How Bistro by Station Road reflects consumer habits
Station Road’s two-month pop-up, Bistro, is the restaurant’s effort to “reflect the current [economic] times that we’re in” while keeping the brand’s quality produce ethos alive.
When we ask Mathieu Smeysters what the first eight months of Station Road have been like, he replies: “it’s been good, but rocky, and I think that reflects the current climate”.
“It’s not an easy time for hospitality,” he says as co-owner and general manager of Station Road. “I know the government has been very reluctant to call it a recession, and I think we’re as close to what a recession is without naming it.
“It’s been very tricky for everyday Australians to pay their bills and pay their mortgage, and the first thing they’re going to save money on is dining and wine.
“I think that the retail industry, and the hospitality industry is going to be the first one that feels an impact of someone not having $100 to spend on dining a week but having $20 instead.
“In that respect, I think it could not have been a worse time for us to open a restaurant, but it’s not something you can control beforehand, and you have to roll with the punches and try to make the best out of it.”
Mathieu says “the biggest issue at the moment” is the lack of foot traffic in the area, aside from those venturing to Adelaide Oval.
“No one really roams this area the way they do when they’re on Peel Street or if they’re on Vardon Avenue,” he says.
“I think our offering, yes, justifies the destination restaurant, but when the economy is not doing very well and people don’t have as much cash, they can put you on their list of restaurants they want to go to, but you’ll stay there for a long period of time before they actually go and spend any money in your restaurant, no matter how premium or how amazing your offering is.
“Especially if you can’t depend on any foot traffic and people walking past your venue and saying ‘oh, okay, no problems. I’ll go in there for a drink’.
“I think at the moment, less than three per cent of our turnover is walk-ins, and I think that’s not because we’re not inviting or accommodating of people that don’t have a booking. I think it’s because there’s no one in this area that can come into the restaurant.
You might like
“I think from an offering perspective, if this restaurant had been in the CBD of Melbourne or Sydney, or even in the CBD here, on a very different street, things would have been very different for us.”
He also says that when the Festival Plaza Tower 2 is open, he knows the area will “become more of a precinct”.
“Getting healthy competition enables us to be successful,” he says.
Mathieu says he thinks Station Road may have “opened with an offering which was perhaps a little too premium for such a juvenile precinct”, considering the “feedback from both critics and customers has been incredible”.
In doing so, the team is “adjusting [the Station Road offering] a little bit to reflect the current times that we’re in”.
“I think there’s a lot of people that think that we’re a destination restaurant only worthy of a special occasion, that you should wait until you’re celebrating your anniversary before you go to Station Road,” he says.
“That’s a label that we very much want to get rid of because once you’re defined as a restaurant for a special occasion, they’ll come to you once a year.
“We created an offering, a wine list and a restaurant of a certain size to be able to accommodate people that just want to come in for a drink, or a snack, or a casual meal on a Thursday night – it doesn’t have to be a special occasion.
“Yes, we love looking after people, and we do so very well – [the people] that come here because they want to celebrate something special. We look after them above and beyond, but we’d be happy to welcome anyone.
“That’s been part of our learnings over the first couple of months, and it’s brought us to realising that a lot of Australians still struggle as well financially.
“And I’m one of them, in a sense. I’ve got a mortgage. I’ve seen the increase in interest rates has definitely impacted our disposable cash significantly, and I consider myself middle class, but if we’re struggling to pay the bills, I can only imagine what every other Australian is going through.”
With this in mind, Station Road has recently launched Bistro by Station Road which is a temporary, accessible food offering for the months of July and August.
“We don’t want people to not be able to come here because you can’t afford it. Our main desire is to provide people with an amazing time, amazing experience, and for them to be able to do so without having to spend $500,” Mathieu says.
Subscribe for updates
The idea is that “you don’t have to break the bank to go to Bistro”.
“It’s not a move that we did out of desperation, it’s a move that we did out of community mindset – that was really the intent for us,” he says.
“I was looking at it again from my own perspective, if I’m going to go and see a show at the Festival Theatre…how much am I willing to spend on a meal before that? If this is just a thing I’m doing on a Wednesday, and I still have the weekend coming up and I have engagements and social gatherings I have to go to, or friends that I’m catching up with.
“It’s going to cost you some money, so you have to budget all of that in and that’s why we came up with an offering which we believe is still premium, and it’s still part of our mindset of having an amazing offering.
“We’re not moving away from the quality that we’ve put together. Station Road and Bistro are still very much about amazing food and amazing produce.
“Only, we’re trying to approach it from a slightly more affordable perspective, cutting down on margins sometimes to actually reflect the difficult times that we’re in and build a community around this restaurant.
“That was the idea – get people in through the doors so that when times are better and the restaurant can continue on flourishing, these people will come back and bring their friends and at that point in time, spend more money because they’re able to do so.”
While Station Road emulates that “old style of [a la carte] dining” with traditional entree, main dessert and snacks, Bistro has gone in “the entire other direction” as “everything is designed to be shared”.
“It’s broken down from small to medium-sized to large and desserts and the intent is really to have people be able to pick around and taste everything and order a larger quantity of small little dishes, which are at a lower price point, so that you can taste many different things,” he says.
The food is “inspired by the streets of Europe” but even more so, “it’s inspired by South Australian’s love of good produce and good food”.
“We didn’t want to lock ourselves into one particular cuisine…it’s a bit of an amalgamation of both French, Australian, some Asian influences in there as well,” he says.
The menu will change depending on where the Station Road team can find the best produce, but what’s currently on the snack menu includes oysters, Gougères, yellowfin tuna tostadas and more.
The main items include sirloin, roasted pork rack with apple mustard on the side, a grilled spatchcock with celeriac and desserts like Creme Brulee and chocolate mousse.
Station Road is located at Festival Tower, Station Road, Adelaide and is open on Wednesday from 6pm until late, then Thursday to Saturday from 12pm until late, then Sunday from 12pm until 6pm.
Bistro by Station Road is only available throughout July and August.
Connect with the business on Instagram for more.
