Make Restaurants Profitable

How to build world-class hospitality, train a restaurant or bar team that wins awards, and run a hospitality business that gets onto The World's 50 Best Bars list. If you're a restaurant owner, café owner or bar owner who wants to understand what separates the best in the world from everyone else — this is the episode.

Maybe Sammy isn't just one of the best bars in Sydney.

It's one of the best bars on the planet.

Seven years running on The World's 50 Best Bars list. Five-time winner of Best Bar in Australasia. The inaugural win...

How to handle restaurant owner burnout, modernise a family restaurant business without losing what made it special, and raise your prices when you're scared people won't pay them. Four real restaurant owners. Four totally different problems. Honest answers, fast.

You asked. Tim answered.

In this Q&A special, four owners from around the world wrote in with the kind of problems that don't show up on the P&L — but quietly eat away at the business and the operator behind it.

If you've ever told yourself the numbers are "fine" while privately falling ou...

How a second-generation restaurant owner took over a 25-year family business with 18 venues across Sydney and refuses to let it go corporate. Daniel Drakopoulos on running SRG Hospitality, scaling without losing the heart, and what most family businesses get wrong.

Daniel Drakopoulos didn't choose hospitality. He was born into it.
He was polishing cutlery at 13 in the family's first restaurant — Aqua Dining at Milsons Point — opened by his parents Bill and Kathleen in 2000. 26 years later, he's just stepped up as co-Managing Director of SRG Hospitality alongside his brother Perry, with his dad finally easing back after a qu...

What's coming for hospo in June: the 4.75% award wage hike confirmed, payday super landing on 1 July, and the looming trust tax changes that could double-tax small business owners. If you're a restaurant owner, café owner or bar owner in Australia, here's exactly what's coming and what to do about it.

Three things landed on hospitality this month, and all three need action.

In this month's industry update, Tim sits down with Wes Lambert — CEO of ARCA and the man in Parliament advocating for every café and restaurant in Australia — to break down the confirmed 4.75% award wage r...

James "Jimmy" Hurlston was studying intellectual property law when he decided he'd had enough.

So he quit, ate over 800 burgers in a year, wrote The Burger Book, and three years later opened Easey's — the now-iconic Collingwood burger joint with a train carriage on the roof, graffiti walls, and a rotating cast of Melbourne's hospitality and street art scene.

Eleven years on, Easey's is still standing. But James says he wouldn't open a burger shop today.

In this episode, he sits down with Tim to talk about how Easey's actually survived, the failed Sydney ex...

Rob Comiskey runs one of the biggest hospitality groups in Australia.

8 venues. 1,000+ staff. And another 6-7 venues under construction, including a $250 million expansion at Sandstone Point that will bring the area's first 5-star resort.

The Comiskey Group's portfolio reads like a who's who of iconic Queensland venues — Eatons Hill Hotel (where Prince, Ice Cube and Post Malone have all played), Sandstone Point Hotel, the BIG4 holiday resort that's the highest selling in Australia, plus the Dakabin, Mundy, Samford, Doonan and Eumundi.

But the real story isn't the scale. It's what Rob, his brother an...

Cam Henderson and his wife Jill opened The Winey Cow in Mornington, Victoria in 2014.

For nearly a decade it became one of the Mornington Peninsula's most loved cafés — Cafe of the Year, Best Breakfast Restaurant Victoria, the lot.
Then COVID happened. Three years of opening, closing, opening, closing. By the end of it, Cam was mentally beat up. So he turned to Jill and said: "I think we need to move."

Two weeks of quarantine in Cairns later, they landed on the Gold Coast — into a house they'd never seen, a school they'd never...

You asked. Tim answered.

Four real owners. Four totally different problems. And the kind of straight-up answers that come from someone who's worked with over 2,000 venues across the world.

In this Q&A special, Tim breaks down what's actually broken — and exactly what to do about it.

