Review Wholefood Merchants Cafe - Ferntree Gully

Completely unexpected find! After a brief walk through this looks like a great place to find organic and healthy food options, as well as a bit of extra stuff. I did notice some things looked a bit on the pricey side, but that is pretty normal for this type of organic wholefoods shop. I really wish we could get this quality of healthy organic food without paying the extra premium! I'll be back. :)

First time at the wholefood Merchant, wow absolutely incredible! If anyone has been to Good Food Emporium this is like that but 10 times better, has a more original natural feeling.The vibes are amazing, and such a great range of products. Mark greeted us at the door, so lovely and awesome energy. This is my new number one shop. Can’t wait to go back.

Hands down the best health food store in Australia. Nobody has this sort of variety. 8 types of Maple Syrup exceptional premium options to suit all dietaries. All premium, all the time. ❤️

Love going here. Great range, great staff, welcoming atmosphere. To all the scaredy cats whinging about masks: they don’t work! Look it up, it’s just a pathetic theatre you’re complicit in.

This place is insanely good! The grocery section has every gluten free, fodmap friendly and vegan option you can think of, from pantry to freezer goods and fresh produce. The cafe is on the same level, plant based but flavourful and delicious! You can't go past their signature bowls. Highly recommend!!

To start off i went to have a coffee. I stood there for ages with 3 or 4 people completely ignoring my existence. When asked where to order I got a “it’s table service” with a rude facial expression. Thankfully the girl that took us to our table was absolutely wonderful, very friendly and helpful. Coffee was good. Ordered a pie and a soup. Both nice. Very unusual menu but was a good experience and the food was tasty! The groceries are a good variety for unusual and organic vegan style products. The staff at the cashier were very similar to the coffee people, too busy in their own conversation to acknowledge the customer properly, only when to say the price. All in all though, the shop has good produce so I’ll be coming back for that but I won’t be expecting anything special from the staff.

Absolutely love this place. Came originally to get dairy free chocolate for a friend and was impressed with some of their products. They have an amazing Cafe inside that honestly has the best chai latte I have ever had. I've eaten a few of their vegan food options just to see what it's like and the VEEF burger was incredible, couldn't even tell it was vegan. Will be back for sure and will bring some friends. Highly recommended.

The business and staff not only sell healthy food, they live healthy; deciding not to follow unhealthy mandates. Bravo. All the 1-star haters should be ignored. My recommendation to them is- stay home in bed covered in bubble wrap with the tv on and you should be safe!

This is hands down the best 'health store' in Melbourne - probably Australia. Not only does it have a huge range of organic fruit, veggies, meat, dairy - pretty much all foods and drinks you can think of - including wine - it also has extensive sections for supplements, beauty & skin care, hair care, household cleaning, cookware, clothing, books etc etc. Plus a cafe. It's totally amazing. before Wholefood Merchants opened I had to go to 3 different stores in different suburbs just to find all the items I wanted. Now they have everything conveniently under the one roof. Plus the store is more like a warehouse - being that it is so spacious. And the staff are just wonderful from Simon in fruit and veg, to Jodie who is everywhere and Jane the manager - they are just lovely. I can't recommend it highly enough. Go check it out when you can. I'm sure you will love it too.

A brilliant presentation by Dr Margie Smith (Smart DNA) and Sue Barron delivering a vital health message and life changing pathways. Thanks so much. The venue is the best Wholefood shop and cafe with beautiful people attending to your needs and always welcoming you with that personal touch.

In over 40mins of sitting and waiting for my Turkish BLT and chips, my partner was able to order and finish her lasagne, a couple who arrived 15-20 mins after us was able to order and eat a salad and a BLT and chips, I was told after 35 mins that my sandwich was only 5mins away, 10mins later I could see what looked like it had the potential to be my food sitting under the heat lamp but despite 3 staff busily attending to water refills and menu distribution, it was left untouched. On every other occasion I’ve been more than happy to eat and bring friends and family here to try delicious vegan food but today was a disappointment that could have easily be avoided, will definitely be reconsidering my visits here in the future. (The cautious refund offered for the lasagne was appreciated however)

Wholefoods Merchants is a fabulous place to get all your health foods under one roof, great staff and a good cafe. Just what we needed in the southeast.

