Up From Down Under
From Threefold Cafe to now Someone’s Son, Nick and Teresa Sharp Have Found Culinary Opportunity in the Gables
By Mike Clary
February 2019
When Nick and Teresa Sharp decided to plunge into the high-risk restaurant business back in 2014, they had a clear concept of their goal, but no clear path on how to get there.
“We sort of stumbled into opening a cafe,” Nick admits. “We didn’t know what we were doing when we started.”
But the couple stuck to their vision: Threefold Café would be a welcoming oasis of good coffee and innovative breakfast offerings, which basically served breakfast all day long, albeit with a couple of lunch-style dishes. It was a concept that was ubiquitous in their native Australia but rarer than wallabies in South Florida.
“We did what we wanted to do, and we ended up with a loyal customer base,” said Nick Sharp, 36.
Indeed, the original Threefold Café on Giralda Plaza – and a second location that opened in 2016 on Red Road in South Miami – are thriving. Their single menus serve the same food from morning until afternoon, so you can get eggs for lunch or fried rice with shrimp for breakfast. And signature dishes such as Smashed Avocado (with feta, lime, basil and roasted mushrooms on toast) and Pope Benedict (two poached eggs on hash browns) have become local favorites. The Miami New Times awarded them “Best Breakfast” in 2016; the year before, the Miami Herald named Smashed Avocado the “Dish of the Year.”
Now the Sharps are about to launch a new venture, expanding their menu of locally-sourced dishes from two breakfast-all-day restaurants into the dinner hour. Someone’s Son, which takes its name from a phrase in a popular song by Australian singer John Farnham, is to open in Coral Gables this month (February) or next. The restaurant will be adjacent to Coffee Et. Al., a small coffee shop the Sharps own in the Douglas Entrance complex.
On the Threefold website, Someone’s Son is described as “a simple Australian inspired restaurant focused on local produce.” The menu is “about incorporating things that are quintessentially Australian (think lamb, beets, etc.) and infusing it with some local twists, pulling from produce found close by,” says Teresa.
Neither Nick or Teresa grew up in the restaurant business. Both are natives of Mildura, a small city in northwest Victoria, where they were high school classmates. They moved to cosmopolitan Melbourne to attend university. Teresa majored in finance, economics and marketing, and Nick in accounting.
After finishing their studies, Nick took a globe-trotting job with a Dutch-based supplier of dairy food products while Teresa worked from home raising the couple’s two daughters. The family moved first to Boston and then, in 2012, to South Florida.
To succeed as restaurateurs, Teresa says, “You need to have a clear vision and stick to it.” Good employees are critical. “When you find employees that care more about working than a pay check, do everything you can to keep them around!” she says.
We did what we wanted to do, and we ended up with a loyal customer base…
Nick Sharp
Like other local merchants, the Sharps suffered during the build-out of the city’s Streetscape Project, which transformed their stretch of Giralda Avenue into a pedestrian mall. But art installations such as the Umbrella Sky Project and now the Sunlit Sky have drawn thousands of visitors to the new Giralda Plaza promenade, and many of those art lovers discovered – and became fans of –Threefold Café.
Beyond their menu of innovative, flavorful foods, the Sharps pride themselves on serving good coffee. In 2017, Threefold partnered with a local coffee roaster to form Deco Coffee Co. Located in Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood, Deco produces specialty coffee for the café, as well as selling it wholesale and providing training and education in coffee-making.
And the Sharps aren’t done. Once Someone’s Son is up and running, the couple has plans to partner with Australian beer experts to open a brew pub, to be called Bay 13, on Alhambra Plaza near the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables.
“There is an incredible amount of opportunity here,” says Nick Sharp. And success in the super-competitive restaurant business? “It’s a balance between creativity and consistency.”
Threefold Café
141 Giralda Ave.
305.704.8007
Open 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.