How the founders of Cheeky Poke Bar are pulling together
For two young brothers-in-law, the journey through the coronavirus pandemic is just the latest they’ve pulled through.
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This isn’t the first time Sam Demetriou and Greg Kalligeros have faced the harsh reality of changing times.
The Great Lockdown came at an unfortunate time for the brothers-in-law, who had been planning for 2020 to be the year of expansion for their Cheeky Poke franchise.
“We had the intention to grow,” Demetriou, 29, says of their plans to open new restaurants at Westfield Garden City and in the CBD.
“At the end of February, we were hitting records, we were at the highest trade,” he says, before revealing that trade then halved in March as lockdowns took hold.
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Kalligeros, 33, and Demetriou's chain serves poke, a native Hawaiian cuisine traditionally comprised of raw seafood with rice and furnished with fresh vegetables, but the pair have added beef, chicken and other meats to their offerings.
Demetriou founded the poke chain in December 2017 after a trip to Hawaii, when he discovered the cuisine and was inspired to bring the increasingly trendy dish back down under.
“We were originally going to do something quite small and takeaway-style concept,” Demetriou says.
But a “bigger, better concept” was waiting in the wings when he established the first restaurant at Newstead’s Haven precinct, neighbouring Betty’s Burgers and Salt Meats Cheese.
“Because it’s such a high quality food – sashimi – it warrants people sitting down and really enjoying the atmosphere, sitting down and taking the food in,” Demetriou said.
Kalligeros, who moved into the family after marrying Demetriou’s sister, joined the business full-time in March last year.
Despite the best laid plans for expansion, the pair were caught on the hop by the coronavirus pandemic, which put the in-house dining experience of poke bowl in serious jeopardy.
While keeping their existing 35 employees on board, Cheeky Poke’s new outlets in the CBD and at Westfield Garden City won’t open this year, while plans to turn their pop-up West End store into a fully fledged restaurant have also been stalled.
Instead, the commercial kitchen in Greenslopes that had already opened to service the new venues was rapidly retooled into a facility to pump out takeaway dishes and deconstructed meal packs, serving as a lifeline when their dine-in locations were shuttered by lockdowns.
“We’ve got this huge production kitchen, but we have this one little window we can serve customers from.”
“It’s essentially set up for delivery – UberEats, Deliveroo and our app.”
Despite the crisis putting the two young men’s expansion plans on ice, both Kalligeros and Demetriou say it wasn’t the first time either had faced catastrophe.
“I’ve been through this kind of experience before with the floods,” Kalligeros says, referring to when his family’s South Bank restaurant Kapsali was inundated in 2011.
“Back then, (the government) didn’t really do much, even when we did cry out for assistance.”
After that, the pair came to work together under Demetriou’s father Michael, who operated the longstanding restaurant Fresh N Wild at Portside Hamilton until its sudden closure in 2019.
“Sometimes it’s just better to walk away then try and hold onto something for sentimental value,” Demetriou was quoted as saying at the time.
Now the pair are just beginning to re-emerge from their latest challenge, one they say has taught them even more about how to expand their business.
“Having Sam around this time … definitely made it a lot easier to survive,” Kalligeros says.
“The teamwork between Sam and I, and the rest of our Cheeky team, has got us through this pandemic.”
“Experiencing COVID is a great experience,” Demetriou says. “If you can get through it, it really makes you feel like you can get through anything.”
“Its cemented the fact that we can scale up or scale down. It gave us a second to pause and really assess our business.”
Both remain resolute that weathering the coronavirus pandemic, like the floods and the collapse of Fresh N Wild, has taught valuable lessons and demonstrated the strength of their partnership.
“Especially during COVID, we’ve come up with different ideas to change our business and evolve with the current situation. Once we created the idea, it was up to Sam to model it on our website and get it to the customers, and up to me to work out costings and how to produce it and how to package it,” Kalligeros says.
“We’ll talk about ideas and it’s up to both of us executing it.”
For the first year of their business partnership, Demetriou admits they did butt heads a bit.
“We’ve got roles, and I think for any partnership to work it's really important to split those roles up and trust each other to do those jobs,” he says.
At the centre of that remains Demetriou’s father, who remains on hand to pass on wisdom to his sons.
“(He) is that middle guy that has so much experience, so much knowledge, so much advice,” Demetriou says. “He’s almost like our adviser.”