Is there a 'Bunnings' of pubs?

In this episode, Michael and Leon are joined by executive chef Scott Eddington at the legendary Arnold’s to discuss the final hurdles before taking the keys to The Pinnacle. The team breaks down commercial lease transfers, and what happens when landlords sit on paperwork while renovations are already underway. You’ll hear about the "Bunnings model" for community engagement and how the team plans to overhaul the traditional kids' menu to eliminate every parent's mealtime anxiety. 

Join us on this journey from idea to opening the doors to The Pinnacle.

Check out Michael's Pinnacle deck here. 

For more information on The Pinnacle, visit thepinnacle.melbourne

For more information on PAX, pax.melbourne 

Follow @pax.melbourne on social media.

Podcast produced by Posterboy Media.

PAX acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we operate. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging and to all First Nations People.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hey everyone, Leon here, and this is episode six. Four days to go now. Hope you've been lucking the series. Today, we talk about the precarious nature of lease transfers, and to stress Michael out a bit, I share a little horror story of what happens when leases fall through. We recorded this one at Arnold's with Scotty Eddington. Uh so we obviously talk food, including the Bunning Sausage Sizzle as a defendable business model. It ties in, trust me. As always, you can reach us via email hello at pax.melbourne if you have anything nice or even not nice to say. Here comes episode six. You guys ready to go? Ready to go. Let's go. So here we are, the lovely Arnolds. Thanks for having us in to have this chat, mate. Welcome. Yeah. Sonny, I still I've never I've never eaten here, which is fucking crazy considering how well I know you and how well I know the business so intimately. I mean, you don't eat. That's that's true. I don't eat anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

That's the hardest part about hospitality. You never go out.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Yeah. You're always in the work. Especially when you've got three kids and you live in Elton. When you got no kids, you still don't get out. So hey, but you know what? I did um in I was pretty sure it was like close to your first dish week. Uh I sent a box of donuts to him after service one night just to show that I'm thinking about yeah. Um everybody was so confused.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Everyone just like had the roughest day. And then this poor guy knocked on the front door at 11 o'clock with a box of donuts, and everybody's like, what the hell? What the fuck is this? It was very well saved. Very well enjoyed.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Oh man, it was so much harder than it needed to be as well. When I placed the order to get it delivered, to go through like two different phone calls with the guy just to explain it. Anyway, worked out well in the end. Hey, so yeah, it you know, it's quite funny that we're just doing this over a podcast, which is kind of on brand for this whole podcast series, but yeah, I'm actually caught up with you in Ages, Scott. And we haven't really had a a good old debrief on on pub activity because we've just been so sorry, you know. And I'm literally doing three audits at the moment. It's just wild how busy everything is.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

So the pub's coming up.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

And the pub's coming up, and the podcast's coming up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's how I mean, you know, to be fair though, I've got I'm pretty low touch with it. Yeah, yeah. And it's been pretty impressive seeing how you guys have all just put it together. So I've been it's it's you know, usually in in everything I've done over the last little while, I'm not really that hands-on when it comes to this side of of a business, but this is the first time I'm doing it with such a low amount of like stress or concern, you know. Usually hasn't been with teams this good.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

It helps.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

It helps.

The stress of lease transfers

SPEAKER_02 2:42

So, yeah, anyway, I thought it'd just be a good opportunity. Like what we've been doing in the podcast is just doing this as a catch-up and being like, cool, what are the headlines for the week? What's been happening? Any curb balls, not that there's been any major ones, but we also haven't done a recording for a while. So there's some stuff. Yeah, so maybe like just lay it on me, man. What's like why don't you lead it? What's what what's been going on? I mean, the last week has been hard just because we're waiting for the landlord to sign off on the transfer of the lease. And it's like, it's not a matter of if, it's just when. Yeah. But it's just a little level of stress that we don't really need. I don't really need. Yeah. Um and you know, we're sitting here Thursday morning and we're meant to take keys on Sunday or officially Monday, but John, the current owner,'s a legend, and letting us in on Sunday. As as a landlord indicated where the holdup is?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