This episode covers:

00:00 – How do you build consistent revenue when your fixed location is unpredictable?
05:00 – How do you manage labour cost during quiet periods without gutting service?
09:00 – What do you do when your team doesn't care anymore?
12:00 – How do you measure true profi...

The federal budget just dropped. The surcharge ban is creeping closer. And the next round of wage rises is about to land.

In this month's industry update, Tim sits down with Wes Lambert — CEO of ARCA and the man in Parliament advocating for every café and restaurant in Australia — to break down what's just happened, what's coming, and what you need to be doing about it right now.

It's the most direct conversation we've had yet.

If you're already break-even, you need to hear this.

You'll hear:

00:00 – Wes is back fr...

Rabih Yanni has spent 33 years in hospitality.

Nine venues across nine different postcodes. Currently runs Botanical Hotel in South Yarra — the iconic Melbourne pub he's brought back to life since 2019. Founded South Yarra Deli during COVID and took it national.

He's the kind of operator who can walk into a venue, look around, and tell you in five minutes what's broken and how to fix it.

But the line that stopped Tim in this conversation was this:
"You never own a business. The community does. Your role is to navigate that community ex...

Julian Cincotta grew up cooking at his family's café in Western Sydney.

He went on to train under Neil Perry at Rockpool, won Young Chef of the Year, staged at some of the best restaurants in the world — and then opened a fried chicken and champagne bar in Surry Hills with a sneaker wall and a Wu-Tang soundtrack.

Two weeks after they opened, Wu-Tang Clan walked in.

That was ten years ago.

In this episode, Julian sits down with Tim to talk through the whole decade — the concept nobody believed in, the t...

Dylan and Katrina started King of the Wings from a little food trailer in 2013.

They were among the first food trucks doing wings in Australia. No blueprint. No safety net. Just a gap in the market and a bet on themselves.

Thirteen years later they're running a restaurant, a food truck, popups and an interstate operation. But the road there was anything but straight.

A collab that went sideways on opening day. A food court concept that COVID killed two weeks in. A Commonwealth Games that turned Surfers Paradise into a ghost town...

Martin Lange has opened eight bars in Brisbane since 2006.

He currently runs four. Takes three and a half months off a year. And has trained bartenders now working in some of the best bars in Paris and London.

He didn't do it by cutting corners or chasing trends.

He did it by committing to a 10-year minimum on every lease, never taking over another venue's location, spending hundreds of thousands on R&D, and building a team culture so strong that the staff who leave for bigger money keep coming back.

...

John Rivera spent his twenties in fine dining kitchens.

Working every Saturday. Missing birthdays. Missing weddings.

Then he opened his own restaurant — and found himself video-calling his kids from the pass just to see them awake.

Something had to change.

In this episode, John — chef and owner of Ascal Restaurant, Inman bar, and Filipino gelato concept Carton — talks about the decision that shifted everything. The boundaries he set, the systems he built, and how he went from working every day on the tools to dropping his kids at kinder before heading into w...

You asked. Tim answered.

In this Q&A special, four real owners share the exact problems keeping them up at night — and Tim gets into the specifics of each one.  

No fluff. No theory. Just honest, practical answers to the questions most hospo owners are too afraid to say out loud.

This episode covers:
00:00 – Is handmade baking even financially viable anymore or should I just switch to frozen?
07:00 – Standards are slipping. How do I fix it without becoming the boss everyone hates?
14:00 – Delivery apps are 45% of my sales. I have no idea i...

On the 31st of March, two major blows landed on the hospitality industry.

And most owners didn't see them coming.

In this month's industry update, Tim sits down with Wes Lambert — CEO of ARCA and the man in Parliament having these conversations on behalf of every café and restaurant owner in Australia — to break down exactly what's changed, what's coming, and what you need to do about it right now

.

This isn't doom and gloom for the sake of it. It's the information you need to make the right...

Tony Kelly had multiple restaurants across three states.
Then one day, he walked into work and was handed a letter.
He was out.

