From Spreadsheet to Storefront: Inside Trishia Mariano's Leap From Lockdown Supper Clubs to a Brisbane Storefront

By day, Trishia Mariano works in growth analytics, the kind of job built on spreadsheets, funnels and cohort data. It's an unlikely starting point for a hospitality brand, and an even less likely one for a Brisbane storefront. But this month, that's exactly what she's opening.

The seed was planted during Sydney's COVID lockdowns, when Mariano, isolated and approaching her thirties, began hosting what she called Dinner With Strangers: intimate supper clubs in her own apartment, open to people she'd never met. The guest list grew from eight to twenty, built through collaborations with chefs and culinary creatives, as she told Concrete Playground earlier this year. It wasn't a business plan. It was an instinct, shaped by a Filipino household where hosting and cooking were never separate from love.

That instinct eventually became Mesa Collections, a tableware and linens label built around the idea that a table is never just furniture. Its debut range, Table XV, is a direct tribute to her heritage, ruffled tablecloths designed to age rather than stay pristine, cutlery chosen to be used rather than admired. The brand operates as much as a community as a product line, hosting founder dinners and collaborative lunches around Sydney.

Mesa Haus is the next step: Mariano's first bricks-and-mortar space, and notably, her first venture outside Sydney. Opening at 33 Latrobe Terrace in Paddington, the space folds a specialty coffee program, run with Code Black Coffee, into rotating retail from Mesa Collections and friends, alongside The Mesa Residents, a co-working residency for Brisbane creatives. It's less a cafe than an attempt to build what her supper clubs did, at a scale that no longer fits inside an apartment.

The drinks list reflects the same handmade instinct, ube syrup simmered with condensed milk into a cold foam over cold brew, a blue matcha that shifts colour at the table, butterfly pea over oat milk, with pastries from Sprout Bakery arriving fresh daily.

Mesa Haus opens softly on 11 September, with an official opening on 18 September; the first 20 through the door that day drink for free. Whether the model, brand-as-community, translated into a full-time room rather than a curated evening, holds up under daily trade is the more interesting story to watch. For now, follow along at @mesahaus.space.