No. Not at all.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Well, the holdup was originally around us having um putting guarantees on the lease. But this was early December that happened. Yeah. And then I came back now. And then I came back and said, Well, we'll just put it on there if you're not gonna if you're gonna refuse it. Um and then that was two weeks ago. And now we're sitting here just waiting for them just to take it off, which is painful because you know, for us, I've you know, I've got painters literally walking in the door on Monday, yeah, um both for the outdoor signage and for indoor painting. Yeah. And then I have to get the stage out Monday, I need to like do all this. Essentially, my program starts. And if we miss that and stuff starts to shift, then we have issues around launching for media and all the the on-flow from that. We've got staff starting next week, like the Jamie starts on Monday to get underway. So you know what though, I'll say, like, transfer of lease, like they are the notorious part of that holds things up. 100%. And like John and I have had a discussion, and essentially last night I drew up a side deed with him and his business partner to basically say they'll grant us access before the transfer of lease and will allow us to start our works with a very, very, very small chance that the they say no to the transfer. Which is worried at all that they might say no, yeah. I mentally know, yeah. But there's a of course, there's a seed of like you know, the classic, oh, but it could happen. Doors, of course it could.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

But if it does, it'll just be some some sort of fine print reworking and it won't even be that. It'll just be them being slow and not ticking it off. But he's closing on Sunday. Exactly. So we're current owners are like, we can just paint on need it. So that's the deal.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

It's like we'll you just keep paying rent, we'll pay you back that rent at whatever date it ends, for whatever crazy reason it doesn't get transferred, which is not gonna happen, we have the right to go in and take out anything we've put in, right? Which is not gonna be bits of furniture, right? Can't take the paint back, but you know, and then they'll be left with an empty pub. So it's just it's just not gonna happen. But it's more for me about the program and getting open when we're saying we're going to be open because I don't want to bleed. It's not so much the red for an extra week, it's the people that we're gonna have standing there going, hang on, we need to open this place and we're gonna be paying wages. So I'm in a very uh conflicting dilemma right now because um obviously, as a as a partner, a a peer, a good mate of yours, I want to do everything I can to relieve your stress and give you face and wine. But the purpose of this podcast is to be informative. Yeah, please. So I feel like I want to tell you a story. Oh, yeah, yeah. Might freak you out a little bit. What would you do this to me right now? Well, should I or shouldn't I?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Fuck it out. Yeah, do it for the people, but I'm just not gonna listen.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Yeah. So, like, I ages and I won't say any names here because the this person I reckon will be listening, but very, very long time ago, um, I experienced this. Okay, so basically, this guy had a site, it was gonna be a little cafe, looked really good, everything was good. He negotiated an absolute peach with the current owner and it was like, cool, just you know, waiting on the transfer of lease, which I didn't know that. He he'd basically just been like, hey, I've got to go to I've got to go overseas for this wedding. I can't, it's unavoidable. But you know, while I'm gone, can you kind of get in there and start getting the transition happening and whatnot? I'm like, yeah, yeah, of course, no worries. So touch base with the with the current um tenant, did all the things, and and I've got cracking, right? Like good, absolutely cracking. So, like I'm talking, gutted it. Fucking that where this is going, yeah, repainted, installed the machine. Literally got everything ready to just open the next day. And you know, and I did it all in like four days, right? It was pretty hectic. And then the um tenant rings me, right, on like a Friday afternoon, and he says, like, hey man, I just just wanted to I I just popped by the the site and I'm like, oh yeah, it's looking at how do you like it, man? It's looking pretty good. He was like, No, no, yeah, it's it is looking good, but I'm just I'm a bit surprised at like how drastically you've started making changes when when we haven't actually had the transfer release come through. And I was like, and that was how I found out that the transfer release hadn't come through. I was like, uh what? And I'm like, fuck, I'll I'll call you right back. And then I'm trying to get in touch with my mate, right, who is overseas. He's like, no, no, that hasn't gone through, but it'll be fine, right? It's just a transfer release. And I'm like, okay, you know, and in the end, right, what happened was so they couldn't refuse the transfer, but they could just sit on it indefinitely, right? Yeah, and they just sat on it and because they I just had the suspicion. What? Like just just to be well, no, because I had what I thought about, I was just like walking around in the site and I was thinking about it, and I was like, fuck, you know what? That site on the corner, there was a shop in between us, right? I was like, that site on the corner is primo for this area. And I'm like, uh that would be the space that you would want to put a cafe. Um, but because these aren't connected, I'm like, it's got nothing to do with this site, but I knew they owned them both. And I was like, oh, then I realized that the shop in between only went halfway into the dwelling, so you could knock out a back wall and then make it one big site. And I was like, you know what? They want it. Yeah, they're gonna, they got bigger plans, they want to do something, so they're just gonna hang out my mate to dry, I'd starve him out, which is eventually what happened. And in the end, it was like, fuck, we gotta, we gotta get out. And and it was so hectic, man. We literally got a van, went in their fucking secret squirrel, unloaded, like stole basically I don't know, maybe stole, depending on how you look at it, all our shit back.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Returned your illegally put in possessions. Yeah, I reckon that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

