Harry's Bar & Dining to open at Bondi Beach

When Harry's Bar & Dining opens on Wairoa Avenue at Bondi Beach next week, it could provide one blueprint for the future of embattled convenience outlets across Sydney.

Chris Karvelas explains his business partner, Harry Lambropoulos, made a significant decision in 1997 when they started to serve coffee in what had been a convenience store since 1982, in a bid to diversify from the big supermarkets who were encroaching into convenience territory.

The coffee bar in the corner of the store may well have saved the business, and the new restaurant format will take it to a new level.

Swallowing the neighbouring laundromat as well, the redesign has created space for an 80-seater with new chef Bryan O'Callaghan, a ten-year veteran at The Tilbury, creating a menu which includes breakfast dishes such as coconut, yoghurt and chia pudding and quinoa balls with poached eggs and fatoush.

For lunch he's working on a dish of stinging nettle and gnocchi. Dinner (Thursday-to Saturday from Feb 12) will be "a little more refined" but still rustic. Karvelas says the kiosk side of the business will remain to service faster beachside needs.

"Our evolution has really taught us how to eat from a convenience store. By this time next year we'd love to be sixty to seventy per cent organic," he adds.