Spirit House Restaurant & Cooking School – New Business Model

well we thought we would have the cash

to ride this out once it was decided

that all restaurants would be shut down

that changed everything

[Music]

I'm a Clinton variety I'm one of the

directors of the Spirit house restaurant

and cooking school up here at Yan dinner

in Queensland we've got a I guess an

Asian restaurant set around the lake so

it's sort of outdoor courtyards and a

cooking school as well a restaurant like

a house is a quite remote we're on the

Sunshine Coast but we're not in noosa

we're about 30 minutes away from all the

big coastal attractions we're inland for

us we've got to get people to come out

to the restaurant the town that we're

even small so there would not be enough

local population to sustain us we've got

63 employees 41 of them pretty much

permanent part-time we were lucky that

were quite a successful business and

while we thought we would have the cash

to ride this out once it was decided

that all restaurants would be shut down

that changed everything we stood down

our employees but we were paying them

their holiday pay you know and to keep

them while the job seeker job keeper or

God sorted out I was overseas when all

this went down so I had the ship's cook

up 800 curries and the idea was to have

those curries and freeze them I was

seeing all these reports overseas about

empty supermarkets and no toilet paper

so I said to the chef's let's just make

800 curries with everything that we've

got left slips freeze it keep them on

hand so that the staff if they were

caught short needed toilet paper or

something to eat or food or whatever

they could come in and we would have

these meals so it started with pros and

curries I said to the staff won't you

guys buy these meals off us at cost and

you can sell them at retail and you guys

can keep the difference a lot of

restaurants are doing takeaway where

people have got to come into the

restaurant and take away the meal having

one person deliver to 50 or 60 places

there's a lot better than having 50 or

60 people coming to us not only now the

chef's being employed but my floor staff

now can basically create their own

business and make you know some extra

money during these times and they've

jumped all over it and we did all the

art work for them we designed a little

order form I thought you know the staff

can sell the meals it might take a

couple of weeks but they had solved the

800 meals in four hours the intention

was that they would let a box drop in

the street that they're in so they were

just getting maybe five or ten meals and

they would make $8 a meal so they'd pick

up an extra 80 hundred dollars or

whatever but of course you

everyone's connected on Facebook they

went to the group so some of them are

selling a hundred at a time you know so

one girl selling 200 of these a week and

they've created these interesting little

distribution networks and businesses so

our model is we are now still producing

the frozen curries and labeling them

here but we're allowing the staff to be

the distributors whereas most other

restaurants are trying to get the

customers to come to them to do the

pickup it's been a really interesting

model that we're able now to deliver all

over the Sunshine Coast without having

to pay over 30 whatever percent or any

other delivery models and that the owl

our guys our staff can keep it so I'm

gonna actually try to get them to dial

it back because some of them are making

more money selling this than what they

were and they were working for us I

think these are exciting times is what

I'm getting at yeah sure it sucks and

everyone's everyone's feeling it but

there's also opportunities here and

Australians are now starting to get used

to eating not just pizzas as a takeaway

meal you can now get some really

interesting food from interesting

restaurants