Wage scandal delays restaurant opening
Millionaire celebrity chef George Calombaris has taken his apology to the next level for underpaying his staff.
He had already committed to the Fair Work Ombudsman — via an enforceable undertaking — that he would say sorry publicly for underpaying 515 workers a total of $7.8 million at his Press Club, Gazi, Hellenic Republic and Jimmy Grants establishments between 2011 and 2017.
There are also financial reasons for the former MasterChef star to repair his public image following the wage scandal at his MAdE Establishment hospitality empire.
The celebrity chef and his millionaire business partner Radek Sali (of Swisse fame and fortune) are set to open a new restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD.
They had planned to have just thrust open the doors of their new Elektra Dining Room, a reincarnation of Calombaris’s Press Club restaurant in the former home of the Herald Sun, at the top of Melbourne’s Flinders Street. But the atrocious publicity around MAdE’s Cremorne-based empire — which the businessmen own almost 50-50 — has triggered a delay in the launch date.
Opening night has been moved to mid-September, another six weeks away.
That will give Melbourne’s fussy restaurant goers some time to digest Calombaris’s teary get together with Leigh Sales on tonight’s 7.30.
Calombaris has now repaid the wages and super owned to staff. He also had to pay a $200,000 “contrition payment”.
Following the Aunty apology, Calombaris and Sali will run an advertising campaign in the mainstream and trade press to apologise for MAdE’s mistakes using a set to words that have been approved by the ombudsman.
This shamed chef is set to say sorry more than Justin Bieber.
After the advertising campaign will be a series of speaking engagements at a range of high profile industry events at which Calombaris is to educate the restaurant industry on the importance of workplace compliance.
Three need to happen in the next 12 months.
The FWO has approved one of the first to be at Fine Food Australia, in September, at Darling Harbour’s convention centre.
There — days before the opening of Elektra — Calombaris is scheduled to continue his Fair Work-prescribed penance.
A degustation of atonement.
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