We headed west once again to team up with our long-time collaborators, City of Parramatta Council, to launch a far-reaching campaign centred on the enigmatic, adventure-fuelled power of FOOD. In a first for us, we partnered with global brand Squarespace to ensure the fabled tale of Joey Kellock and his 1800 Lasagne empire (and the website that built it) was spread far and wide, utilising our own platforms as the springboard. We helped launch not one but two electric booze brands into market, from the canned magic that is Homegrown Spritz, to a stackable, endlessly drinkable bottled cocktail brand built by great minds (and named by us), BLOC. We floated effortlessly from day to night for Breville’s new colourway, Noir, and as always, had way too much fun working with QT Hotels on no less than four seasonal brand campaigns, each one more effervescent than the next (the comments on this alone made us WEEP.)

Covid who? Never heard of her. We helped launch more venues this year than EVER via our ever-popular Launch Kit, which takes care of all your content launch business, end to end. Pristine (and fast) steak and Martinis? Make it Alfie’s. A tri-level CBD playground led by Terzini? You may have heard of Jackson’s on George. The pearl of Port Melbourne (and the ideal event space?) It’s gotta be The Chandlery. An inner-west grocery store filled with the condiments, meals, picnic-goods and homewares of your dreams? We built the brand that is GOODS. Don’t forget the moody Paddington Vinyl bar, Balmain’s newest oldest, shiniest new pub, Sydney’s slick Salty Palace and sister bakery, Fabbrica Bread Shop. Lastly, how could we forget Raja, with Firedoor’s Ahana Dutt on the pans.

The Strategic Ideation TLDR? It’s a NEW small but mighty service for small but mighty businesses, empowering you with 10 creative recommendations to execute in-house — direct from the Buffet Brain’s Trust.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve had the pleasure of tooling up a boutique B&B in Mudgee, a couple of fire chilli oil brands, an experimental native produce-led cafe, Sydney’s coolest floral artist, a sustainability architecture firm, and a private (ex-10 William) chef and caterer.

Watch this video by our star student from Mudgee’s boutique accommodation, Balabudgee, for a guaranteed serotonin boost.

Drop us a line to enquire about your Strategic Ideation for 2024.

Perfect imagery is nothing, nothing, without immaculate copy. Another year has flown by writing for The Old Clare Hotel’s journal, from gift guides to poolside reading hits and interviews with local DJs, candlemakers and artists. We weaved words across the new Japanese-leaning products at Jimoto Foods, The Shangri-La Hotel’s menu was reintroduced with a batch of slick introductory copy by yours truly. At this! very! moment! we’re plotting out a brand new evolution of Archie Rose Distillery’s online editorial space to mark 10 years of good drinking for the brand. Watch this blank space. As always, we talked the talk over on our own editorial platform, bringing you as much Lazy Susan as our fancy little fingers could this year. 

Now here’s a dream project that spans The Full Buffet of services – Brand Naming, Brand Identity, Collateral Design, Photography and perhaps our new favourite – Stock Curation. A perfect example of when a client has the vision, and we build the brand. You’ll find GOODS snuggled next to Scout Pilates’ new location at 333 Enmore Road, Marrickville. We curated a cornucopia of edible and drinkable delights for its shelves and fridges, from the best peanut butter this side of anywhere, incredible liquorice, adult-friendly cocoa puffs, non-alc Margs, cult bonito vinegar from Japan, canned bubble tea, only the best sourdough and baguettes, a cheese collection to be VERY excited about, and coordinated an exclusive collaboration with local heroes Whole Beast Butchery. If you haven’t paid GOODS a visit yet, you’re being BADS.

2023 was well and truly the year of video. From fast-paced short-form IG Reels to large-scale premium brand campaigns, we did it all. 

While there are too many to mention, some highlights included our Sgroppino sensation with Icebergs, a viral Reel and TikTok that just kept on delivering. Last we checked it was sitting at 1.3 million views! From iPhone shoots to full production video we delivered international content for Breville, shot countless wonderful faces and places for our friends at City of Parramatta and captured a beautiful, nostalgic hero brand campaign for The Old Clare Hotel. Throughout it all some of our most enjoyable moments in video this year came down to telling the stories of real people and personalities, and we were lucky enough to wrap the year doing just that with our most recent video campaign in collaboration with Squarespace, showcasing the wildly energetic character that is restaurateur Joey Kellock of Melbourne’s 1800 Lasagne.

Behold the highlights reel:

We’re so lucky to work with a huge range of the coolest/greatest/loveliest clients, and we LOVE sharing feedback with the team on our #clientfeedback Slack channel. Here’s a taste:

Iphone content, Iphone content, IPHONE CONTENT!!

This has been the bell that has tolled all day, all night, all year. 

With the surge of high performing, high-engagement, lo-fi content, came the demand and our subsequent offering of stills and video shot on iPhone. Not to be mistaken for any old content that can be made by your mum on her new phone, this is highly polished, highly planned, high quality content delivered by our team of iPhone shooting professionals and editors. 

Photography has always been a strong player in the Buffet team but this year we’ve seen even more experimentation, diversity in treatments and growth in our creative team with a few new faces joining our extended creative family. Punchy hard flash across a range of treatments and briefs did not dissipate this year, dominating the look for a bunch of campaigns and shoots from the Heaps Normal product range, launch night at Jackson’s on George and of course all the usual shenanigans across QT Hotels nationally and in NZ! We’ve also actioned plenty of stunning softly lit premium shots, from the moody vignettes at the Rover, elegant plates at Quay and some pretty special product shots at Archie Rose that made their way to billboards across the state. Big thanks to all the talented shooters who have collaborated with Buffet this year! We’ve also started to play in the world of AI, taking client dishes and other ideas into other realms and corners of the imagination – the possibilities are endless. More to come on this in 2024 – watch this space!

See our favourite imagery picks of 2023 here!

The traffic to our website, which you’re currently browsing, DOUBLED — shout out to our pal @ SCCO for the design

We hosted a Secondhand Cookbook Market and raised $1,690 for the Literacy For Life Foundation!

A friendly Fruit Sticker Poster in collaboration with Melbourne artist Alice Oehr – available now!

Three new team members joined the good ship Buffet; Content Editor Kaleela Lauder, Junior Producer Taylor Silk and Account Manager Billie Routledge.

We launched our second Buffet prints collection, Edition 02, a selection of our favourite restaurant interiors from the archive.

We threw a pizza party for friends and clients!

Not one (but three!) Buffet babies are imminently on the way. 

Birthday cakes served: a family-sized banoffee tart from Fabbrica, a giant Humble finger bun, an assorted stack of Grumpy Donuts, an apricot mille feuille tart and cinnamon scrolls from Cherry Moon, Flour & Stone’s *iconic* carrot cake, the cloud-like Melon Chiffon from Dulcet Cakes & Sweets and a 1.5 metre showstopping Napoleon log from World of Crema. We live for CAKE.