Excellent place to visit. Its a supermarket with all those wonderful foods you dont find in a regular supermarket. It has a nice cafe in side. I recommend the Potato soup and the raspberry smoothie. Make a day trip, visit this store and the Vintage market next door. Its massive and needs lots of time to explore :)

Amazing shop! It's about time that we have a health food shop for healthy living and change of lifestyle for the people who chose to be.

The cafe was amazing, had the vegan bacon and scrambled tofu turkish roll, delish! Great selection of vegan foods, reasonably priced on most items. Will definitely be back!

I love this place too much. So much variety of health foods & environmental products. Highly recommend

Love this place, such great variety in delicious products and reasonable prices. The cafe is great too, perfect for my lunch take outs as there's not much vegan/vegetarian options around. The quinoa fritters with the salads are amazing and again, very reasonably priced.

Favorite place to shop, dawdle, wonder, eat and drink yummy almond milk mocha exactly to my liking. Love this place!

I can never go wrong in this place, delish food. Lovely staff and all the vegan options ��

A lovely place to meet to catch up with friends and indulge in seriously good culinary delights. Pleasant helpful staff. Those seasoned chips were the best I have ever tasted! I'll be back!

Love everything about this place. Great staff, delicious cafe food n drinks, fabulous shop �

I tried 2 of the raw slices in the cafe today and I wasn't very impressed. They were pretty tasteless and very sickly. We couldn't finish them which is disappointing when they are $7.50 each. I mentioned this to the girl at the counter and she said she agrees with me and that many customers have said the same. The old ones you used to sell were much better. I'm not sure why you are selling slices that many people, including your staff, don't like. It's a shame as the rest of the food you serve is amazing.

Cafe staff were attentive and professional and the food was fresh and tasty. Almond latte coffee was one of the best I've had and hot!

Top place. If you are on a gf or vegan diet. Go there and allow plenty of time looking thru merchandise and enjoying the beautiful food.

This used to be a fantastic cafe but the food has drastically gone downhill over the last year or so, and is VERY AVERAGE now. New chef? The staff are lovely but food is disappointing. <br/>Not worth it.

Great little cafe attached to the amazing Whole Food Merchants store.<br/><br/>Not a great deal of available seating, but the staff are friendly and attentive and the decor is fantastic.<br/><br/>A great variety of menu items including some delicious vegan friendly options. Opted for the vegan eggs bene and the kentucky fried burger.<br/><br/>The burger consisted of a marinated piece of cauliflower, which was a bit different but was surprisingly quite delicious. The rest of the flavours of the burger weren’t overly impressive though. Not a lot of flavour.<br/><br/>The texture of the vegan eggs was a little sloppy and the meal itself lack any sort of flavour.<br/><br/>Overall quite nice, but not a cafe I would travel out of my way for

On this occasion, I chose the 'B.L.T. - vegan dijonnaise, tomato, petite lettuce, and vegan bacon, in a toasted, gluten-free Turkish roll, and chips ($14.50)'. Lovely, fresh ingredients in this sandwich made it a winner!

Went for Sunday breakfast at around 9.45. Not busy early on but almost full by 11am. Most things on the menu are/can be made vegan - a bonus is the "heavier" lunch-style options are available in the morning too. I had the seared vegan haloumi and a chai latte. The haloumi and toast were nice, the salad portion was much more shallot than cucumber, and there was an eggplant puree that looked a bit unappealing (tasted OK, bit boring, there are more interesting things to do with eggplant). A filling meal though. My sister had the quinoa fritters, which she enjoyed, and the spiced hot chocolate, which she did not (basically the chocolate taste was totally masked by the turmeric - also, cultural appropriation much??). Service was good (water glasses weren't totally clean though...) In short, a bit overpriced, but I would go back.