In this episode, Tony breaks down the real story behind the comeback — the mistakes, the systems, the partnership lessons, the financial discipline, and the mindset shift that changed everything.

If you’ve ever felt stretched, betrayed, burnt out, or one bad month away from disaster… This one will hit home.

You’ll hear:
00:00 – The day Tony got forced out of his own business

Jenna Sanders was 21 years old, a single mum with two kids…
And decided to buy a bakery.
No systems. No tech. No real plan.
Just grit, fresh product, and a vision to turn a small country bakery into a destination people would drive hours for.
Fast forward 10 years:
4 locations. 140 staff. Thousands of donuts sold every single day.
And one viral moment that changed everything.

In this episode, Jenna breaks down the real story behind Kenilworth Bakery. From $500 days and handwritten notebooks… to going viral with a kilo donut… to building a scalab...

Welcome back to our monthly Hospitality Industry Update, where Tim sits down with Wes Lambert from ARCA to break down what’s happening behind the scenes in Canberra — and what it means for restaurant, cafe and bar owners across Australia.

In this March update, we unpack the latest economic and industry developments impacting hospitality right now — including the growing number of venue closures, global supply chain disruptions, rising operating costs, and the upcoming Payday Super changes hitting in July.
We also talk about what operators should be doing now to prepare for the months ahead, why experi...

After 10 years running one of Melbourne’s most respected restaurants, Peter Gunn made a decision most owners struggle to make:
He closed it.

Not because the restaurant failed.
Not because the food wasn’t good enough.
Not because the guests stopped coming.
But because deep down... he knew it was time.

In this episode, Peter shares the full story behind Ides — from starting as a monthly popup, to building a decade-long restaurant brand, to the moment he realised the business he built was no longer the one he wanted...

Justin Newton had it all on paper—multiple venues, awards, a booming reputation—but behind the scenes, he was burned out, emotionally exhausted, and quietly unraveling.

In this brutally honest episode, Justin shares what finally broke him, how he got clear on what really matters, and why walking away from two venues helped him build a leaner, stronger, more profitable business than ever before.

If you've ever felt trapped by your own success, this is the episode you need.

You’ll hear:
00:00 – Burnout, identity loss, and feeling like a failure
07:00 – The illusion o...

AI isn’t coming for hospitality.
It’s already here.
From missed phone calls costing you reservations… to real-time dynamic pricing… to AI agents handling guest conversations 24/7 — the gap between early adopters and everyone else is widening fast.
In this episode, Tim sits down with Bianca Brady, co-founder & CEO of FY.ai and MIT-trained data scientist, to break down what’s actually happening in the industry — without the hype.
This isn’t about robots replacing chefs.
It’s about removing admin noise, answering every call, understanding your data, and giving owners their time back so they can focus...

Staff showing up late (or not at all), demanding flexibility but giving none back, forgetting everything you trained last week—and that one toxic "rockstar" who's quietly destroying your team?

You're not alone.

In this Q&A Special, Tim tackles real questions from hospitality owners struggling with modern staffing challenges—and gives you the scripts, mindset, and systems to take control without burning out.

You'll hear:
00:00 – Why flexible staff are breaking the roster
01:10 – What to do when the team won't work nights or weekends
03:00 – How to set (and enforce) non-negotiable expectatio...

This is the first of our new monthly hospitality industry updates-where Tim sits down with Wes Lambert from ARCA to break down what's happening behind the scenes that every venue owner needs to know.

In this February edition, we cover everything from upcoming 30% junior wage increases, a potential ban on debit card surcharges, RBA interest rate outlook, and how to get ahead of the 5%+ wage rise expected in 2026.

If you've been too busy in the day-to-day to track it all-this is your shortcut.

You'll hear:
00:00 - Why this new monthly series exists<...

