East End Flower Market has moved to an expanded shopfront on Halifax Street, and they've brought former pop-up coffee vendor DAYJOB along with them.

After five years on Grenfell Street, boutique florist East End Flower Market has moved a kilometre-and-a-bit south onto Halifax Street, into a space that is double the size of its former site.

The move has been a long time coming, with East End Flower Market growing beyond its capacity after two years of trade, around the time of the launch of their website and online delivery-ordering system.

In the earliest days of the website, East End Flower market was doing between five and 10 deliveries a day, and they’ve now grown to between 50-70, and a maximum of 300 on peak days like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

To cope with that growth, for the past three years, East End Flower Market’s founder Justine Ellbourn has split her business between the Grenfell frontage and a studio in Parkside, but in this larger tenancy she has been able to bring all facets of the business back under one roof.

The additional warehouse space will allow East End Flower Market to expand again to 400 deliveries on peak days, the increased retail floor space will mean an expanded range, but most importantly, it will also let Justine bring back her original intentions for the business.

“When we first envisioned East End Flower Market on Grenfell Street, it was supposed to be a come in store, grab a bunch kind of thing, [but] as soon as we got the website, it changed the whole game. It was like, ‘Ok, we’re doing deliveries now, not so much in the store,’” Justine says.

“We really want to get that side of it back, and that’s why we’ve got this space, because there’s a lot more room here, we can spend more time with customers and really do custom bunches, and just give that really good customer service. And obviously there’s plenty of parking as well.

L-R: Antonio Trotta and Justine Ellbourn

Justine has also teamed up with DAYJOB, a pop-up coffee vendor, run by Antonio Trotta and Jessica Rogers, who have taken up residency in the eastern end of the space.

DAYJOB has been running for about a year and was set up to bring a specialty coffee option to outdoor events. In this shared shopfront, they are pouring Kindred Coffee and rotating single origins and special blends from Ona Coffee.

The café also stocks Portuguese tarts from Saudade, pastries from Market Street, and a revolving selection of house-made sandwiches.

“One of the aspects of specialty coffee is you need that attention to detail, and I think that’s probably where we complement each other,” Antonio says.

“The flowers are so detailed, and there’s a bit of traceability in the flowers, especially with the natives and things like that, and we want to do that with our coffee and make sure that our flavours and things are spot on, even with our sandwiches and food and pastries.”

The space seats around 12 people at its maximum, so it is takeaway-focussed, but the hope is that there will be plenty of opportunity for people shopping for flowers to sit with a coffee while they wait for their custom bunch, and for coffee customers to sip while browsing the extensive East End Flower Market Range.

“As we’ve been renovating, we’ve seen so many people stop by, mostly residents… saying there’s a big gap around weekends. There’s nowhere really to grab a coffee,” Jessica says.

“Other than what you see, there’s no kitchen, so we’re keeping everything really simple around people’s lunches to grab and go. That was another bit of feedback from a lot of businesses around here, was there’s no simple options on this street.”

EEFM candle packaging design by Imogen Koch

Justine hopes that this site will become the long-term home for East End Flower Market, and has made several alterations to the site – the open glass frontage, the green-tiled counter, and the mural on the back wall (by graphic designer and East End Flower Market employee Imogen Koch), which is also repeated in the branded flower bunch wrapping paper.

“I want us to make a home here, where everyone knows where we are,” Justine says.

“It’s obviously very important for my staff to be back together… It’s nice to be more of a community again.”

Both East End Flower Market and DAYJOB open seven days a week. See the remark at the top of the article for their operating hours.