Aristocratic Lobbying and Un-Cooking the Restaurant Industry
Change is possible. We just have to be the ones that demand it.
The Restaurant industry is cooked. Yes that is a pun, but more importantly - it’s an attempt to have Ramy levels of vibe check. There has recently been an uptick in the media landscape on stories about the downturn in profit margins, as well as the announcement of high profile restaurant closures; so much so that friends and family have begun to pretty consistently ask about the state of my business. I’m of course grateful to speak about myself, but I must say their tone is somewhat suspicious. Why? Well, as sure as the first bloom of spring after a long winter, Merivale appears to open. another. new spot just as another. restaurant. closes. This coupled with our algorithmic reality and social media upper-class cosplaying (I see you/us/me with your/our/mine Steak Frites and $25 martinis), I think my family and friends are sensing something of a disconnect between what they are seeing and what they are hearing. I don’t need to hammer home a critique of social media, especially when there are enough older men (Jonathan Haidt) doing this who refuse to criticise the hijacking of our pleasure principle by capitalistic economic measures, instead blaming your addiction to this viral-reality for all our depressive woes. But I will add quickly and succinctly though… don’t believe everything you see on your friends Insti stories. And I mean that in all its totality.
A full restaurant and an immaculately plated $20 leafy salad doesn't equate to financial security AND these media frequented, copy-paste, ethnically opportunistic offerings which are unfortunately closing do not encapsulate an industry which stretches as far as I don't know… Penrith??? Yes, the restaurant industry is cooked, but not because aspiring-restaurant-groups are struggling to keep alive their second or third spot. It’s cooked because the industry elites have sold the soul of hospitality, its domestic warmth, to incestuous bourgeois politics and an almost Nietzschean, aristocratic moral belief in our middle-to-upper-class God-Given-Right to enjoy unfettered success through multifaceted entrepreneurialism.
Restaurant’s are untenable and unsustainable in almost every single way; financially, emotionally, psychologically, ecologically & socially. Mitch Orr of the once great ACME and now the good KILN fame was half-right when he somewhat semi-famously remarked in 2019, during the last great industry downturn, “Don’t do it” - The “it” refers to opening a restaurant
- Sorry excuse me Alex… wait what?! You’re telling me that in 2019? Even before the “shamdemic” (I don’t condone this term but it is very funny)? It was hard to run a restaurant let alone one that achieves temporary success by pilfering staff, menus and branding from other successful spots? - To be clear, ACME did not do this.
Yes, restaurants are holistically unsustainable and no one gets out alive; unless of course you’re ridiculously good looking and don't care about dining prestige, according to the deliciously underrated ‘The Menu’. Rent, produce, overheads and wages as well as subscriptions, council fees, POS fees make the money skint. The long, often late hours worked by staff in a still stubbornly hierarchical environment (thanks The Bear for throwing us back to the Dave Chang and Rene Redzepi days of dysfunctional idolatry) are under appreciated by customers who never care as much as waiters who “really-genuinely-care” about the quality of the produce. All the while restaurants continue to insist on being discussed and portrayed akin to theatre (Chef's Table as the most recent culprit with their attempt to cement their opening jingle as some sort of cultural competitor to the Champions League choir refrain), and they are theatre; it's just the stuff that dreams are made on. It’s all make believe and that’s fine, fun even, but the ones who have benefitted most significantly from this entrepreneurial Tempest are suggesting they should be the ones to fix it.
Just a few days ago a new Lobby (ACRA) announced its existence, citing the “unprecedented challenges” of 2024 (take that Mitch, ACME wouldn’t even last a second in 2024 mate!) as raison d’etre. Yeah I'm just as shocked as you are; sureeelllyyy lobbying has to be illegal by now?? Gun lobbyists? Oil Lobbyists? Anyways, a lobby that wants to inform the government how their “legislation and the things they’re doing can affect the restaurant industry” seems like a sound idea. Who wouldn’t want to have direct access to the people who matter - especially when you’re the kind of people who think people matter. Surely these lobbyists are not the kind of people currently fighting a class action lawsuit for underpaying staff in the total of tens of millions. Or the kind of people who are about to open a new 3 story restaurant in double bay, recently profiled for “transforming” said affluent suburb and giving advice to the always reputable Sky News on how to “unlock capital”. The disconnect that my friends and family have felt recently is spot on.
