Axil Coffee Roasters
Two people have won the World Barista Championship while working for this roaster, Anthony Douglas in 2022 and Jack Simpson in 2025, and the cafe where the business started is a converted strip of bowling alley on Burwood Road.
Why go
Dave Makin and Zoe Delaney opened here first, and Makin had already taken the Australian barista title twice before the roastery moved in behind the room (Broadsheet). The competition line never stopped: Jack Simpson, who works as Axil's head of innovation, won the Australian championship three years running and then took the world title in Milan in October 2025 (World Coffee Championships). His signature drink was built on a Colombian coffee from producer Jonathan Gasca, using honey vinegar, cascara and passionfruit husk to make an argument about what usually gets thrown away. The buying side is written down too: the beans carry a Direct Trade label and the company has committed to paying 25 per cent above the fair trade price. The name is the botanical term for the joint where a coffee tree flowers, which Makin chose because we wanted to find something that related to where the coffee story begins
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Order this / avoid
- Order: the single origin on the espresso bar, black. A magic if you want to watch a competition kitchen handle milk. Batch brew when you are walking.
- Avoid: treating the world titles as a guarantee about any given cup. They belong to two named baristas and to the roast, and the group now runs more than sixteen stores.
What locals & experts say
- Broadsheet, on the Hawthorn room:
As serious cafes go, this slick operation by two-time Australian barista champion Dave Makin, and his partner Zoe (of equal coffee nous), is as impressive as they come.
1 - Lauren Dinse, Time Out Melbourne, 17 June 2025 (reporting, not her own verdict):
For the third year in a row, local Melbourne barista Jack Simpson from Axil Coffee Roasters has just been crowned the Australian Barista Champion.
2 - Jack Simpson, in the same piece, on why the producers matter:
The work they put in to get specialty coffee to taste as good as it does is amazing! It's their livelihood and the risks they have to take to make it work inspires me daily.
2 - No critic has assessed a cup at Burwood Road in anything reachable on 1 August 2026, and none of the 74 chef picks in the Melbourne corpus names Axil. The rung rests on competition results and on the roastery.
Good to know
- Where: 322 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn. The roastery is around the corner at 48 Lynch St and there is a second Hawthorn store on Glenferrie Rd.
- Sites: over sixteen, including nine in the CBD, Chadstone, Melbourne Airport, Melbourne University and one in Surry Hills, Sydney. This entry is the Hawthorn original. Time Out's Axil page is filed to the Flinders Lane store, so its room description belongs to that address.
- Timing: breakfast and lunch menus, with four sandwiches made to order. Hours for this room were not confirmed from a first-party page.
- Booking: walk-in.
- Food safety: Safe Food Victoria's register of convictions, updated 21 July 2026, does not list this business or either Hawthorn address. Victoria publishes court convictions under s.53D of the Food Act and holds each for twelve months, which is a narrower check than a UK hygiene rating.
Verdict
should-visit — Go for the coffee and understand what you are buying. Axil has put two baristas on top of the World Barista Championship, Anthony Douglas in 2022 and Jack Simpson in 2025, and Simpson also took the Australian title three years running. That is the hardest evidence available in this category, and it is competition placing rather than a listicle. The Hawthorn room is where the business started, the roasting happens on the same street, and the beans are labelled Direct Trade with a published commitment to pay 25 per cent above the fair trade price. What holds it at should-visit rather than higher is honesty about scale: the group runs over sixteen stores including an airport and a shopping centre, and a world title belongs to two people rather than to every bar in the network. No critic has assessed a cup at Burwood Road in anything we can reach, and no Melbourne chef among the 74 picks names it.