That's okay. And then we never Yeah, it was I was yeah, I didn't lose any sleep over it. I was like, this has to happen, and then it's gonna get really fucking messy, and all of this guy's stuff that he's put money into is sitting in a in a building he might not have access to soon. So we just went in, ripped it all, and bounced. And but that that tenant man, I feel for him, because he cocked it. He was just like, well, now I'm fucking stuck here in a site I didn't build. Yeah, I can't really trade. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty bad. So anyway, I hope that gives you some peace of mind. Right. Awesome. It's gonna help me sleep tonight. My god. But I mean, I I have to say it, right? Because if someone's listening to this thinking, oh yeah, transfer releases are fine, yeah. Maybe sometimes they're not. Honestly, there, as I said, there is the the seed of doubt that that can happen. Like, of course. But the thing is, the landlords have already agreed to the contract of sale. So it's like you agree to a contract of sale without agreeing to the contract. Well, why why this instance isn't the story I just told is because they legit have an agent running. Why the fuck would they engage an agent? Yeah, so yeah, I reckon you're good.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

It's just they're fine, it's just time putting coverage and having like a little side agreement that helps everybody.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Yeah, and we can just move move on with it. Um, you know, everything else, as we've spoken about on the pod before, is done. Like the transfer of liquor license and all that stuff is underway. I've been uh we had food um inspection last week, it passed with flying colours, which is great. And basically what that does is it triggers our ability to apply. This is something new I learned is that the footpath trading doesn't carry over weirdly. Oh what? So you have to reapply it, even though it's an existing one. Uh just kind of a transfer, but you can't apply for it until your food license is done. I was like, oh great, so I'm doing that. But what I've uh currently it's only um three tables and I've gone in for six. Nice, nice. See safe, what they say. Yes, it might, because there's plenty of space along that.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Yeah, but that doesn't that doesn't take as long as just so good.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Um what about that front area, like where the corners intersect? We can't do the corner. We can't, no, because the way it's a it's always about how pedestrians can walk around it, yeah. Then you can't go on the building. Yeah. And you if we go away from the building, then you're essentially blocking that pathway. Gotcha. Um well I'm kind of happy to hear that because that's where I was planning on parking my motorcycle. Yeah. Um, but for us, if we get that pass and we double our seating at the first because we're moving smokers from courtyard to front, then it just gives that capacity. Whereas at the moment they just don't have that. So it's that'll be a win if we get that over.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

It's gonna make the courtyard so nice, moving it all out to the city.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

He's actually opening it, opening it all up. Um but yeah, that's where we're at. Like staff-wise, we're pick rocketing along, right? Like you're chatting to a lot of chefs.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Oh, we'll have a roster in a week. Fuck, really nuts, yeah. Fuck amazing. Yeah. Like we chatted a bit about it offline, yeah. They're just like there's jobs out there, but there's not a heap of great jobs, and just kind of been able to confidently present something that's you know, the produce is gonna be good, the vision's there, the consistency's there, the support's there, the pay's fair, you know, and to be to be able to chat to people in confidence, or like you spend your years working and running other people's restaurants, and you're like trying to hire somebody that you know that they're gonna work fucking 60 hours a week, and you just like you just don't want to do it, and it's like so nice to be able to confidently put a great offer in front of people, so and you know, be able to sit there and build this nice team and have a really clear vision and do something really cool. So, very exciting.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

I mean, you have everything else that I think is really cool, and keep it in your back pocket in case you feel like it's appropriate to mention. But one thing I've been working on hard this week is bringing in an additional resource into PAX that is um really elbow grease based in the HR culture space, predominantly in the learning and development aspect of it, right? So it's not someone who's gonna be like, cool, come in and help us with, you know, I don't know, compliance and auditing. It's like, cool, I can just do all that anyway. But it's like, hey, we want someone who can come in and go, hey, all of our clients get out there and run workshops on recruitment, on boarding, growth and development, how to approach marketing, how to run, you know, viable, successful partnership events, how to, you know, uh run a forecasting template, you know, you name it. So I think for for staff, it's gonna be awesome because you're basically gonna have like free access to an academy.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Well, the growth side's always good because there is that thing like you know, everybody's everybody's like, well, you know, the biggest position is that who's running it day to day, like that kind of head chef, and you know, everybody's like head chef or a sous chef that wants to kind of grow and climb. And it's like, cool, you say that you hire a sous chef that wants to grow grow and climb, but then put them in the fire, throw them in the fire and offer them actually no growth. So it's like I've seen it so many times. So it's like, you know, generally hiring that person that wants to take that next step is the right thing to do because you can put you can give them a cleaner slate, let them grow in the way that they want to grow, but but you gotta you gotta put the work in with them, you know, you gotta show them how to do it, you gotta teach them because you can't just throw them.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

