67
Australia is thehardest place in
the world to run a restaurant: Tom Pash, the
American chief executive of Australia’s newest
dining group, calls it as he sees it. Pash has
big plans, and doesn’t shy from facing the
facts about the country’s business life with
an amiable smile and blunt pragmatism.
Sitting next to him in the Rockpool
Dining Group’s Sydney headquarters in
The Rocks, Neil Perry – arguably Australia’s
most celebrated culinary name – concurs.
High costs including labour and rent, the
fickle discretionary dollar and equally
unpredictable local economic conditions: the
rollcall of formidable trading circumstances
is long, says Perry, and makes for slim profit
margins in the fine-dining sector.
And any edge you may earn can
disappear in a second. Perry snaps his
fingers to underscore the point. He has just
announced the closure of his fine-dining
Sydney restaurant, Eleven Bridge, the last
incarnation of what had been Rockpool.
Opened in 1989, it was his flagship, and
the restaurant that made his name.
Right now is a pivotal moment in the
restaurant trade in Australia, and Perry
and Pash are at the centre of the action.
In November last year, Perry signed a deal
described as one of the biggest in Australian
hospitality, featuring the acquisition of his
restaurant businesses by the Urban Purveyor
Group, a restaurant conglomerate backed
by Quadrant Private Equity, for a reported
$65 million. (Eleven Bridge, Perry’s work
with Qantas, and his newer consultancy with
David Jones were outside the deal.)
It saw the birth of Rockpool Dining
Group: 15 brands, 50 venues, 3000 staff
and $350 million in turnover uniting key
names inPerry’s portfolio – Rockpool Bar
& Grill, Spice Temple, Rosetta and Burger
Project – with Urban Purveyor Group’s
roster of brands, which includes Saké
Restaurant & Bar, The Cut Bar & Grill,
and The Bavarian, along with another
more recent acquisition, Fratelli Fresh.Age of empire
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW FINLAYSON
The newly formed Rockpool Dining Group is a game-changer in Australian restaurants.
But how does it work? Who’s running it? And why?Sharon Verghis gets the inside word.FEATURE
It was a deal touted as a game-changer
for the trade, reflecting changes in the way
we eat and live, and creating an ambitious
new Australian food empire with plans for
global expansion.
It also attracted its fair share of
controversy. Perry himself acknowledges
that it raised some eyebrows in the trade
and the Australian media, and prompted
discussion of whether he’s selling out the
venerable Rockpool brand and selling his
soul to corporate masters.
“Tom is CEO of Rockpool Dining Group,
and I’m head of brands and culinary,”
he says. “We’re working on the business
together. That’s how it is and that’s how
people are going to see it. Nobody is going
to believe the Rockpool Dining Group
unless Neil Perry is at the centre of it.”
He says he’s been fielding queries from
his own staff and customers about the sale.
“Any kind of change freaks people out...
Everybody asks questions and our staffone of the group’s restaurants disappoints,
“you can kick us in the pants – we deserve it.
But don’t run with this line of, ‘oh, private
equity destroyed Neil Perry’.”
Yes, he’ll have to answer to shareholders,
but, he argues, “you can be a large public
company and still do the right thing and
grow sustainably”. While the deal with
Urban Purveyor Group was an acquisition,
Perry has equity in the new entity.
As Perry and Pash sit together to talk
through the minutiae of the deal, it’s the
chef doing most of the talking. Pash, a lean,
ultra-fit, big-business import, is quieter
and more careful with his words. On this
occasion they present a seamless front that
marries Pash’s bullish business projections- a $1 billion IPO is a realistic goal within
the next three years, he believes – with
Perry’s food-driven, people-focused, family
man philosophy.
On paper the two men may seem
mismatched, the passionate food guy and
recognise now that nothing has changed- we’re going to be giving our best as
we always have.”
Pash’s business strategy of speedy
and large-scale expansion has also raised
the spectre of the McDonaldisation of the
Rockpool name, with restaurants on every
street corner in every state. But Pash
certainly shows no inclination for killing
the golden goose. “We don’t want to grow
too fast, or we’re compromising quality.”
Perry stresses there will be limits on the
number of new outposts of top-end brands
like Bar & Grill and Saké, with a strict eye
to quality control and individual excellence
of each brand.
“I want everyone to judge us on our
performance,” he says. If a night out at any
the corporate animal. Perry apprenticed as
a hairdresser and waited tables before he
found his calling as a chef, and was made
a Member of the Order of Australia in 2013
“for significant service to the community as
a benefactor of and fundraiser for charities
and as a chef and restaurateur”. Pash, on
the other hand, is not a household name
in Australia. Born in Ohio into a family of
engineers, he would go on to run billion-
dollar solar technology and semi-conductor
companies. He describes his attention to
detail as “maniacal”.
Trading quips, though, they seem at ease
together. They have more in common than
it may appear. Perry is a businessman, just
as comfortable filleting bottom lines and
talking units and scalability for a Rockpool>“Any kind ofchange freaks people out. Everybody asks
questions and our staff recognise that nothing has
changed – we’ll be giving our best as we always have.”