Popular Melbourne bar and burger joint goes into liquidation owing $500k

Eagle-eyed fans noticed that their favourite burger restaurant had quietly shut down with no explanation. Now it turns out the company owes half a million dollars to creditors.

A popular bar and burger joint in Melbourne’s inner city has had to shut down as post-Covid woes continue to bite the hospitality industry.

On Thursday, The Beer & Burger Bar Pty Ltd, based in Cremorne three kilometres from the city’s CBD, went into liquidation.

Mathew Gollant of insolvency firm CJG Advisory was appointed as the liquidator.

The restaurant owes around half a million dollars to creditors and several staff members are also understood to have lost their jobs.

It had ceased operating since December. Six weeks ago, one customer lamented online “Wtf happened with the best burger of Melbourne???”

The Beer & Burger Bar had a following of 8000 on Instagram and worked with delivery services including UberEats and Mr Yum. It is now listed as permanently closed on Google.

Staff shortages and the cost of living crisis were behind the restaurant’s failure to turn a profit.

The bar and restaurant has been listed as permanently closed.

The restaurant specialised in burgers.

The liquidator, Mr Gollant, told news.com.au that The Beer & Burger Bar owes somewhere in the ballpark of $500,000 to around 10 creditors, including the Australian Taxation Office.

Several staff including one of the company’s directors are also owed some entitlements from work in the last days and weeks of the restaurant operating.

“All staff have been terminated,” Mr Gollant said.

“Debt accumulated during the pandemic.

“They had cash flow issues … It was not a sustainable situation.”

It’s not expected creditors will receive a large dividend, if any.

“There’s not sufficient funds to pay the creditors in full,” Mr Gollant warned.

The Beer & Burger Bar has an Instagram account that is still live although there haven’t been any posts since August last year.

Its very last post on August 14 illustrates the restaurant’s struggles to keep functioning.

“Due to staff shortages we will be closed Sunday 14th Aug,” they posted. “Back Wednesday 17th from 12pm.”

It has been struggling with staffing in the lead up to its collapse.

Fans have lamented the loss of The Beer and Burger Bar.

The Melbourne company isn’t the first to fold under the pressures of rising costs and not enough staff to go around.

In December, a popular Brisbane eatery was also forced to close in recent weeks.

The bakery, called Bella and Tortie, served its products to customers for the last time after being unable to find enough staff to keep the operation running.

The company’s sole owner, Suzi Unwin, often worked more than 12 hours a day, sometimes every day in the week from lack of staff amid skills and labour shortages.

Then in January, two popular Brisbane restaurants located next to each other and run by the same owner shut down over a landlord dispute.

La Quinta Mexican Cafe and Bar and Amante Tapas and Vino, along Oxford St in the busy inner city Brisbane suburb of Bulimba, had to shutter their doors due to an uncertain future because of the new landlord who had taken over their venue.

In August last year, Brisbane developers Cielo Group lodged a development application with the local council which detailed plans to convert 187-193 Oxford St into a three-storey mixed-use building on the shopping strip with new restaurants, shops and a luxury rooftop pool and bar, essentially putting them out of business.

Another Victorian small business also couldn’t weather the storm brought about by the tough economic conditions.

Victorian food delivery company Delivr, that styled itself as a rival to UberEats, fell into liquidation in July last year.

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Originally published as Popular Melbourne bar and burger joint goes into liquidation owing $500k