Fine dining restaurant goes bust after seven bakeries in business group collapse into liquidation
One of the last pillars of an award-winning Queensland chef’s hospitality empire has gone bust, just a month after seven other sister venues collapsed.
One of the last pillars of an award-winning Queensland chef’s hospitality empire has gone bust, just a month after seven other sister venues collapsed.
Cuisinier Australis Pty Ltd trading as Montrachet has called in administrators.
Montrachet is a well known fine-dining French restaurant in the Brisbane suburb of Bowen Hills.
The appointed administrators, Mark Holland, Jamie Harris and Anthony Connelly of restructuring firm McGrath Nicol, informed news.com.au of their appointment on Friday.
Montrachet continues to trade and administrators encourage interested parties to reach out to if they’re interesting in buying the eatery.
The restaurant had been in business for 20 years and was headed by award-winning chef Shannon Kellam.
“It is with a heavy heart, that I regret to advise that we have made the very difficult decision to place the business into administration,” Mr Kellam said in a statement.
“We are very grateful for the ongoing support provided by our clientele, staff and suppliers over the past 20 years.”
It’s the latest heartbreak for Mr Kellam, who was also forced to close down seven other popular hospitality joints at the end of May, resulting in 90 job losses.
News.com.au reported that another arm of Mr Kellam’s business, BCN Events Group, entered liquidation earlier this year.
BCN Events Group was behind seven venues specialising in bakery goods. Liquidators shut all of these down immediately.
Those businesses include cooking school Lumiere Culinary Studio and popular cafe Mica which had locations in Newstead and the CBD.
King Street Bakery, based in Bowen Hills, wholesale service provider the Kneadery in Newstead and a commercial production kitchen in Brisbane were also caught up in the company collapse.
The current administrators of Montrachet are also the liquidators of these other businesses.
“We intend to work with staff, customers and suppliers during this difficult time,” the liquidators said at the time.
BCN Events hit a rough spot in 2022 which it appeared unable to recover from.
The Courier Mail reported that 18 months ago, the bakery business was hit by a power outage, which destroyed about $150,000 worth of food.
Another Mica cafe in the Brisbane airport continues to trade and is not caught up in the collapses.
News.com.au previously contacted Mr Kellam for comment.
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It comes as a number of other hospitality businesses across the country have also succumbed amid the economic downturn.
Earlier this month, a national salad manufacturing business called HS Fresh Food, which stocked its products in Coles, Woolworths and the IGA among others, went into administration.
In May, popular Sydney restaurant Lucky Kwong, headed by iconic chef Kylie Kwong, announced it was shutting down.
That same month, the Botswana Butchery chain which operated as a high-end steak restaurant across three cities went bust, with debts of more than $23 million and more than 200 staff sacked.
Last month, after 18 years in business, Melbourne Asian fusion restaurant Gingerboy shut down blaming “market pressures since Covid lockdowns”.
News.com.au also recently spoke to a hospitality insider who said he was deciding if he was going to liquidate his business in the next 48 hours because things were so dire.
A number of other restaurants have joined the growing pile of corpses, including Japanese chain Sushi Bay, Elements Bar and Grill and three stores in Sydney restaurant franchise Bondi Pizza.
Late last year, arm of major Victorian catering business, Legacy Hospitality Group, went bust with debts in excess of $1.7 million.
alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au
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