
When Kate Reid was offered a job in Formula One as an aerodynamicist, it was a dream come true, so she packed her bags and moved from Melbourne to the UK. However, working for one of the most highly-regarded motor racing teams in the world wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“I’d dreamt of working for Formula One for such a long time, but when I actually achieved it, it didn’t meet my expectations,” says Kate. “The role just wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.”
After a few years, the stress had taken its toll and Kate’s health was suffering – so she moved back to Melbourne. She got a job in a bakery and began to recover, then one day opened a coffee table book on Parisian pâtisseries to a double page photo of a stack of pains au chocolat. Next thing she knew, she’d booked a ticket to Paris.
“I worked in a boulangerie in the 10th arrondissement in Paris where I learnt how to make viennoiserie – a style of pastry that started in Vienna,” says Kate. “I was there for four weeks and worked full-time in a raw pastry kitchen.”
When she came back to Melbourne, Kate couldn’t find a croissant that met the expectations of what she’d had in Paris, so she decided to make them herself.



Expanding the business
Reaching this point in the business meant they could either pare back the business or expand. They decided to take on another business partner, Nathan Tolman – who owned cafes like Higher Ground and Kettle Black – and he offered them a much larger building in Fitzroy.
The croissanterie had suddenly gone from 20sqm to 400sqm and with that came the opportunity to expand and hire staff – Kate and Cam took on two more pastry chefs and hired a small front of house team.
“Xero became a really critical tool for us as soon as we moved to Fitzroy and began to take on more staff,” says Kate. “We needed accounting software to assist us in the clean and tight management of the business.”
Kate’s expertise as a pastry chef is perfectly matched by Cam’s expertise in business.
“The split of our skill sets is almost perfect,” says Kate. “We have little areas where we overlap which is great because we understand the responsibility each of us has and we can come up with informed decisions.”
As the business has grown, Lune has increased the number of suppliers to over 100 and the number of staff to over 60 – so being able to manage all of them easily is vital.
“We needed to get those systems in place that streamline and interact with Xero,” says Kate. “The more systems that talk to each other, the better. If we didn’t have something that so neatly managed the payroll and invoicing, it’s safe to say we would spend hours and hours trying to do that manually.”