But and to me though, what what moves the needle the most on that is that like I've got this leadership and management program that I've been facilitating for close to 10 years now, and it's just so potent because it's like, man, you can get really stuck in all the basic technical skills of a job, and you know, an eight out of ten effort in that area isn't gonna return as much return as a four out of ten effort in the leadership space, yeah, irrespective of the industry, yeah. So I think it's pretty cool to be able to know that's like, hey, we're gonna hire people that have aspirations to learn and grow, and then we're also gonna give them access to like proven leadership management. The actual skills to do it as well. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Very exciting, and just like just kind of damn excited to crumb a schnitzel. You know, like I'm excited to eat that shit. Yeah, I just you know, I came from running so many big restaurants and like massive teams, and it's always harder to put change in for the good in those in those in those positions. So coming from that to opening a single place where I'm the only chef, whereas like you can put your money where your mouth is, you can buy the right ingredients, you can do it well, and just doing a cool little simple pub with nice chicken from a single farm and but yeah, still just making a snitzel that's seasoned. Yeah, so excited. Oh I know.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

This episode of the Pinny Cool Podcast is brought to you by Industry Kitchens. Now, if you don't know industry kitchens and you haven't yet met Tim Keenan, I'd strongly suggest you remedy that pretty quick. Especially if you actually need anything in the kitchen world. I'm talking catering equipment, any kitchen equipment, commercial refrigeration, dishwashers. I mean, these guys literally have everything right down to chemicals and stuff that you need on the weekly. Now, why I rave about these guys is because it's not just about getting the right price, right? Like where Tim adds a lot of value is he makes sure that you actually get the right product, okay, and that adds a whole ton of value on top of the actual price as well. So the biggest difference I've experienced with these guys over the years is that Tim's a chef. Often when you're dealing with sales reps in this sector, they might be really great salespeople and they've worked in sales for a long time, but they haven't actually worked in kitchens. So with Tim, you're getting someone who can bridge the gap between what you know about your product and your kitchen and what you might not know about opportunities in terms of equipment, even right down to sizes and dimensions and options. So pretty much anyone who consults Tim is going to save money, not just on equipment, but through just better efficiency and logistics. I've recommended Tim to a bunch of people over the years, and every single time it comes back with the most glowing endorsement. So if you need anything at all, highly recommend you find these guys and get in touch. Put them on your radar, and I promise you won't regret it. Thanks to Industry Kitchens. Um, you've been an amazing sponsor of the show. Did did you guys talk about my um kids menu concept? We haven't. We need to talk about it. There's waiting for this. I was waiting for something. I was waiting for something. I'll put it I'll put a cat, I'll put a caveat on it. There's stuff on your menu you're just gonna be able to use to do this. So talk to me, you're fine.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

All right, so summer's got three kids. What are we doing for a kids' menu?

