Pumpkin and feta pizza and fresh juices feature on the menu of new café The Hive, which opened in premises formerly housing Snappy.

Run by Australian expats and pals Clayton Jedam and Abbie Morgan, the café promises a taste of home and a healthy dining alternative.

The duo had been thinking about opening a business for a while and when the former Snappy came up for sale, they jumped at the chance.

The Hive is now almost unrecognisable from its previous incarnation. The café has a clean, industrial look, featuring all grey concrete and a sleek bar with dangling, satin-covered fairy lights hanging above it.

There are cute touches like the word ‘coffee’ spelled out in coffee beans on the long mirror behind the bar. The mirror and glass shelves add a feeling of light and space, as does the staircase and the view of the upstairs area.

The downstairs area houses simple wooden tables and chairs, while in the more private upstairs section there is Japanese-style floor seating on cushions.

“We just want it to be really relaxed,” says Clayton. “We don’t want there to be any pretension about it.”

Clayton also teaches English at the Shinta Mani Foundation and a couple of the students work part-time at the café as part of their hospitality training.

The former Snappy staff, meanwhile, have been retained and have taken quickly to the new western menu which includes enticing breakfast items such as cinnamon spiced pancakes, plus lunchtime staples including smoked salmon on rye and grilled vegetable salad.

“We’ve got breakfast, sandwiches, salads and pizza but even in our first week we had a lot of people come in for dinner, so we will do a dinner menu soon,” says Clayton. “It will still be simple – just stuff you miss from home.”

The pair want to keep the prices affordable, buying all their fruit and veg from Psar Samaki with just a few imported ingredients. Some dishes have already proved firm favourites, especially the roast vegetable panini, and the breakfast burrito, according to Clayton.

Many items, including the sundried tomato pizza, come from Clayton and Abbie’s family recipes.

The café’s chef is also a baker. Abbie equipped him with some of her recipes and says that the flourless chocolate cake, banana cake, and pumpkin scones he made were “just perfect.”

The name Hive was derived from the gold and brown colour scheme which reminded the dynamic duo of bees.

Clayton adds, “The café’s mostly aimed at expats so it’ll be a place where busy people can go after work and hang out. Lots of busy bees, a hive of activity.”

To continue the theme, the duo devised a house cocktail with honey, called the Bee’s Kiss, featuring Bacardi and Bacardi Gold with honey and cream, shaken.

The Hive’s official grand opening will be tomorrow, August 10.