Watch the full CHEFS HAT CALCULATOR TRAINING here: https://discover.foodiecoaches.com/chefs-hat-calculator-v1 

Richard and Jade’s food truck went viral overnight. Massive lines, booming sales, non-stop growth.
But behind the scenes?
They were three months behind on rent, losing money, and working 80-hour weeks just to stay afloat. The pressure nearly broke them—and their relationship.
In just six months, they turned it all around.
In this episode, they share how they took ownership, fixed their numbers, rebuilt their culture, and created a business (and life) they actually wanted—with a second venue n...

CK Chin didn’t plan on becoming a hospitality powerhouse. He just needed a night job. But what started as bouncing at a nightclub became the beginning of a remarkable journey—one that now includes Michelin recognition, multi-million dollar businesses, a 6-seat restaurant with a waitlist, a community art park, and a dance studio built with his wife.
This episode dives into how CK makes it all work—with heart, with humility, and with a relentless focus on people.

You’ll hear:
00:00 – CK’s unlikely start in hospitality
06:00 – What real hospitality looks like behind the scenes

Luke Mangan got asked to leave school at 15.

No HSC. No plan. No backup.

Just a two-week work experience at one of Australia's best restaurants — and a quiet feeling that maybe this was something he could do.

What followed was a career that took him from washing dishes in Melbourne, to a cold call that landed him a stage at a 3-star Michelin kitchen in London, to opening Salt in Sydney the year of the Olympics, to restaurants in Tokyo, Singapore, Indonesia, and cruise ships across the Pacific.

But it wasn't a...

Tony Kelly had multiple restaurants across three states.

Then one day, he walked into work and was handed a letter.

He was out.

In this episode, Tony breaks down the real story behind the comeback — the mistakes, the systems, the partnership lessons, the financial discipline, and the mindset shift that changed everything.

If you’ve ever felt stretched, betrayed, burnt out, or one bad month away from disaster…

This one will hit home.

You’ll hear:

00:00 – The day Tony got forced out of his own busine...

Jenna Sanders was 21 years old, a single mum with two kids…

And decided to buy a bakery.

No systems. No tech. No real plan.

Just grit, fresh product, and a vision to turn a small country bakery into a destination people would drive hours for.

Fast forward 10 years:

4 locations. 140 staff. Thousands of donuts sold every single day.

And one viral moment that changed everything.

In this episode, Jenna breaks down the real story behind Kenilworth Bakery. From $500 days and handwritten notebooks… to goin...

Welcome back to our monthly Hospitality Industry Update, where Tim sits down with Wes Lambert from ARCA to break down what’s happening behind the scenes in Canberra — and what it means for restaurant, cafe and bar owners across Australia.

In this March update, we unpack the latest economic and industry developments impacting hospitality right now — including the growing number of venue closures, global supply chain disruptions, rising operating costs, and the upcoming Payday Super changes hitting in July.

We also talk about what operators should be doing now to prepare for the months ahead, why ex...

After 10 years running one of Melbourne’s most respected restaurants, Peter Gunn made a

decision most owners struggle to make:

He closed it.

Not because the restaurant failed.

Not because the food wasn’t good enough.

Not because the guests stopped coming.

But because deep down... he knew it was time.

In this episode, Peter shares the full story behind Ides — from starting as a monthly popup,

to building a decade-long restaurant brand, to the moment he realised the business he

built...

AI isn’t coming for hospitality.

It’s already here.

From missed phone calls costing you reservations… to real-time dynamic pricing… to AI agents handling guest conversations 24/7 — the gap between early adopters and everyone else is widening fast.

In this episode, Tim sits down with Bianca Brady, co-founder & CEO of FY.ai and MIT-trained data scientist, to break down what’s actually happening in the industry — without the hype.

This isn’t about robots replacing chefs.

It’s about removing admin noise, answering every call, understanding your data, and giving owners thei...

Justin Newton had it all on paper—multiple venues, awards, a booming reputation—but behind the scenes, he was burned out, emotionally exhausted, and quietly unraveling.

