The Paleo Cafe Journey

Welcome to the Paleo Cafe blog. One of our goals when we started Paleo Cafe was not only to run a successful, healthy and Paleo focussed cafe but also to provide free education and support to our customers and supporters – something we are so passionate about we even included it in our mission statement!

That’s why we’ve started this blog – so that we can share information, recipes, tips and stories with you. Paleo Cafe started as somewhere that Cairns locals could go to get clean, Paleo friendly meals and supplies but has grown into so much more. We have had so much enthusiasm and support for this business and it continues to grow and expand every day. Paleo Cafe is now a community, and one we are so proud to be a part of.

Over time you will get to learn more about the People of Paleo Cafe – both our staff and our customers, but for now here is our story about how and why we started this business. Thank you so much for joining us on this journey.

Jai and Marlies Hobbs started Paleo Cafe in 2012. They had discovered the Paleo lifestyle a year earlier – it was something they heard of through Jai’s Crossfit gym and adopted as a family after discovering their young son Troy’s severe acid reflux was being caused by a dairy intolerance. Troy had been suffering for most of his short life when, at four months, he was put on a dairy free formula. Within a matter of weeks he went from waking every hour screaming in pain to sleeping through the night.

This was the start of the Paleo Cafe Journey – seeing the difference that a change in diet made for Troy, Jai and Marlies sought to get a greater understanding of how the food we eat affects our bodies. They started slowly adopting the Paleo lifestyle and both noticed improvements. Jai and Marlies both lost weight, started sleeping better and skin and digestive problems that Marlies had been experiencing cleared up.

There was still one problem though – sourcing Paleo friendly food and products was time consuming and frustrating for a time poor young family. Jai runs his own business and at the time Marlies was working as an Environmental & Planning lawyer. The lightbulb moment came when Marlies told Jai how much easier it would be if there was somewhere local that they could go to buy specialist ingredients, eat out without temptation and pick up convenient premade clean meals. Jai has almost ten years’ experience in the financial services industry and runs Hobbs Financial Services so was able to see the potential in the idea immediately – so much so that the business name was registered the following day!

Paleo Cafe opened the doors of its Cairns outlet in October 2012 and less than twelve months on has already started franchising with the first outlets due to open in Brisbane and Sydney by October 2013.