Mercy Cafe

Mercy Cafe is a shipping container cafe dropped into Eastern Park, Geelong, and the setup is unusually deliberate about dogs: water bowls and leash posts at the front deck, home made dog biscuits and pup cups on offer, all with dogs staying leashed under the park rules. That is a fuller dog kit than most bricks and mortar cafes manage, and it reflects the location: Eastern Park is a walking destination in its own right, so the cafe is built as a dog walk destination rather than a street corner stop.

The menu is compact and confident: brekkie tacos, bruschetta, the triple cheese toastie and the egg and bacon roll carry the morning, and the container setup gives the whole thing a casual, parkside feel. It runs 7am to 2pm every day, and the small footprint means the front deck is where everyone wants to be, dogs included. Reviews consistently rate it among Geelong's best value breakfast stops, which at a park side table with a tired dog is hard to argue with.

Worth knowing

Eastern Park parking is ample compared with Geelong's cafe strips, with the circuit road putting you within a short walk of the container. The 2pm close is the main constraint, and the deck fills on sunny weekend mornings because the park crowd and the dog crowd are the same crowd. The leash rule comes from park rules rather than cafe policy, so the leash posts are there for a reason: keep the lead on while you eat, and the biscuits do the rest. Bring coins for parking meters if the app is down.

Make a day of it

Eastern Park's open space is the draw, and the coffee here is the anchor. WYM is the other East Geelong dog friendly cafe, Zillah Crawcour Park in Newtown is a good dog park option across the river, and our East Geelong guide plus the Victorian cafe list round out the options.