Merlo has dominated the caffeine world for more than six decades, but now the coffee giant has announced it will be branching out into baking with the opening of state-of-the-art wholesale bakery Milano Bakehouse.

The bakehouse is set to open its doors at Merlo’s roasting facility in the inner-city suburb of Bowen Hills on July 5, and will be creating pastries, breads, croissants and cookies for their 16 stores located across South East Queensland. There are also plans to expand further into restaurants and cafes nationwide.

Merlo owner Dean Merlo told The Courier Mail the decision had come after they decided they wanted to reinvent their food offer across all 16 stores.

“…it had to start with the bread, so we said, ‘right, we’re going to open a bakery and we’re going to make the best product we can,” he said.

Dean and his business partner James Wilkinson have brought on board some of the best in the field, including former Montrachet chef Shannon Kellam, who also worked at the now defunct wholesale bakery The Kneadery, as well as French-trained head baker Thomas Meneau.

Dean said the entire Milano Bakehouse offering would contain no preservatives, flavourings, colourings, additives, or improvers.

“…just amazing European butter, Australia’s finest flour and knowledge from this incredible team,” he said.

The Milano Bakehouse facility has been 12 months in the making and is expected to produce up to 1000 baked goods each day – including 24 varieties of bread.

Dean said initially the baked goods would be transported to each of the stores fresh each morning, but the eventual goal was to have the production facility make the doughs that would then be baked off in Merlo outlets in front of customers.

“You’ll be getting brilliant product baked within hours and that’s a big deal,” Dean said.

Milano Bakehouse has been named after the Merlo family’s first hospitality venture, Cafe Milano, which opened in the Queen Street Mall in 1960.