Three years after fire destroyed their Burringbar café, Elwood, Bangalow couple Jack and Sophia Deacon are back with their new coffee bar, Pour Good. Turns out that’s not even half of it, Georgia Fox discovered.

Theirs is a Bangalow hospitality love story. They met over Corner Kitchen’s coffee machine, where Jack, Bangalow-born and bred, was working as the barista after returning from six years in Brisbane and Melbourne. Sophia, hailing from the café’s namesake suburb of Elwood and raised in country Victoria, was a relatively recent arrival to the area, managing the newly opened Woods. On their very first date they talked of starting their own place.

So when the chance came to take on Burringbar’s only café in 2019, they jumped at it. They loved the village’s old-school charm, which reminded Jack of the Bangalow of his childhood. And it was affordable. “Coming in with a skeleton budget, we felt like it was the last little country town within striking distance where we could dip our toes in and have some fun working together,” he explains.

Hospitality is tough. But for Jack and Sophia, it was a particularly wild ride from the moment they opened the doors. In their first weeks, bushfires came within just a few kilometres of the village, bringing prolonged heavy smoke, ash fall and ember risk, and a steady stream of frazzled evacuees, their cars crammed full of belongings.

Then just four months later, the pandemic was declared, which saw the first-time operators spend the next two years grappling with the challenging logistics of ever-shifting regulations. The silver lining was that with the café as one of the village’s few social hubs, a strong and deep connection was forged between the couple and the community, and they soon relocated to an idyllic rental nearby.

The relief at the ultimate lifting of restrictions in late 2021 was unfortunately short-lived when, again, just four months later, the same weather system that inundated Lismore flooded low-lying parts of Burringbar and brought devastating landslips further up the Range.

Sophia, five months pregnant at the time, found herself stuck on the Gold Coast while visiting her grandmother. Back home, Jack refused to let the four flooded causeways in his path prevent him from opening the doors at Elwood while the town still had power. Once the waters were low enough, he packed a survival kit and made his way on foot to the car they’d left on the other side, even swimming part of the way.

Cut off, the residents rallied, transforming the area around the café into a command post and recovery hub, corralling services and supplies. Amid the crisis, Elwood provided a vital community space – serving some of the most delicious coffees of Jack’s career, thanks to the buckets of fresh Jersey milk delivered by local cheesemaker, Deb Allard.

But again, the dust barely had a chance to settle when, just four months later, on the evening of June 23 2022, with Sophia in the early stages of an overdue labour, Jack’s phone rang. There was a fire at the café.

Sophia’s sister en route, Jack raced into town, arriving just as the battering ram was about to break down the heritage shopfront’s beautiful cedar doors. He rushed to unlock them, and along with most of Burringbar, watched in shock as firefighters brought the blaze under control.

With forensic reports completed and the building deemed safe, Jack was escorted inside, where he retrieved a charred stack of five-dollar notes from the safe. The café was dark and smoky, but he didn’t think it looked too bad. Plans were made to meet the chief fire inspector early the next morning, and he locked the doors behind him and returned home to Sophia, whose labour had stalled in the stress.

After a sleepless night, Jack headed back to the café at 6am, finding the doors smashed wide open. He feared the café had been ransacked, but it was much worse. The fire, thought to have been started by an electrical fault, had reignited in the early hours of the morning. The building was unsalvageable.

Surreal days stretched on, with Sophia becoming increasingly overdue and Jack navigating the gruelling insurance process – which, three years later, is still ongoing – until finally, a week later, daughter Mally was born.

Jack, Sophia and Elwood had become firmly embedded in the tight-knit community, and their absence was felt profoundly. “It’s such an odd thing to experience,” Sophia says. “It was like the loss of a friend. We still have people saying how sad they are it’s not there anymore.” Today, the vacant block remains as a literal hole in the village.

They continued living in Burringbar, but when Jack’s father suffered a debilitating stroke six months later, they returned to the Bangalow family home. After some time to recalibrate, Jack started working at Old Quarter Coffee and Sophia at Harvest, where she remained until baby Miles joined the mix in 2024. “It’s given us all a new perspective,” Jack says of their multi-generational living arrangement. “They support us as much as we support them.”

But Jack and Sophia weren’t done with their dream, or with the community they loved so much – and thanks to an interesting proposal from an old Elwood neighbour, they had a chance to pick up where they left off.

Bron of Natural Wine Shop & Bar was taking over the old laundromat out the back of her store when she approached Jack and Sophia with the idea of sharing the space: their coffee by day, her wine by night. This increasingly popular hybrid hospitality model suited them perfectly.

With no kitchen and an atmospheric fit-out that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Melbourne’s laneways, the space called for a different strategy from last time. And a new identity. “Elwood was a really special time for us,” explains Jack. “We decided to leave the name to rest with the memory of it.”

For Jack and Sophia, ‘Pour Good’ is about being conscious of the entirety of the process behind the cup of coffee in your hands – from cultivation to labour to preparation. If you’re going to drink coffee, make it good.

Underpinned by Old Quarter Coffee, Pour Good showcases different roasters each week, offering a menu of experimental specialty cold pours alongside the classics, and a pastry cabinet stocked with Lehem Breadhouse goodies. They’re open Friday through Monday mornings, with plans for additional days now that Jack is no longer juggling his travelling sales role at Old Quarter.

The demand is certainly there, not only from locals but from the steady stream of visitors the Rail Trail now brings to the area – something Jack and Sophia passionately hope Bangalow will get to experience too, having seen the phenomenal effect it’s had on the Burringbar community. Jack was on the platform the night the last train ran through town. “And we’ll be first in line when the tender goes out for the old Bangalow station!” he says.

@pour.good

29 Broadway, Burringbar

Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon 7.30am – 12.30pm