Coffee Mio Pty Ltd

In the days before cafe society in Australia, Mario Berra had a simple idea. Take natures raw product, the humble coffee bean, and transform it into something enticing, aromatic and inviting. Today we know this product as Coffee MIO, the epitome of coffee roasting and blending finesse. Back in the early 1960s however, with cafe society being little more than a ragged gathering of new arrivals coming together over a game of cards and the occasional short black, Mario Berra, and later his brother Franco, took a gamble and using a second-hand coal-burning roaster set out to redefine the term coffee in Australia.Working from the back of a shed that was cramped with all the accoutrements of a fledging cottage industry, the two brothers sold their product in hand-filled hessian sacks out of the back of a not too reliable van to sympathetic cafe owners. They managed to build a steady band of loyal clients looking for quality products. By the late 1960s Coffee MIO was established as a brand name in its own right, and now operates successfully out of Melbourne, Australia-wide and also exporting to various countries.