Family friendly venues

Bellagio Cafe285 Bronte Road, Waverley, 9387 1562.

Mean Fiddlercorner Commercial and Windsor roads, Rouse Hill, 9629 4811.

KokoroyaShops 1 and 2, 665-667 Anzac Parade, Maroubra, 8347 2226.

Love Grub38 Mitchell Road, Alexandria, 9318 2323.

Babycino's Cafe Shop 12, 27-31 Crinan Street, Hurlstone Park, 9554 6986.

Barzura 62 Carr Street, Coogee, 9665 5546.