A lot of what ACRA would like to lobby for is valid. The industry award is incredibly confusing and out of step with how a restaurant in particular runs; managing casual staff breaks during a Friday night “turn” is the stuff nightmares are made on. Payroll tax disproportionately affects businesses that rely on waged labour to scale enough for even the smallest of profit margins, as opposed to say, more tech-heavy work domains. And ensuring that “cooks” remain as a criteria for skilled working visas appears to be an almost humanitarian approach to nation building. The first problem with all of this resides in the well trodden Aussie leftist acknowledgement that these requests do not go far enough (shout out the Greens) in both application and scope. Fighting to ensure that “cooks' ' remain on the skilled workers list seems admirable, especially considering the recent vilifying of migration as a cause for our cost of living crises. And it is admirable, in theory. The charcoal haze of optimism doesn't disappear until you realise that this long-standing multicultural policy has never been as egalitarian as we would hope. Australian academic Ghassan Hage has written extensively on this subject, suggesting in fact that this opening up of the market for migration came with culturally hegemonic expectations which looked to sanction “acceptable creativity” and use bodies such as the National Tourism Industry Training Committee to survey and “police" the applicants' experience. This brief (and yes, vague) critique of policy is caught up in the emergence of Sydney’s societal stratification. A divide of class between inner city gourmand elites who desired to replicate central European prestige and the far more genuinely diverse outer suburbs defined as lacking global touristic nous in contradistinction.
I’m not trying to zero-sum their position here - it is not possible to fix everything all at once no matter how much you might want to get irrationally angry and fact-checky with your so-called woke mate who used to post about Ukraine & Iran. But I do think it is absolutely vital to pay far more attention to the history of our unilateral dining scene. A good place to start would be for us to honestly and sincerely question this new lobby’s intentions and ask ourselves…are we sure this is how change is to be brought about and are these the people we want representing the needs of our diverse industry? They are legends, no one is doubting that, but I don’t believe we should continue to hero a historically aristocratic and exclusive voice; we only just recovered from molecular fine dining and no Michelin starred street food vendors. Their vibe, as currently constituted, reminds me of Mark Fisher’s neo-liberal call-centre analogy in the forever relevant ‘Capitalist Realism’. Industry elites complaining about reduced profit margins is akin to the prototypical defender of Late Capital (which is indebted to off-shoring practices) who yells down the telephonic throat of a worker in South East Asia who just can’t let you speak to their manager or “someone from here”.
The second, and biggest, problem with all of this is a pretty persistent unwillingness to engage properly with working class epistemology. We don’t need top-down lobbyists, we need rigorous critique of our broader economic structure beginning with far better protection for our most vulnerable - e.g. Gig Economy workers who have little-to-no insurance policies and part-time Student Visa employees hamstrung by an unwillingness of our government to properly integrate their buying power into our economy. It’s probably time to take a leaf out of the Nursing Unions book and actively engage/empower our labor force regardless of apparent “skill”. This might firstly raise our general consciousness beyond a ressentiment-esque suspicion from friends and family who can’t see past all the new and flashy openings on your god-forsaken Insti stories. This raising could then be partnered with more clearer structural demands like, umm, I don’t know, insisting our government stops protecting the duopoly interests of Woolies/Coles and gives up on resisting a quicker, more comprehensive transition to sustainable energy alternatives. Both of these broader re-considerations could directly alleviate the stresses of the $64billion dollar industry by putting weekly spending money back in the consumers pocket, allowing smaller fruit/meat/veg producers to compete financially AND reducing growing electrical and gas bills. This is a bigger fight than just a few restaurants closing recently. It's at the heart of our multicultural society which I stubbornly believe has the potential to be Utopic. So let's cherry pick the energy for change that is present within this new Lobbyist group and wield our massive labour power to make change that affects the entirety of the industry… not just a few in the hotel lobby.