Overhauling the kids' menu strategy

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Okay, so like I said at the start, I very low touch on this side of things. This is probably the only input I'll ever have into any type of culinary. Yeah, but here's my customer insight as a customer of three kids trying to dine out, right? The kids menu come what comes with a kid's menu is a shitload of anxiety that people and parents are out there aren't willing to consciously admit to, but they fucking feel it every time. Tell me more. Okay, and it's it's really acute and it's concentrated to about a 12-minute time frame from the moment you order to the moment the food arrives at the table. Okay. And what this anxiety is, which you know, in about four or five years you'll experience this yourself firsthand is like, okay, so think of it this way, right? You go to a pub, you're gonna go out to dinner in heavy quotes, because that is a completely different definition when you're doing it with kids. And you go and you first thing you need to do, if you want to have any semblance of a conventional pub experience, you need to get the kids sorted, right? Parents that don't do that, they're like, mate, no one's winning, all right. So it's pack's parenting advice now. We could have a pretty good one. All right, and six kids between us. That's not true, yeah. That's that's pretty true. Make a spin-off, yeah. Bring happy hour back. Yeah. All right, so I'll cut to the chase, right? So you you go in, you get the table, you get everyone sat at the table, blah, blah, blah. And then you've got to figure out what everyone's gonna eat, right? So you'll get the kids' menu, and the kids' menus are pretty normal. No one's going to do anything too adventurous out there, right? It's like, all right, the burger, the whatever. And you place the order, and then you are, then, then the anxiousness starts, right? Because from the moment you place the order till the time the food arrives at the table, you're just going, fuck, I hope this works. Right. I I just what I don't want to happen is that they put the burger down, but there's like black sesame seeds on the bun, and now my kid's not gonna eat it. Yeah, yeah. This happens all the time. Something as simple as that derails your whole episode. There you go. Night's done now, right? And it's just like, yeah, you're in trouble at this point. So I had this idea. I know where this is going. Do you want to have a stab or do you want me to just go? Like the kids' meal is like a mese plate, separating ingredients, and they build their own. Okay, you're on the right track. You are small on on the right track. I can see it. Okay, but what it is, what I'm saying is that take the staples that you eat at home. Yes. And just have them available as a safety net, right? So it's like at home, everyone is gonna do this at least four times or so a week for their kids. Is that their dinner's gonna comprise a bowl of pasta with some butter in it, some chopped-up carrot sticks, a couple chicken nuggets, just some things that you know you can rely on, right? And just put them on the menu super fucking cheap, right? It's all ready ahead of time. You can just bust it out anytime. And then they can still get the burger, but you've got the backup, right? And then the other thing is that if you then also do have that family, because I'm I'm representing one particular segment, right? That like if I'm gonna take my kids out, it's probably gonna be a lapaquetta-ish type place that I'm gonna feel comfortable in. Yeah, yeah. But there's other crew out there that laugh their head off at me because they take their kids out to fucking two hat restaurants and shit. Yeah. And their kids, you know, know the difference between certain grades of caviar. So you've got to cater for them too, right? Yeah. If you have the staples, then you can go a bit adventurous with a couple of dishes on the kids' menu that they could be like, yeah, I'm gonna get down with that.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

I don't hate it. I don't hate it. You're already gonna have some of the stuff on the menu. So it's just like my thoughts of it always is make it as simple, let less decisions and fast. Yeah. Like that's the always the thing for it. Is it's like bef if a kid's order comes in before even cooking anything else that's going out, just get them fed. Yeah. And then give them a bowl of free ice cream later and let them do hot laps around the park. Sick.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

I'll tell you the other the other element though is like even if you think about it as an as an upsell thing, right? Take think about it if you're going to the counter and you're going, all right, we'll grab, you know, you've got three kids, you're like, we'll get the burger, the fish and chips, and the whatever the third generic dishes, and you see that for like five bucks you can get a little bowl of buttered pasta, or for five bucks you can get a little bowl of you know, chopped veggies, you're just gonna chuck it in. Yeah, yeah. You're not even gonna think about it. You're just gonna go, yep, I'll grab it. It comes out in eight seconds. Yeah. Stoked. I'll put it on the blackboard specials menu.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Okay. Done.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Cool, easy, love it. Make it special.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Love it. But no, it's great. Like it is, it is it's good because it's again, it's those things where it's like minimum effort. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Minimum effort from the kids. But maximum value at the table for that very specific segment. Doing a plate of buttered pasta.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

I mean dough. Damn, easy. Yeah. And the fact that you can order it, we can smash it out in seconds, and gives you know, somebody peace of mind. Yeah. It's a winner. It's a win.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

I mean, I I've actually considered taking a bag of these things to the pub. But I just don't want to be that guy. Yeah, they're gonna be that guy. Don't really not. Today's community announcement is brought to you by Industry Kitchens. Melbourne Xiao, founded by Dan Frankel, is a truly special place in the heart of Fitzroy. Dan has 15,000 hours of practice as a manual therapy practitioner, and he specialises in client-centred and process-oriented sessions. Melbourne Xiatsu is a real hub for a lot of pretty amazing therapies, but I only know Dan's work firsthand, and I honestly swear by it. Um, if you've never had a Xiatsu treatment, I highly recommend you go see Dan. You'll be in great hands. Pun intended. While we're rolling with ideas, you want me to drop my idea of the episode on you? Alright. Give it to me. Ready for it? Give it to us. Yeah. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

So I'm always excited. I like your ideas. To give you a little bit of context though, they so far they've been mostly hits. I feel like they've all landed pretty well. They do require some explanation, as you would probably expect from me. Yeah. And usually extra work for me in the need to, yeah. Well, this one might not be any extra work for either of you. Oh, it's already so I don't believe it. Let's see. So, no, no, I I swear to God it won't. It will except for maybe for the the only work it'll be is that it might result in a shitload of volume, which is a nice problem to have. Nice problem. Okay. Hear me out. What if we were to model the structure of our steak night on the same model that bunnings use for their sausage sizzle?

