Thank You, The Deli Nook: The Mackay Café That Helped Us Shout QME 2026 Coffees

Every exhibitor at a mining expo faces the same question about six weeks out: what do we give people? The default answer is merchandise — hats, drink bottles, branded pens by the box. We looked at the numbers on that and decided we'd rather spend it in Mackay. So instead of a pallet of swag, we bought coffee. The Deli Nook, Moss on Wood and Rydges Mackay each agreed to run a tab for us across QME 2026, and anyone who wanted a coffee on SprintSuite could have one. The money stayed in the town that hosts the expo, and the locals and visitors queueing up at 6:30am got something they actually wanted.

The Deli Nook is a locally owned café in Mackay, Queensland — the sort of small, owner-run venue our CBD runs on. It is not a franchise and it is not a chain. During QME week it was full of exactly the people Mackay is built on: workshop supervisors, boilermakers, service managers, hose and hydraulics crews, drilling contractors, OEM reps, office staff from up the street and a fair few site-based locals burning annual leave to walk the expo floor. If you are searching deli nook mackay because someone handed you one of our cards in July, that's the place — and yes, the coffee was the reason we picked it.

Deliberately low-tech. You picked up a physical SprintSuite coffee card from Stand C604 at the Mackay Showgrounds, walked into The Deli Nook (or Moss on Wood, or Rydges), ordered what you wanted, handed over the card, and we settled the tab with the venue afterwards. No email capture. No QR code. No "watch a demo first". That mattered: the moment you attach a form to a free coffee it stops being a gift and starts being a lead magnet, and everyone in a high-vis shirt can smell the difference from thirty metres.

The best conversations we had during QME 2026 did not happen at our stand. They happened in a queue on a Mackay footpath. People who would never stop at a software booth were perfectly happy to talk about rostering, timesheets, pre-starts and invoicing while they waited for a flat white — and because they'd bumped into two other locals they knew in the same queue, the conversation was three-way. Watching two Bowen Basin operators recognise each other outside The Deli Nook was our favourite moment of the whole week. It also confirmed something we already believed: this region still runs on knowing people. Software has to earn its place inside that, not replace it. We wrote more about that in 5 things we learnt from QME 2026.

SprintSuite is a Mackay-region software business. We're a member of Resource Industry Network and the Mackay Region Chamber of Commerce, and the same logic applies to both: the region's mining supply chain is our customer base, and the region's small businesses are our neighbours. So thank you to Patrice, Simon and the team at The Deli Nook for handling three days of unusually heavy mornings without missing a beat, to Moss on Wood and Rydges Mackay for jumping in, and to everyone who walked in with a card, said g'day and stayed for a chat. Buying a week of coffees is a small thing. But it beat 500 branded lanyards, and we'd take that trade every time.

No — the QME 2026 coffee cards have been retired. QME runs on a two-year cycle, so the next Queensland Mining & Engineering Exhibition is in 2028 at the Mackay Showgrounds, and we fully intend to do the coffee thing again. In the meantime, The Deli Nook is open without us — go buy your own. You can see how the week went on our QME 2026 recap page, and there are plenty of other chances to catch us on the 2026 Australian mining events calendar.