A bustling place which caters very well to food intolerances with lots of options for healthy and naughty versions of favourites. Highly recommended!

Busy and they can’t cope. Waited a long time for a table and thought oh well, it’s popular. Once sat down, started to realise that tables were waiting ages for food. We waited half an hour and a table that had been sat for an hour had just been sent food!<br/>Paid for our drinks and left.<br/>The coffee was nice and the abundance of waitresses were attentive, but the kitchen could not cope. While waiting for our table to be available, I couldn’t believe how many people were sat around chatting after what looked like they had already finished their meals - but no, it was because all the tables were waiting for the food to actually turn up. <br/>Shame - as would like to have tried the food, but didn’t have an hour to await for food to arrive!

this is a super cute small but very busy cafe on the side of a really wonderful organic wholefoods store, perfect place for a shopping break. the staff are lovely and extremely knowledgeable about their products, attentive and happy to help without being overbearing and intrusive.<br/>both the "coffee" orders of a soy latte and almond milk hot chocolate were hot and presented nicely. perfectly flavoured with the right delicious kick if caffeine and sweetness. also shared the sweet potato fries which was a value for money, large serve of crunchy salted chippies without being either too dry or oily.<br/>it was a lovely experience, keen to come back and try the sweet treats.

As it is very hard to find good filling meals, it was an awesome place to try. It was actually quiet awesome walking into a foods store to have a cafe. As I had the berry porridge, I can say for certain berries are not nice warm. Other than that the porridge itself was wicked! Those sweet potato chips are bloody ace tho!

Have only tried the caramel crunch slice so far but it was amazing! The girl who served us was also really helpful when I was trying to decide on what to get. Definitely want to come back and try other things on the menu.

Was recommended to try this place & I’m not sure it was worth the drive out there. <br/>The sweet potato chips were the only good thing and I’m guessing that’s because you get them in from a supplier... the beetroot carrot quinoa super salad was so tasteless, so dry, no dressing. The quinoa fritter was just ok. Table service is not great, no water given till half way through our meals, not enough cutlery. Don’t think I’ll be going back

This cafe is situated inside this wonderful health food store. The cafe offers a range of vegetarian and vegan options. I’ve had both the vegetable soup and the smashed avocado! The smashed avocado has a flavour combination it was amazing. Thw cafe also offers a range of raw vegan treats including coco whip which is like soft serve for those that can’t eat dairy! Wow! The bliss balls are also delicious! The cafe is slightly small with getting a table being difficult at times however I Highly recommend for those that enjoy vegetarian/vegan foods!

I rather liked the cafe there however the last two times I've been the barista burned the milk. The taste was awful and it was way too hot. It was the same barista both times so perhaps they need to train their staff!

Good food and vegan/vego. The store itself is more worth it. <br/><br/>Tumeric latte is pretty quality and on tap kombucha is brilliant. <br/>Service is okay.

Just discovered this gem today, is the closest thing I have seen to whole foods in the USA. The space is a whole foods wonderland with anything you could imagine<br/><br/>They have a cute cafe within the building that serves awesome whole food options. Plenty of Vegan options which rocks my socks. <br/><br/>Check it out for sure I'll be back!

I eat here twice a week. The salad bowl is my favourite and I think the coffee is good. I can't leave without spending up big in the fresh produce section either. I wish I could have every meal here or st least live next door. Extremely friendly wait staff.

As much as I love to support new veg places especially in the hills, it was very disappointing. The venue itself is amazing as part of an organic market. It uses organic produce and I was very excited to try it as the food looked quite delicious. <br/><br/>Sadly it had hardly any flavour. Feels like that generic veggie whole food cafe with bland salads and 'healthy' food. Not enough herbs, spices, garlic, olive oil, salt or chilli. Vegetarian should never mean bland, no wonder some meat eaters are uninspired to try veggie food!! I've been veg my whole life and know that veg food should be TASTY!!!<br/><br/>The coffees have always been awesome. And that atmosphere and shopping store as well.<br/><br/>It has all the makings for a great cafe but the final execution of the food really lets it down. Hopefully they can improve in the future as I would love to support a great local veggie place.

