One of the minor miracles of the past few months is how a small business like Mount Isa cafe The Xtra Mile has kept its doors open.
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There is plenty of goodwill towards proprietor Trine Gall and she is looking to the next evolution, a dedicated app to serve her loyal customers.
"The community support has been paramount in keeping my doors open," Trine said.
""Through this whole thing I've been using Skip, an order ahead app but they've got all the controls and it took five working days to upload all my menus and every time I changed something I had to ring them. What could have been a five minute process took days."
So Trine has taken matters into her own hands, creating her own The Xtra Mile app available on Google Play and Apple iStore.
"I got in touch with a company into hospitality and we decided to create our own app," she said.
"It takes into account contactless serving. You can come in here and order and pay at the table using the app. Or you, or a group of you, can order before you arrive so it makes life so much easier."
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Ms Gall is currently in the process of going through the COVID safe process and has a checklist in place, which can also be accessed via the app and the cafe is currently limited to 20 patrons at a time which needs to be monitored at the two shop fronts.
She did great work for the community in the height of the pandemic cooking up hundreds of meals.
"Our first cook up was when Sheree (Tuppurainen) put the health page together and I went to her and said if anyone is struggling I can cook and I've got the facility to do a few meals for the elderly or people who lost their jobs," she said.
"In that week we raised $1600 and cooked up 180 meals which all went out to a heap of families,"
"It was awesome and it really helped me get through my week because it was something else to think about other than how am I going to keep my doors open and pay my staff for the week."
Like other hospitality businesses she is missing the tourist income with no events in town.
"And I tell you who we are missing is the reps, there are no reps in town, all of those people who fly in for mining or Queensland Health or suppliers, there's none of that happening and my shop used to look after a lot of the reps."
When asked how she kept the cafe going through the pandemic, she replied with a laugh, "honestly, I have no idea!" but she warned we were not out of the woods yet when it came to COVID-19.
"There's still a long way to go," she said.
"Coming into October and November and next year when all of the housing loans have to be paid back, things might get difficult."
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
