Greenacres CEO Karen Burdett with Shellharbour Mayor Chris Homer at the launch of the cafe in 2025. Photo: Jen White.
The disability services provider that operates the cafe at Shellharbour Airport has had to downscale operations and shift focus to adjust to the absence of commercial flyers since Link Airways cancelled flights from the region last month.
Greenacres has been growing its cafe operation at Shellharbour Airport for the past year, creating supported employment opportunities in the hospitality industry which benefit both workers and the broader community.
“It’s been building slowly, so we sort of started with a very small skeleton crew and that built up to having seven to eight employees operating out of that each day which is really, really positive,” Greenacres CEO Karen Burdett said.
But now its having to scale back, after Link Airways stopped operating commercial flights out of the airport.
“There was not a great deal of notice but we understood it was a difficult decision for them – so council informed us when they found out,” Karen said.
“There was a little bit of trepidation in terms of what that meant for the cafe itself and for the operations of that, but from our perspective we actually run some of our catering out of the kitchen at that site and so for us it was just about making sure that everybody was clear that we would adjust our pathway forward and that catering aspect is still very important to us.
“Obviously we were disappointed from the perspective that we have front of house services that is for the travellers that were flying on the Link flights and that means that we’re not going to be servicing those.”
The days leading up to the end of flights were anything but slow with the Wings Over Shellharbour airshow ensuring that the cafe and staff were kept busy before things changed.
“We’ve pulled back on our front of house services and we’ve just gone back to the crew that basically service the catering side of things,” Karen said.
“We’re going to have still all of our catering operating out of there but it will just be limited front of house, so coffee and grab-and-go style products and condensed hours of operation which we’re still working out at the moment as we see what demand is.”
Despite the reduction, Greenacres has ensured that workers will continue to gain opportunities and experiences, with no employees losing their jobs in the reshuffle.
“We are very lucky in that we have a couple of other cafes that we operate and we were able to essentially adjust the rosters so that all the people that were employed out of that were redeployed into other functions and of course we’ve got our other services that Greenacres runs for our employees as well,” Karen said.
The Shellharbour Airport cafe is still welcoming customers to get a coffee and they can continue to show their support for the social enterprise by visiting one of its other hospitality sites at Warrigal Shell Cove, SES Wollongong and Wollongong City Council, buying from its IMAGINE homewares retail stores, or using one of its many other services.
“One of the main things the community can do is support us through catering services,” Karen said.
“We have corporate catering and functions catering that we offer and that can be purchased and learned about via our online services or calling through to us.
“Also to tell people that those services are available, that would be a great help for us.”
While they are taking it day-to-day with demand at Shellharbour Airport, Greenacres is still hopeful circumstances will change and things will be able to take off once again.
“We fully understand that it’s a very difficult environment for airlines at the moment but hoping that there might be future opportunities for another carrier to go in there soon,” Karen said.
To find out more or contact Greenacres about the cafe, catering or other social enterprise services, visit the Greenacres website.
