First Impressions Count With Taste Whitsundays

Katelyn Collins has owned the café inside Whitsunday Coast Airport for over 2 years and has seen many achievements during that time, including the airport winning best regional airport, but nothing makes her happier than providing hungry customers with great food and service.

To give customers great food, Taste Whitsundays focus on fast and speedy food but make it extra delicious by focusing on local produce.

“We make all our own salads using as much local ingredients as we can; anywhere that we can use locally sourced products, we do,” said Katelyn.

“We use all local avocados in our nachos, rather than buying pre-packaged preservative filled guacamole.”

In addition to local avocados, at Taste Whitsundays they use local tomatoes, limes, other fruits and vegetables and adapt their menu to suit seasonal products.

“When certain things are in season, we really feature those things,” explained Katelyn.

“In the fruit salads we'll do a special on mangoes and mango ice cream right through mango season.

“We adapt, and because we're hand making, we've got usually three salads on each day and any of the produce that is fresh at that time we really push and use.”

Using fresh produce is just one part of Taste Whitsundays, their service is also top tier, and they have many customers, national and international praising them.

“We’ve got a really good system that is set up to be fast and efficient,” said Katelyn.

“We make food to order, and the number of times people say, ‘Oh, gee, is it going to be 10 minutes for my burger? And I'll say, no, it might be two minutes at the most.’ And they can't believe just how quickly we can get it out to people!

“Passengers waiting for a flight can get stressed because they think things are going to take too long so we use technology to enhance that speed and efficiency.”

When Taste Whitsundays opened its doors they had QR codes on tables, allowing customers to order from the tables instead of going up to order. They have now introduced a self-serve kiosk.

Katelyn expresses that the self-serve machines do not mean customers get a lesser experience at the café.

Instead, introducing the kiosks allows her staff to not be overworked and have more time to take care of customers and offer a better overall service. She also expressed that airports are fast-paced, and the kiosk lets customers make their order in their own time and feel more relaxed.

Moving forward, Taste Whitsundays is excited to introduce more languages to the self-serve kiosks, to be more accessible for Chinese and European customers.

The Taste Whitsunday Team with locally designed travel cups, Julie Burns, Sam Groves, Yvonne Cambell, Awhina Shortcliffe, Desley Camm, Alan Moore, Photo credit: Daniel Heggie

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