SPEAKER_01 25:11

What's that model?

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Okay. What do you mean? Charity. Yeah. So you so what bunnings do for the sausage sizzle is they go, hey, local footy club, sausage sizzle is yours this week. All the profit that you make from it goes to you, but you come and service it and you come and do it, and you just get a slice of that action, and it really helps the community. So imagine we do that for our steak night. A portion of our profits goes to a local community organization, and they can turn up on the night and talk to people about their cause. I mean, they they're you know the other benefit, right? Is they're gonna turn up with fucking 50, 60 people. I mean, that is the benefit. Yeah. And it doesn't really benefit us because we're not gonna make it. My forecast takes a bit of a hit. My forecast takes a hit. But I mean, pillar of the community, we're doing something cool, we're helping people out to like listen to this podcast, go motherfucker. Well, I mean, even if even if we even if it wasn't all the profits and it was a portion, right? That's still pretty fucking cool. Yeah. Like if you're the local football club and you're like, oh man, awesome. We can we get to get a slice of like the steak night in three weeks. Every fucking player is coming in that night. Sure. Like they're it'll it'll book out, you know, and it's like, and they get to actually tell people what they're doing. Yeah. Like I'm not saying stop service and put a stage up in that. Put a stage up. There's a stage there now. We should leave the stage. But they can work the room, go from table to table, have a little yarn. I was out at the pub in Queenscliff the other week, and it was so funny because there's this like, I don't know how she was connected to the pub. She would have been close to 80, definitely not an owner, but she was walking around selling raffle tickets. And I was like, How is this? Yeah, I this isn't making sense to me because you don't work here. And it was just the the meat tray. So I was like, I gotta get to the bottom of this. And so I went and found her after a while, and I was like, hey, it's just how are you connected to this whole thing? And she was like, Oh, you know what? So the proceeds from the meat raffle are actually going to my fucking, I don't know, I tuned out, but it was like Rotary Society or something like that that she's running. I was like, that's pretty fucking dope. And it was really, really quaint because you just had this lady like she's walking around to each table. She's like, Oh, hey, hey guys, just you know, do you want to buy some look? I don't know how to use this thing here, but it but it was it just made the night so much better to have someone stumbling around. We literally just were talking about meat trays and uh meat raffles and veg raffles, and it's a thing.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

I love half of it. Okay, yeah. I fucking love half of it. Give me your feedback. So I've got two things to say. Yeah, my brother went to something very similar to this, paid money going to charity, which is great, yeah, for a poorly cooked shit steak. Yeah, okay. This is why it's a sausage sizzle. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

This is why they're not No, but we'll we'll still cook it. Remember, they're getting profits, not no, no, I know.

Pitching the Bunnings charity model

SPEAKER_01 28:03

And it's like I I think like there's a little wine bar in Kensington that's had this idea for a hot minute and has been working out how to do it. So I proceed very carefully because but taking the Bunnings model of adding to your already business to help a charity get a leg up is bloody cool, and not enough people do it. Totally, and a lot of people do events and pop-ups in their business that are a lot of work and people put in energy and people get around it, and outside of a handful of people that I know of who are good friends of mine that do this for like good, good charity projects and they donate everything to it. Yeah. But offering our space, like i.e., putting some barbecues in the courtyard and letting a a charity come and grill sausages. Oh, yeah. It allows us to add a bit of theatre, do the right thing. Yeah, that's cool. Add engage to the community instead of, you know, like I guess your way of doing it is it's like if you're saying we do the steak night once a month and we still cook the steak and we still do this, you may as well just donate 10% of a week. You may as well just go, hey, for the month of the month of January, we're gonna donate 1% to this company. And for the month, do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 29:29

So there's a but the difference is that is they're bringing 50 people in. Well, not just that, well, yes, but also it's it's taking away from the transaction and it's creating that relationship, right? Where they can be there on the night, they feel a sense of ownership, they can think about it.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

If you're they're not attached to it if we're cooking it and we're taking like what they're just gonna stand behind the bar and take the order. Yeah, like the attachment of a sausage sizzle is you you're seeing them sizzle your sausage, you're chatting to them, you're watching it. We've all had a good sausage and a bad sausage from Bunnings. That's true. But I don't think I have had a bad one. I've had one shock before. 100%. 100%. Depends what time you go. But I think like if I I tell you wrong, I think it's a fantastic idea, and I think that it's a way that because you know, the trucks of it is it still needs to be, you know, we can't we can't send our business to profit somebody else's because we need to have a profitable business so that we're there next year to do it again. Yeah, for sure. So, but you know, I think adding the theatre of it why do you take the idea of where you got it from, and that's what we do.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

