10 years of Now and Not Yet Café

by GREG SWEDOSH
7th October 2024

An interview with Derek Bradshaw,
Founder of one of Warrandyte’s most iconic cafés

PHOTOS: GREG SWEDOSH

WARRANDYTE’s iconic Social Enterprise café, Now and Not Yet (NaNY), is about to celebrate its tenth birthday.|
Over the past decade, NaNY has become a much-loved part of the Warrandyte community as a place for people to dine, drink coffee, and foster community spirit.
To mark this milestone, I sat down with founder Derek Bradshaw to chat about all things NaNY.

Greg Swedosh: What does Now and Not Yet mean?
Derek Bradshaw: Now means that the community is good now, already beautiful.
There are already so many great features of Warrandyte.
But like everything, it’s not yet as good as it can be.
We wanted to embed ourselves in this place and try and do everything we possibly could to contribute to it continuing to grow and being the best that it can possibly be.

GS: NaNY is a not-for-profit café.
What inspired your decision to set it up, and what were your initial aims for the venture?
DB: The big reason for a cafe is that I’ve spent years sitting in cafes myself and I believe that there is something pretty special that happens there.
I don’t know what it is, but I love to walk into a cafe and hear it buzzing.
I love that feel and that vibe.
The initial aims were to try and set up something that was viable and sustainable, and that could generate some profit to be able to do some things that helped and supported people who were doing it tough.
I also wanted to employ people who may otherwise struggle to get a job in a place like this.
People who may have a history of not being able to get a job, who have been a bit used and abused by the system.
Why don’t we give them a chance and create an environment where they can flourish?

GS: What is the philosophy behind NaNY?
DB: We all need love.
It makes the world a much better place to live.
We will love an individual no matter what their circumstance, no matter their race or their sexuality, or their story.
None of us can go through life without, at some point, needing a helping hand.
When I was in my early teens, this girl knocked on our door at our home in North Balwyn and asked for money.
My Mum said, “No, I won’t give you money, but I’ve just cooked, and we’re about to sit down for a meal — so come in”.
So, she sat down and had a meal with us.
She ended up living with us for a couple of months.
And Mum and Dad ended up helping her mum.
My dad had a midlife crisis and decided to buy a cafe in the city, and then, after a couple of months, went back to computing, and Mum was sort of left with it.
So, Mum gave the girl work at the café.
Now, she’d been in jail for a whole lot of petty theft stuff, so people were saying, “She might steal stuff, or whatever”.
The easy thing for Mum and Dad to do would have been just to give her some money.
They would have felt good about themselves, and the problem would have gone away.
But instead, they said, “No, come in.
“We’ll get alongside you, support and help you”.
So much of what I was involved in before this was giving people money, and then the problem would go away.
And you feel good about yourself because you’ve given them some money.
But you actually miss out on the relationship and on learning a huge amount about yourself and your humanity through somebody else’s humanity and somebody else’s journey.
Like what Nige [who Derek helped come to Australia from Sri Lanka as a refugee] has taught me.
Now, that is love for your family, to escape in the middle of the night from civil war into the jungle and then to make your way to Australia to be locked up.
And to never, ever give up on fighting for your family to come to Australia.
Not just to come to Australia so that you can be reunited, but so that you know that they’re safe and at peace.

GS: Has NaNY evolved in a way that you thought it would?
DB: Oh no.
Quite intentionally, when we started this, I didn’t want to have a set agenda.
I wanted to work out who we wanted to be as people and what our values were.
I wanted to allow it to play itself out in its own unique way and for us to be nimble and flexible.
To become whatever it looked like in a Warrandyte context.
So, it’s had so many evolutions and iterations.

GS: What made you choose Warrandyte as the location?
Did you have a previous connection to Warrandyte?
DB: We lived in Donvale, and I used to come down and walk along the river regularly.
It was my place of solace and peace and where I felt like I really resonated with my Creator and people.
I always knew Warrandyte had such a special communal village sort of vibe.
I thought Warrandyte would resonate with who we were and what we wanted to achieve.

GS: What causes has NaNY been involved in over its 10-year history?
DB: Obviously, there’s the asylum seeker work.
And we’ve worked with people affected by domestic violence, where we’ve provided anything from housing and food support to emotional support.
We’ve provided employment pathways for local people who have barriers to long-term employment.
We’ve helped the Warrandyte Refugee Support Group and artists through the NaNY Gallery, and the space is often used by different community groups for meetings.

GS: Has the success of NaNY been what you expected?
DB: Success for us is what the community thinks of us, and whether the community feels loved and supported by us.
We’ve done all sorts of different things, and we’ve just changed and adapted as it’s gone along.
And the change and adaption haven’t been trying to chase success.
It’s been working out how we can best support this community.
So success, to a certain degree, is that we’re still here, and we have hundreds of stories that people share with us about what NaNY means to them and how it’s impacted their lives.
That’s been one of the beautiful things about the 10th birthday.
We had one couple who said: “You literally dragged us through COVID.
“We would come down every day just to get our coffee and chat to you guys.
“You were the only physical people outside of our house that we got to talk to”.
They often commented that they didn’t know whether they would have survived COVID if it wasn’t for NaNY.
We intentionally stayed open, not because it was financially profitable, but because we knew that was what we needed to do for the community.

GS: If you had your time over again, is there anything you’d do differently?
DB: Everything we’ve done, whether it worked or not, successful or unsuccessful, we’ve done with the same passion for people and community.

GS: What were you doing before you were running a café?
DB: So I am still technically a Baptist pastor.
I worked in what I call “church land” for 10 years.
Before that, I was a plumber.
I ran a mechanical workshop.
I managed a drum shop and worked in the music industry.
I worked in real estate.
I ran my own events management company.
I ran a motorbiking business.
I worked at Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in the maintenance department and then ended up working in my local church as the worship pastor.
Then, I worked for an organisation that did Community Development overseas for a couple of years.
And I wanted to do this because I met some of the happiest people I’ve ever met in the world in the slums of Cambodia and Indonesia.
And I thought there’s something really powerful in that.
I realised that the pursuit of more money, status, a bigger house, or a better car was a pointless and futile exercise.
I wanted to put all my time and effort into bringing to people or being part of something that was of true and genuine value.
And that is: relationship. 

GS: Has the success of NaNY given rise to other similar ventures?
DB: Yeah, we opened the Shared Cup café in Donnybrook five years ago, and that’s been really successful.
That came out of Mirvac, a big developer, seeing what we were doing in Warrandyte and approaching us because they wanted that same drive, ethos, and practice in a new development there.

GS: What do you have planned for NaNY over the next 10 years?
DB: Just trying to keep doing what we do.
We don’t have any grand plan.
We want to do some things to help ensure that we can continue to do what we do.
I think it’ll be more of the same and to be completely open to whatever.

GS: Last question, and most importantly, what’s your go-to order on the NaNY menu?
DB: Well, I do like a good smashed avo.