Customer support needed to revive flood-struck eateries

Flood-ravaged hospitality owners are asking for the community to dine with them or buy a gift voucher to show their support, after losing tens of thousands of dollars each from the wild weather event.

SUPPORT your local – that is the message from flood-ravaged restaurant and cafe owners across South East Queensland after unrelenting rains destroyed businesses and caused customers to dry up.

From Gympie to Currumbin, hospitality operators have lost tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in produce and stock, while others have lost everything from a lack of insurance.

A feast of restaurants along South Brisbane’s Fish Lane received water damage. Picture: Peter Wallis

They’re now begging for the public’s help so they can rebuild, with some starting crowd-funding campaigns, while others are simply asking diners to book a table or buy a gift voucher for a future visit.

Yianni Passaris from Thai restaurant Ping Pong and breakfast favourite Yolk in Newstead’s Gasworks complex estimates he’s lost about $20,000 in produce alone after his cold storage rooms were flooded.

With the centre currently closed, he is unsure when he will be able to open and is losing money every day the business is ­unable to operate.

While he has been encouraging customers to support his West End cafe Morning After, he said after two years of constant forced lockdowns with Covid, which each cost tens of thousands of dollars, a natural disaster was devastating.

“You’re trying to get back up on your feet and then you just keep getting punched back down to the ground,” he said.

“From staffing issues to Covid to floods, it just doesn’t stop.”

Keith Nunnsof Wilston’s Willow & Spoon (inset, bottom) is also feeling battered by the floods, which swept through his northside cafe, destroying a new deck, bar, toilets, and kids area, while an Energex power outage caused them to lose about $10,000 in produce and stock.

With the business not insured for flooding and turning over only about 1 per cent profit, he said he would be forced into more debt to try to rebuild.

“I’ve put so much money into this place and I love it, it’s my second home, so you just keep going,” he said, waiting to hear from Energex as to when the power will ­return so he can begin the clean-up phase. “There are a lot of people relying on us as well. We’ve got 15 staff there, so I have to keep her going.”

Just down the road, gourmet doughnut wholesaler Doughluxe in Newmarket was also wiped out by floodwaters, with owner Jacqueline Madden estimating she’s lost at least $20,000 in stock, income and staff wages. She is still waiting to hear if any of her equipment is salvageable.

Across town, South Bank Parklands and its eateries were all closed because of the flooding. Nearby popular food precinct Fish Lane was completely flooded with venues including Southside, Bar Brutus and Julius Pizzeria all taking in water. The venues spent Tuesday cleaning up and hope to be reopen in the next few days.

Brisbane CBD’s Eagle Street Pier bore even more of the brunt of the surging Brisbane River, with Michael Tassis’s Greek eatery Opa and Italian restaurant Massimo among the worst-affected.

Michael Tassis at his restaurant Opa in Brisbane's CBD over the weekend when waters were peaking.

Both were flooded with water around waist-deep, with no indication as to when they’ll reopen. Dozens more hospitality venues have been affected across the state, with all those suffering urging the community to get behind them.

“I encourage you as a community to go and support those businesses who are still open and operating in every way you can,” Mr Tassis (inset, top) said.

For the flood-affected businesses, unable to currently operate such as Willow and Spoon, Mr Nunns asked the public to leave a positive online review, and tell their friends about the venue so people could visit once it was back operational.

“Simply telling people we’re there, that’s really powerful for us,” he said.

Ms Madden said those wanting to help flood-destroyed businesses get back on their feet could buy gift vouchers.

“We supply so many cafes that have been affected and while there is a lot of support between us as an industry, it’s those extra things that the public do that help so much,” she said.