Restaurants overcome tyranny of distance
Running a successful restaurant in the middle of a city has its challenges, but add the tyranny of distance and making ends meet at the ends of the earth can be downright frustrating.
The problems include finding fresh food, employing staff willing to live in a remote area, call-out fees for technicians when equipment fails, and finding a regular supply of diners.
These are the challenges faced by chefs at the growing number of dining establishments springing up to cater to the penchant of well-travelled food lovers for remote food destinations, according to Restaurant & Catering Australia.
Down dusty tracks and at the end of very long highways, chefs in regional South Australia are battling supply chains, market forces, and even the elements to provide diners with what they have come to expect in urban restaurants – and send them on their way with an experience they will never forget.
Soul Projects director and chef Kirby Shearing, best known for his foraging passion and fine-dining style at establishments in the south-east of South Australia, has nurtured valuable local contacts to overcome his main challenge of fresh supply.
His latest restaurant project, in the Lakes Resort in Mt Gambier, takes just about everything a local Burmese family can grow in their unique market garden out of Kalangadoo, an hour’s drive north of the regional hub.
He builds his menus around these ingredients, ever thankful for the family’s “consistent supply”, which is a rare commodity in rural Australia.
“It’s so frustrating to be operating in an area renowned for produce such as premium potatoes and onions, and not being able to buy them locally,” Shearing (right) told Restaurant & Catering Australia magazine, bemoaning a system that encourages growers to sell in bulk to city markets, instead of looking after local providers.
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Instead, he reluctantly buys well-travelled spuds, and cooks with leeks fresh from the Burmese family’s soil.
In the coastal town of Robe, four hours south of Adelaide, Adam Brooks, the chef and owner of the town’s fine-diner Sails, also shapes his menu according to local produce, but says it wouldn’t work without the restaurant’s “garnish garden”.
Despite the coastal location, buying local seafood is cost-prohibitive and supply is unreliable, he says.
The small top-ups of all types of food that city restaurants enjoy are too cost-prohibitive to contemplate, so staff must be extremely organised in terms of ordering, and also be inventive with menus to ensure they can deliver quality on the plate.
Again, local markets are used, but these also suffer seasonal supply problems in and out of the remote, yet major regional city.
Staffing in remote regions is another major business headache.
The hunt to fill restaurant positions is “constant” at most restaurants, and chefs describe the staffing situation as a “revolving door”, which gobbles up time and money.
Staff tend to come to the regions to live and then soon decide they don’t want to stay, says one chef.
Most hospitality workers are travellers and backpackers who, by nature, move on regularly.
Local workers don’t stay, either. Anecdotal research indicates that in Australia, hospitality is rarely seen as a long-term career path. Only chefs and restaurateurs tend to put down roots around their country businesses.
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Husband and wife team Nick and Maxine Ikonomopoulos, owner and chef at John’s Pizza Bar and Restaurant in the desert town of Cooper Pedy, barely have time to stop shuffling pots to chat about catering logistics in their South Australian outpost.
Again, menus are based on a changing collection of ingredients according to what’s available.
“If they send the wrong thing and stuff up the order, I’m stuck with it,” says the country chef who has become adept at “substitutions”.
“It’s not like you can send it back. Everything comes once a week, and everything apart from milk, fruit and vegetables, is frozen.”
Maxine is even bound by regional regulations that allow her to buy milk only from Port Augusta, 550km down the road.
With other supplies from making their way up from Adelaide and Port Pirie, there’s no chance of following the low-food-miles trend. And the chef laughs at the concept of growing anything in a kitchen garden in the desert.
Freight costs add a considerable level of angst to the regional chefs’ bottom line. When that bottom line is so tentative, there are minimal dollars for marketing and advertising to drive more customers deeper into the country.
In Mt Gambier, Kirby is thankful for social media, which gives him cost-free promotional opportunities. He is a regular on Facebook and Twitter, and is dedicated to managing his website soulprojects.com.au.
Bill Lindsay, chef/owner of the Murtoa Railway Hotel, in central Victoria, says he is hoping social media sites will also help fill the gap in his marketing budget.
Lindsay has taken his family back to regional Murtoa, where he grew up, after more than two decades in Melbourne and Adelaide.
He and wife Katherine sometimes put together a complex network of temporary management with family support and babysitting so they can make fleeting trips to major cities for industry events where they can engage with equipment suppliers “and hopefully do a good deal”.
“You have to balance the deals with the necessity to buy the best quality, because you can’t risk breakdowns, and call-out costs for repairs,” he says.
However, none of the chefs and restaurateurs interviewed would swap their position and lifestyle, despite the challenges.
“I wouldn’t swap the country lifestyle for my family for quids,” says Lindsay.
“Business is tough, but life is good.”
This article was previously published on The Lead.