So it's like the metray is the raffle, as in like is the donation, yeah. And we do it. And they can do it that and like we're talking about just on over email, literally last night, you were talking about a veg box instead of a metra. Love that idea, and one of our lovely legend investors is a co-owner at Farmer's Pick. Oh wow, exactly. So it's like pretty easy layup there to get a box of veg a week, massive, sponsored by them, massive, and then we choose the charity. Great, love it. Okay, so but look, something like that. For me, the the pitch here wasn't to land the plane and and lock a date in for this, it was just to get a foot in the door. Yeah, and it's like on that for you that there's an opportunity to workshop this.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

I like it. I think if you're gonna bring up ideas that you also want to try and land the plane. What do you mean? Put a date on it. Oh, really? Yeah, fuck yeah. I'm sorry, but like if you're gonna have good ideas from somebody that's had their life full of good ideas, saying them out loud and doing nothing about them. And you know me for a long time, and so you know this is very true. I reckon next time I see you, put date on it, we'll make it happen. Because I think that's the thing, is it's like a really like we want we love the area that the pub is. We love the people that live there, and we want to be a community backbone for it. And there'll then there'll always be a cause. The the the you know, the as you've always said to me, like this kind of northern star of why you get out of bed every day to do it, yeah, and making sure that this pub is clean, consistent, welcoming, it's got a bit for everybody. You know putting a putting a charity day once a month, or let's let's start a bit easier, yeah, once a quarter, yeah, and just goes, cool, it's done. This is what we do, and we'll deal with it later in the future. And it might be a sausage sizzle, or it might be veggie box raffles that day, or it might be dare I say,$15 spritzes, yeah. Five bucks of it goes to this charity this week, bring all those charities down, get a picture, yeah, enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Well, in my mind, I was like, this would definitely be a get the funder, get the foundation set up and then build like so. I'm thinking, wait six months, you can just go, well, no, but but you made a good point before, which I hadn't thought about, which is that you have to do it. You're actually chanting now to make this idea. Um, like you know, we we also don't want to make a promise of something that we can't then do viable. Agree.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Yeah, and I I I I think it's just and I'll say it from my experience. We opened here, Arnold's the week before with a thousand great ideas, and we're like, we're gonna do it, right? We're gonna fucking do it. It's gonna be so good. Three weeks in when I was cooking 80 hours a week and not sleeping, a few of those things went off the things went off the railways really fast. Yeah. At the end of this year, we did a big kind of we sat down with the whole team, we just printed off every single element of this business. You know, we went back to three, four, five years ago when we wrote our first menu. We went through business plans, we went through PLs, we went through what we put into it, what we take out of it, what we wanted to achieve, what we didn't achieve, and why we didn't achieve it.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

And the everything else, I would say 90% of it, I was so stoked with. There was a few little things that I was like, I wish we could have done that better. And there was just those 11th hour calls where we decided not to do something that I look back now thinking that we wish we just pushed a little bit harder and stood on them. Right. And one of them was a charity event. Yeah, right. Okay. One of them was that thing because it's just so easy to have a great idea like this. Yeah, get three months in, everybody's doing 60 hours, pubs peaking, it's so busy, everybody's loving what we're doing, and then we can just kind of let it slip. And then all of a sudden we're we're talking about this in a year and a half's time, doing a retrospective and going, what's the one thing we wish we could have done? So we'll say, land the plane, okay, put a date in it, walk away, work it out. And it could be as simple as you know, the first Sunday of the month we do this. Yeah, yeah. You know, it doesn't have to be promising the world because you don't want to overpromise and underdeliver. But I think putting it in as a core value of a community element and sticking to it is good.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

Well, I'll just what I'll do then, rather than land the plane on a date, I'll just land the plane with accountability and say, I'll just be the project lead to make sure.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