In this brutally honest episode, Justin shares what finally broke him, how he got clear on what really matters, and why walking away from two venues helped him build a leaner, stronger, more profitable business than ever before.

If you've ever felt trapped by your own success, this is the episode you need.

You’ll hear:

00:00 – Burnout, identity loss, and feeling like a failure

07:00...

Staff showing up late (or not at all), demanding flexibility but giving none back, forgetting everything you trained last week—and that one toxic "rockstar" who's quietly destroying your team?

You're not alone.

In this Q&A Special, Tim tackles real questions from hospitality owners struggling with modern staffing challenges—and gives you the scripts, mindset, and systems to take control without burning out.

You'll hear: 00:00 – Why flexible staff are breaking the roster 01:10 – What to do when the team won't work nights or weekends 03:00 – How to set (and enforce) non-negotiable expectations 04:15 – That "skilled but toxic" s...

This is the first of our new monthly hospitality industry updates-where Tim sits down with Wes Lambert from ARCA to break down what's happening behind the scenes that every venue owner needs to know.

In this February edition, we cover everything from upcoming 30% junior wage increases, a potential ban on debit card surcharges, RBA interest rate outlook, and how to get ahead of the 5%+ wage rise expected in 2026.

If you've been too busy in the day-to-day to track it all-this is your shortcut.

You'll...

At one point, Tara felt like she had completely lost control—not just of her business, but of who she was. Burnt out, drowning in debt, and facing bankruptcy, she found herself isolating, second-guessing every decision, and questioning everything.

But what she did next changed everything.

This episode is a raw look at what it takes to come back stronger: the brutal self-talk, the wrong advice, the fearless decisions, and the one shift that 5Xed her revenue almost overnight. Tara also shares how she rebuilt her culture, transformed her food costs, and built a team th...

Watch the full CHEFS HAT CALCULATOR TRAINING here: https://discover.foodiecoaches.com/chefs-hat-calculator-v1 Richard and Jade’s food truck went viral overnight. Massive lines, booming sales, non-stop growth.

But behind the scenes?They were three months behind on rent, losing money, and working 80-hour weeks just to stay afloat. The pressure nearly broke them—and their relationship.

In just six months, they turned it all around.

In this episode, they share how they took ownership, fixed their numbers, rebuilt their culture, and created a business (and life) they actually wanted—with a second venue...

CK Chin didn’t plan on becoming a hospitality powerhouse. He just needed a night job. But what started as bouncing at a nightclub became the beginning of a remarkable journey—one that now includes Michelin recognition, multi-million dollar businesses, a 6-seat restaurant with a waitlist, a community art park, and a dance studio built with his wife.

This episode dives into how CK makes it all work—with heart, with humility, and with a relentless focus on people.

You’ll hear:00:00 – CK’s unlikely start in hospitality06:00 – What real hospitality looks like behind the scenes13:50 –...

Vanessa went from corporate HR executive to pub owner. She joins us today to discuss the lessons she’s learned, and the structures she put in place to turn a failing business around in less than 24 months. We discuss how to lead staff as a team rather than just managing them, get everyone onboard with making the business as successful as possible, and when necessary, make the hard decisions.You’ll hear:00:00 - 70% staff quit in month one06:29 - Why throwing out corporate structures was a big mistake10:16 - How the break even point removed all stress14:08 - Numbers over feel...

From dealing with staff not respecting their friend turned superviser, to having a fully packed restaurant that still isn’t making money, today we’re answering YOUR questions in this special Q&A episode of Make Restaurants Profitable.You’ll hear:00:00 - There are good problems to have, and bad problems: This is a good one02:43 - How to know when to exit vs fix06:02 - Don’t repeat history, make a plan06:43 - Maximize profit while you're busy 08:30 - Promoted best worker to supervisor, but the team won't listen to them09:03 - Being great ≠ wanting to lead09:35 - How to reframe...