How I balance delegation and dictatorship

Thirty-two-year-old chef and restaurateur George Calombaris is the star of Australia’s top-rating TV show MasterChef as well owner of four restaurants in Melbourne and one in Greece. He’s also been nominated as a finalist in Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year competition. Describing himself as one of the luckiest men alive, Calombaris tells SmartCompany how he’s a culinary Napoleon.

What are your impressions of hospitality at the moment? Figures have come out recently saying restaurants and food in particular have outperformed retail. Have you noticed an improvement, a pickup in trade? 

I don’t know the figures on retail trade. All I know is I’ve got five restaurants here in Melbourne, one in Mykonos, and I’m a happy chappy. We’re in a great country; I’ve travelled Europe and the US in the last six months, and wow, they are in some serious trouble.

Are my restaurants busier because of the whole food thing? No, they’re the same, but people know a bit more about food. Those that come to the Press Club come because they want a night out or to suss it out; those that come to my other restaurants come because they want to eat and they want to enjoy it.

But you know what? There are a lot of restaurants out there doing less than 5% profit; you could put your money in a term deposit and generate more income out of that.

And have a lot more time, I assume. 

Exactly, and less stress too. Food is a very hard game. Your main sources of income are food, beverage and service, and if you don’t get those three right, you’re in a world of pain. I’ve got a million-dollar wine list sitting downstairs in the Press Club, and if that’s not getting looked after and sold, it’s just money sitting there not moving.

So did you find during the GFC that your high-end restaurant, the Press Club, managed to ride it out a lot easier than some your less expensive restaurants? 

Not necessarily. For instance, Hellenic Republic – that’s between $50 to $70-per-head spend – did really well. Press Club did okay. People were a little bit more careful, so rather than getting that second bottle of wine, they’ll probably just reassess the situation. People are still eating the same amount of food and spending the same amount of money on food but I think on beverages they’re a bit more cautious.

And has that changed? 

Things are good. We’re breaking monthly records; it’s just fantastic. I think what’s lovely when you have five restaurants and 380 staff, you’ve got a bit of power in the market place in terms of buying. I’ve got a full-time beverage buyer, I’ve got a full-time purchaser who looks after categories such as seafood, where we could spend $50,000 or $60,000. So we’ve got somewhere there who can work the supplier to make sure we’re getting the best quality, number one, and then number two, the best price.

What kind of benefits do you put on public exposure? Now that you are an “identity”, has that had a demonstrable impact on your sales?  

I think nothing’s really changed. If anything, people come into my restaurants with higher expectations. It means rather than two sommeliers on a night at Press Club, I’ve got three; rather than one manager on at Hellenic Republic, there are two. So you’ve got to boost the sales element up to make sure there are just no issues at all. ‘Ooh, they put the water bottle down and the label wasn’t facing us, and the glass had a little fingerprint on it’ – all those things are so crucial for us. That’s really the awareness. Because who gives me the right to go on national TV and critique other people for what they’re doing when I’m not being critiqued?

I think I’m one of the luckiest men on earth to have businesses that are running, that are successful. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not perfect, we make mistakes.

What are the things that you wish you knew when you started? 

I wish I knew what I know now five years ago. The minute you stop learning each day is the minute you should quit your business. The minute you stop questioning why you’re doing something or how it’s done, you should quit your business. It’s a very simple thing. There’s no secret.

I look back at my father. He was a businessman himself, owned independent supermarkets. You never forget where you come from, and you always – each and every day – make sure you crawl out of dirt.

I don’t have an office per se; I don’t need it. The minute people become successful they go and buy themselves a big office overlooking the city, and drive around in a big beautiful car because they feel successful. Success doesn’t come in the car I drive or the office I have, it comes in the happy internal customers, which are my staff, and my customers. So as long as all those people are happy, and they’re enjoying themselves, and I’m enjoying it and what comes out of it, that’s success.

Everything I learn each day I wish I’d known it five years ago. But you know? I can’t complain. I’m 32, I’ve really worked my butt off, and I’m always driving and pushing myself to be better because I think I’ve got a lot to learn and I can do things better every single day.

How do you manage to keep your businesses on track? You’re comfortable with delegation, I assume.

Yes, if there’s anything I do well, it is delegation. I’m Napoleon, but the chef version. I don’t take shit, I know what I want, and I get it. There’s no two ways about it, and I don’t compromise on standards.

But in saying that, I put the right leaders in place who I’ve worked with for years, who believe in me, and I inspire them.

Hospitality, it’s a f***ing hard job. Do you want to be chopping carrots all day? Is it really that exciting? It ain’t.

You’re on your feet; you’re mentally, you’re physically pushed every single day. There’s nowhere to hide, you’re exposed all the time. I say all the time, rock bands do one, two concerts a week but we do 14 – lunch and dinner. A hundred customers they walk in, they watch us, the look at us, they applaud or they go, ‘this is a s**t concert; I’m outta here and I’m not coming back.’ So for me it’s about inspiring my staff, driving them, making sure that they’re around for a long time, not the short-term. So the right people, that’s what it’s about.