Today’s coronavirus special: cooked goose seasoned with false hope

Melbourne’s once-buoyant restaurant scene is on the cusp of savage correction and the extension of JobKeeper is merely prolonging the inevitable.

Melbourne restaurateur Matteo Pignatelli, centre, with pastry chef Ross Eckersley, left, and head chef Rhys Blackley at his Fitzroy North establishment. Picture: Aaron Francis

Melbourne’s once-buoyant restaurant scene — envied the country over — is on the cusp of savage correction and, according to at least one industry observer, the extension of JobKeeper is merely prolonging the inevitable.

“It will allow businesses that should close to stay open,” veteran restaurateur Matteo Pignatelli, the former national president of Restaurant and Catering Australia, told The Australian yesterday.

“(It’s) a false economy, prolonging the inevitable. It’s keeping talent in a dead-end job.”

His comments come on the back of continued high COVID-19 infection numbers in Melbourne and the increasing bite of a second lockdown on the city’s food and wine businesses.

The restaurant scene has already been under pressure. Even in May, as the first wave of the pandemic hit Australia, venues were closing. The first high-profile scalp in Melbourne was Longrain, leaving 40 staff out of work.

While many operators welcomed Tuesday’s news of the government’s extended job support scheme, others lamented the state of the industry, fearing the extension would artificially prop up unviable businesses in the sector.

“A lot of people would have closed after Christmas anyway, if not before, if JobKeeper wasn’t extended,” Mr Pignatelli said. “People were talking about it well before COVID as they were pushed into compliance. It’s not just hospitality; there are many other industries, but ours was the worst.”

According to Mr Pignatelli, who runs Matteo’s in Fitzroy North, too many hospitality industry businesses became unviable once the compliance measures policed by the Fair Work Commission had bitten, the result of high-profile underpayment scandals involving celebrity chefs in recent years.

“Compliance was making their business models unprofitable. COVID-19 was a lifeline,” Mr Pignatelli said. “There are a lot of egos in our industry.”

JobKeeper, he said, was a “good excuse to ride it out and not open. So what will happen now is that they’ll reopen with another unsustainable model and they’ll have gone from one to another.”

Mr Pignatelli said JobKeeper, while going to many good businesses genuinely in need and deserving of government assistance, was “patching up a leaky bucket”.

“I’m sympathetic, but a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money and maybe their homes. It’s time for them to reassess.”

Another veteran Melbourne restaurant entrepreneur, Con Christopoulos, told The Australian the new reality for the industry would be, in many cases, a low-service model with less employment.

“I’ve been at this for years,” said Mr Christopoulos. “Our profit have been dwindling for years. But COVID didn’t bring this on. Wages have gone from 35 per cent 10 years ago to 50 per cent. It’s no longer a business model, it’s a maybe.”