The real reason celebrity chef restaurants fail in Australia

JAMIE Oliver is another in a long line of celebrity chefs who have failed to crack the Australian restaurant market by being unable to woo an increasingly sophisticated dining public.

HE’S written cookbooks that are sold in their millions around the globe, has more than 6 million followers on Instagram, who’s the face and namesake of an empire that encompasses products from saucepans and spoons to plates and TV production.

But Jamie Oliver is just another in the long line of celebrity chefs who have failed to crack the Australian restaurant market, with his Jamie’s Italian restaurant chain collapsing last month.

Gordon Ramsay was another British chef who tried his hand at a restaurant Down Under, but Melbourne’s dining public quickly told the Hell’s Kitchen chef what they thought of his food. Ramsay’s Maze restaurant at Crown was put into liquidation in 2011, little more than a year after opening.

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Big-name chefs lending their “brand” to multiple sites in multiple countries isn’t new, but those big name, big ticket restaurants are usually found in big ticket cities — New York, London, Hong Kong.

Jamie Oliver, pictured at Jamie’s Italian (in Sydney), which collapsed in Australia last month.

What is it about Australia that leads these global chefs to think they can woo our increasingly sophisticated dining public?

Founder of Eldred Hospitality Tony Eldred has 30 years’ experience consulting to the industry and said many global chefs simply licenced their name to be used on a restaurant, and the international backers of these groups failed to understand the reality of the local market.

“Overseas organisations underestimate our labour costs, so the business model overseas doesn’t make sense here. Restaurants might make lots of money overseas, but not here,” he said.

That hasn’t stopped property developers keen for a marquee tenant and other backers lining up to invest in restaurants, especially those that come with a celebrity chef’s name attached.

“Investors think a restaurant is a road to gold, local celebrity chefs become legends in their own minds, so they expand to three, four, five restaurants. But then things come down like a house of cards.”

Eldred said the problem for many of these restaurants was that the chefs, through their profile, get “phenomenally good offers” thrown at them that can include rent-free periods and free-fit outs. This can lead to expansion that’s unsustainable.

“They expand beyond their management capabilities. The reason chefs become high profile is because of their culinary skills. They’re put at the top of a large organisation but don’t have the management skills. They are two very different skill sets,” he said. “Unless they have the skills, team and systems in place it all falls down. Most think they can do it, but then absent themselves from the business.”

Manu Fidel (left) tried to open a restaurant in Melbourne but spectacularly failed.

Sydney-based My Kitchen Rules judge Manu Fidel tried to open in Melbourne, but his attempt at a restaurant here, Le Grande Cirque, was a spectacular failure, closing just four months after opening.

Diners expecting to see the celebrity chef cooking were left disappointed when his television commitments and commuting from his home in Sydney meant he was often out of the kitchen here.

As a presenter on Postcards and host of three seasons of Spice Journey, chef Shane Delia is no stranger to both the small screen or receiving offers to expand his restaurant business.

“We get approached every week. The hardest thing for me is to say no. You get caught up in this expectation of success being the number of restaurants you have,” he said.

“When I started cooking, the goal was to own your own restaurant, if you could do that, that was the pinnacle. It wasn’t to own a multitude of restaurants. Now it seems you aren’t a restaurateur unless you own seven brands.”

Diners, however, want more than just to eat at a “name” restaurant, seeking authentic experiences when eating out. Delia’s CBD restaurant Maha celebrated its 10th anniversary in January, and is where the chef still cooks three nights a week.

“The dining public in Melbourne, especially, want more than a brand. Or they want a brand that’s legitimate. They want a face, a name behind the brand and want to know that person is actually involved in the restaurant,” Delia said.

According to Eldred there are a couple of overseas chefs who get the recipe right. Rick Stein, who has a restaurant in Mollymook in NSW, and Heston Blumenthal.

“Heston seems to be able to spread himself, open restaurants and maintain standards,” Eldred said.

Ashley Palmer-Watts and Heston Blumenfeld. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis

That’s due mainly to Blumenthal’s right hand man, Ashley Palmer-Watts, who has worked alongside the bespectacled chef for more than two decades, first at The Fat Duck, then as chef director creating Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in London and then setting up Dinner here in Melbourne.

Palmer-Watts said the key to their success — Dinner was crowned the No.1 restaurant in Victoria in the 2016 delicious.100 — was down to training staff in the ethos, culture and values of Heston and the group, with many of the key staff in Melbourne having trained in the London restaurant.

Palmer-Watts, who will open the third Dinner by Heston Blumenthal restaurant in Dubai in 2019, is in Melbourne every six weeks to oversee and train the team, to maintain the standards here that are set from the two-Michelin-star original.

Palmer-Watts said he hated the term “celebrity chef”.

“Heston is such a massive name, the restaurant will always be in the shadow of such a megastar. But I think ‘celebrity chef’ devalues what he’s done. It devalues what the restaurant is,” he said.

“When I hear celebrity restaurant, I think of a place with a bloke’s name on the door, no one cares about it, it’s just set up to make as much money as they can. That’s opposite from my mentality for this restaurant.”