Community on North Terrace has become too busy to service the Lot Fourteen community on its own, so they've launched grab-and-go eatery Good Neighbour around the corner, serving coffee, smoothies and double-cut rolls.

Two years on from the launch of Community at Lot Fourteen, co-founder Brett Hicks-Maitland has debuted a follow-up takeaway sandwich project just around the corner.

Good Neighbour takes the Community approach – which Brett describes as “delicious and rustic and large and generous and healthy-ish” – and packages it in a more convenient format for the growing number of tech and innovation workers in the area.

“The fast access to a quick lunch to sit at your desk and have a bite to eat isn’t something that we could provide from Community, as well as being a full-functioning café,” Brett explains. “[For] the Good Neighbour offering, we’ve got pre-made on the day, fresh on the day, ready to go.”

Brett got access to site, which is down an alleyway east of Community, through an expression of interest process with Lot Fourteen, and, in addition to offering convenience to customers, Good Neighbour will play a crucial role for the café – reducing wait times.

“As the district grows and develops… we’re reaching that point now where there can be a 15-minute wait on coffee, and we’ve got two fast baristas churning out coffees as fast as they can, and they just can’t keep up,” Brett says. “It’ll take the load away from Community, in terms of the coffee demand.”

Among Good Neighbour’s menu items are sandwiches, wraps, pastries, chia puddings, muesli cups and smoothies – all of which can be ordered online for pick-up.

The hole-in-the-wall eatery has also dubbed itself the “Home of the double-cut roll” on Instagram – a menu item Brett holds in high esteem.

“Anyone who was born after 1995 wouldn’t know about the double-cut roll, but anyone who was born before that will be climbing the shoulders of the person before them to get one – I hope,” he says. “That’s what I grew up on… [and] it’s that kind of offering that we want to bring back, that you can have two sandwiches in one and it’s all about the filling.”

In this current moment in the Adelaide Sandwich Renaissance, it’s not unusual to see a near $20 asking price for an ‘elevated’ ham and cheese toastie. Good Neighbour’s sandwich selection hovers between $10 and $13 – which is in line with the Home of the Double Cut Roll of CityMag’s heart, Favourite Fillings on Gawler Place.

Good Neighbour is only the latest business to enter the Lot Fourteen district – and there’s a lot still to come.

In the plot of land immediately next to Good Neighbour, there’s a vacant space where, by 2026 (pending the outcome of a review), Tarrkarri – Centre for First Nations Cultures will be located. Behind the café, the Entrepreneur and Innovation Centre is set to begin construction this year.

All the heritage buildings on site have now been fully refurbished, and Lot Fourteen State Project Lead Di Dixon says there are 1500 people now working within them.

Alongside the much-touted major tenants, like Amazon, Google, the Australian Space Agency and the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, an ecosystem of “startup and entrepreneurial”-stage companies have moved in, creating “a waiting list of sorts,” says Di.

“We talk about that having been in our establishment phase, and we’re now moving into the growth phase, and we’ve got a new strategic plan for the next four years because of that,” she says.

“I think it is pretty well balanced at the moment. Having come from interstate and working on other innovation districts, I think we’ve got a really strong basis. I don’t know many that would get those global names at such an early stage.

“Going forward, our targets are all aligned to those emerging sectors – so defence, for example, looking more globally… Those are opportunities that, yes, they may be manufacturing submarines being built elsewhere, but that intellectual property side and that ability to attract and retain skills is where Lot Fourteen plays a really critical role.”

Di Dixon and Brett Hicks-Maitland. This picture: Johnny von Einem

Brett’s critical role in the operation is keeping those who need a quick coffee or meal to take back to their desk fed and watered, while also providing a space for those who want to sit in for a long lunch, meet with people, or just mingle.

“All of the different businesses within the district can come together and bash their heads with tech and ideas, and… they can do that on neutral territory, it’s international waters, if you will,” Brett says of Community’s function within Lot Fourteen. “It’s a great space for Google and Amazon to talk together, but not on Google’s territory and not on Amazon’s territory.”

“It is really the heart of the community,” Di says. “If I’m in there having a meeting, I’ll end up introducing three people who wouldn’t have met, because they’ll literally walk past and, ‘Oh, you need to meet this person here’. There’s so much of that that happens.”

Good Neighbour is located in the Bice Building at Lot Fourteen on North Terrace (take a long look from the pavement, it’s set a fair way back), and operates Monday to Friday from 8am ‘til 2pm.

Connect with the business on Instagram.