Looked hopefull but didnt deliver. Coffee was made well but did'nt taste so great I couldnt even finish it! Acai bowl was very basic and quite small. This cafe has so much potential

Dinned here at the opening about a year ago and then about 4 months later and food was great with a comprehensive a la carte style menu that catered for all dietary concerns. I was excited to get back there last week with some friends until we sat down and saw the food offering now. Disappointed doesn't really cover it,  what happened guys? the cafe isn't a shadow of what it once was. Dont waste your time or money.......very, very sad............ This cafe had soooo much potential with an organic grocer and all the quality ingredients at arms length away. Coffee was ok but seems to be run by moody teenagers without any idea on service standards.<br/>Very disappointed..... what happened??

Beautiful atmosphere, lovely staff and amazing food! My friends and I bought some vegan cakes to share, a panini and a hot chocolate, heaps of variety and heaps of choice for us! Not to mention the amazing range of food in the store next to it. I will be back!

What happened??! The menu posted above lists a good variety of breakfast items, but when we got there today there was only berries, muesli and avocado on toast! There were some yummy looking salads and wraps, but it was 9am! The breakfast menu seems to have disappeared. So disappointing. <br/>The avocado on toast was quite yummy, but we were so disappointed that we won't return to eat there.

I was really looking forward to visiting here.  Very disappointed - not a good advertisement for healthy eating!  Bland, bland, bland!  The service was appalling and the waitress had no idea what she was doing.  Only 4 other people in the cafe but had to call her over to order, then ask where our food was a half hour later!  It was even a chore to pay our bill (which I thought was a bit excessive for our brunch).   The coffee was undrinkable, could not begin to describe it.  This place has been open for a while so it should be running smoothly by now.  I like to give places 2 tries, but not sure if I would give this a second chance.

Great concept! A cafe where you shop (the store itself is amazing!) but poor execution on the food. Bland and uninspiring. The juices however were lovely, fresh, tasty and delightful but the coffee was woeful. I was frankly shocked when it was put in front of me, it was lukewarm, watery and tasted horrid. I'd be embarrassed to place it on a customers table. It's sad as I love to support this sort of thing in the community. I'll give it another chance but they desperately need barista training.

Ate in the cafe once with my husband. We had to wait for a table and the staff did appear quite unorganised. The floor space of the restaurant area is big, but they have a lot of empty space. Could fit a few more tables or bar stools around, so that people don't need to wait to sit. I got the vegetarian big breakfast which was still tasty given that I'm not vegetarian. I enjoyed the homemade potato rosti, vegetarian sausage and the produce and bread used were good quality. The size was good too. Coffee was OK, but a bit weak. Need proper latte glasses as you burn your hands on it. Nice to see you can get an assortment of milks- organic, soy, almond etc with your coffee. Hubby who is a keen meat eater (and bit fussy) struggled with the menu and just got some hot chips. Cake selection looks nice. Prices are a bit steep but the produce is good quality and tailors to dietary needs. Love shopping here too, come here regularly and love exploring as it is so huge and changing array of products. Some items are expensive, but many items are organic and are cheaper than the major supermarkets. Love the atmosphere here too.

Delicious healthy food! Caters for intolerances and lifestyle choices. Smoothies are amazing! Try the avo smash or the tofu scramble! Generous portions. Love this place!

Absolutely loved it at this place! The food was fresh, vibrant and went down a treat. The wait staff were able to accommodate my food allergies as well. Highly recommended!

I adore the concept of this place: a health food store with a healthy, vego/vegan cafe which serves great food and has such a friendly atmosphere. The avo smash was without a doubt the best I've had. It's so refreshing to have a place like this out in the suburbs, definitely will be going back.

The cafe has really good coffee, wonderful food (especially for vegans!) and a lovely atmosphere. Please be warned - there are A LOT of amazing products to purchase. Your wallet may leave lighter ;)