It's all you now.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

And there it is. You said you. Yeah, I said I can do it. I can I can be like, you know what, maybe for all of these dumbass ideas I've put forward, I can just say, look, you know what, I'll I'll roadmap them. Yeah, create a little backlog and I'll make sure that they they see the light of day. I need to find some way to contribute operationally to this book. All right, what else is there? Because I haven't even been tracking time here, but we probably should start wrapping it up soon. Yeah. Any other headlines? No, like I mean, PR goes out next week, um, which is exciting. Uh, we're dropping this podcast, yeah, which is gonna be confusing when you're listening to it, right, at this episode. But this would have dropped and been going. Yeah. Um releasing it over 10 days, not over a longer period, which is pretty cool. Yeah, real hard and fast. Um that's it.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Like, we've got to get in there. I'm look at you. A looked at your two-week roadmap of the work that needs to get done. Yeah, yeah. How are you feeling? Oh, I'm I'm working at my other restaurant, so I'm okay. The question is, are you gonna be okay? What do you reckon the thing you're most excited to do? And what is the one thing you just shit? I've got to do that, and I don't want to do that, but I know I have to. Great question. I was thinking about this in a shower this morning. Because I reckon the team can like pitch in a little birthday present and take that one job off your hands. Yeah, if someone takes this off my hands, I'll be fucking stoked. So the one thing I'm most excited about is getting the stage out because that's opening that front door.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Yeah, and opening that front door, that's the main thing that needs to get done next week so the pages can come in and it just will suddenly change the layout of everything.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

And pull the curtains down. They're the like the two things. Yep. Um, and then the thing I'm dreading is the toilets. So they're a big problem, like dirty, not dirty, like they need a good clean, of course. I'll bring my gloves in a gurney. Yeah, but they need to be painted, which I haven't included in the paint, the painter's schedule because of cost and time, right? Which is obsolete, but only I did that because we were I was unsure of what we had to really do in there at time of engaging the painters. If they're if they're fast, if they're a half a day faster than they think they're going to be, which they have left a bit of lag, maybe they could just jump in there and do it. But there's a a fundamental thing around that toilet when you go to the courtyard. It's got that weird timber little sweep. It'll be such a I need to smash that out.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

It'll be it'll be a little bit more. And I need to put a door on.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Okay. Putting the door on, the only issue is the sink is outside of the door. Oh, yeah. So I need to get a plumber to bring that around as well and work out how to fuck. That's the bit that I'm like, it'll it can happen and work, but I just haven't thought through it enough. And I haven't been in there to be like, right, okay, I'm just gonna be the guy that does this. Yeah. Um, and everything I look at in there, it's like, oh, that's a one-hour job. That's another one hour job. That's another one hour job. Because overall, it's nothing crazy. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

But when you add all those one-hour jobs up, you're like, fuck, yeah. We did all the bathrooms here that have been sitting, I think, used and untouched for a year and a half. Yeah. And it's rough. But the sense of pride of like getting it. Yeah. Every time somebody comes up to me and goes, Oh, the bathroom's really nice here. You got little napkins and like ace of it's like, yeah, we did that. It's like good. Yeah. Did you tile them yourself? Half of them, yeah. Yeah. New vanities, new just clean, paint, new tiling, move basins around, new vanities, new toilet seats, yeah. A lot more waterproofing, yeah, new doors, which I've the worst thing about building, putting doors on it. Doors is the worst thing. I don't even hate it.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

And I'm really bad at it. That's why I'm annoyed about this job, because I'm like, I can foot a hole in the wall successfully. If you're hanging a door, yeah, but hanging a door is so painful.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

If you want what I've got going for cheap, it's about 70 litres of bright blue paint. You're beauty. Yeah, when we opened, when we built this. Sorry, seaside. When we built this, Lost saw a house in Mexico City that was like sky blue. Yeah. And took a photo of it from like the outside with this blue sky behind it, and we're like, it's amazing. And we painted the roof blue. And the difference of having blue have light touch it and in shadows and curves, yeah. Looked like to the cookie monster, like, died on the roof. So now I've got 60, 80 litres of blue paint that I'm trying to offload at somebody. So if you want a blue bathroom, could be the option.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Yeah, it might work in a pub. Yeah. Hey, we gotta wrap this up because I've got to get to my next meeting. Um, and I'm was meant to be on a call 20 minutes ago. Well, yeah, all right. Thanks, lads. Good chat. Thank you. Peace. Thank you so much for listening to the Pinnycast. We're super stoked to be bringing this series to you. So we hope you found it informative. We would love to hear from you. We'd love some feedback. Any thoughts you have around how we're going about it would be really, really welcomed. So hit us up at hello at packs.melbourne and we will definitely be all ears and we'll respond. Lastly, just want to say massive thanks again to industry kitchens, to posterboy media. Without them, none of this would be possible. So, yeah, massive, massive shout out. We're really looking forward to bringing you more. Cheers.