Beneath the wages scandal that ran George Calombaris out of business, Melbourne's restaurants are being squeezed between rising costs and customers who won't pay more to eat great food, writes Melbchief and Gemimacody
Raymond Capaldi remembers a time when Melbourne was, plate for plate, the world’s most vibrant and creative culinary city.
But beneath the public opprobrium and bitter industrial politics of the wage scandal which engulfed Calombaris and the company he part-owned, an industry essential to Melbourne’s cultural identity and the national economy is in deep trouble.For many years, Angie Giannakodakis gave the Press Club its human touch.
The morning after Made was placed into voluntary administration, prominent restaurateur and business owner Chris Lucas called for a fundamental rethink of how the industry operates. Over the same period, prices charged by restaurants have hardly budged. When Calombaris opened his original Hellenic Republic restaurant 12 years ago in Brunswick East, the set menu was $58. When he worked his final shift before this week’s closure of the Hellenic Republic in Brighton, a comparable set menu was priced at $65. The increase is well below the current, anaemic rate of inflation.
“There will certainly be some consolidations in the industry because many of these external forces can’t be changed,’’ he says. “We are not advocating the award rate goes down. We are telling restaurants they need to increase their prices.” The message for diners is clear: it’s been a long, long lunch and now, we need to settle the bill.
A former Made host describes a hard-bitten management culture which, at the time, was typical for the hospitality industry. “George was nothing but lovely to me when I was there but the direct management culture was not as kind,’’ the former host says. “We were blatantly told to clock off at certain times even though we were still expected to work.
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