We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with one of Australia’s most renowned and highly acclaimed wine connoisseurs. Stuart Knox is the owner & sommelier of Sydney’s Fix Wine Bar + Restaurant. He was kind enough to join us in the first episode of our newly revamped podcast series. In the interview we discuss how Stuart and other businesses have been affected by COVID-19 and how the shift to remote work presents the potential to fundamentally transform Sydney’s CBD and the hospitality industry.
There’s a lot of genuine confusion about the award wage
According to Stuart, the hospitality industry has been deeply dysfunctional for some time. Even before COVID-19 the industry had been rocked by several high-profile wage scandals related to the prolific underpayment of staff. However, Stuart argues that onlookers should be wary of reducing this problem to simple greed alone. The nature of the industry makes the regulation of working hours more difficult to manage than many may realise.
“When I first started working in the hospitality industry, we worked 50, 60 or 70 hours a week. Award wages were never raised in conversation,” said Stuart.
The historic practice of long, arduous hours has for some time been adopted as part of the industry’s norm and many well-established restaurants have struggled to adapt to new expectations around working conditions.
“When I was at 41 we had our first bookings at 6pm, which meant that our floor staff had to start at 3pm because it took us three hours to get the restaurant ready, iron all the table cloths, polish everything that needed polishing and so on. You can imagine on a Friday night you’ve got 300 people booked into a restaurant seating 150 and you’re turning tables over. If the staff started at 3pm, they all have their half hour meal break at 8pm, which is of course in the middle of service when the restaurant is at its busiest. You can imagine how well that works – it’s just really hard,” he said.
Of course, Stuart doesn’t deny that there are abuses within the industry and owners who deliberately take advantage of young staff members who perhaps aren’t aware of their rights.
“There’s still a lot of restaurants doing a lot of bad things. I know there’s a lot of students out there getting paid way below the award rate.”
Stuart argues that restaurant owners have a legal obligation to ensure their staff are paid fairly and according to the award, however, he also argues that some of the conditions imposed by the award are ‘impractical to say the least.’
A post COVID-19 world may transform Sydney for the better
As a restaurant located in the heartland of Sydney’s central business district, we asked Stuart about how the lockdown and transition to remote work has affected his business.
“The CBD is a whole new animal these days I think at best we’re running at 25 percent of what we would expect. The afternoon drinks session we used to have is non-existent.”
However, Stuart concedes that his venue FIX has been slightly shielded from the worst effects of the lockdown due to their proximity to the legal section of the CBD and therefore are still frequented by barristers and those coming in and out of chambers.
We also discussed the possibility of a permanent shift to remote work for many professionals and what this could mean for establishments like FIX, which rely heavily on corporate foot traffic from those working in the CBD.
“I talk to a lot of my regulars in the legal and banking professions and they’re looking at reducing their retail or commercial floor space by 30- 40 or 50 percent. That to me sees a whole paradigm shift in the CBD I’m excited and terrified at the same time. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of those commercial spaces turned into residential spaces.”
If companies were to allow a significant amount of their employees to work from home, the subsequent opening up of space in the CBD could potentially be an answer to Sydney’s housing crisis and lead to an increase in desperately needed affordable housing. Furthermore, this presents the potential to resurrect Sydney’s long mourned nightlife.
“If you get more residents in the city, this encourages a night-time economy because people are here and they’re out and about. Look at our climate in Sydney – it’s perfect for night life.”
Stuart argues that if companies were to embrace staggered start and finish times amongst their employees this could be a huge advantage for hospitality businesses.
“Going back to the wage thing we need to put our prices up to cover wages and ensure we’re paying our staff fairly. Right now, the market’s not ready for price rises, however if I could do two sittings at lunch and three sittings at diner, I don’t actually need to put my prices up because my fixed costs haven’t changed but my turnovers have gone up”
Certainly, one positive to come out of the COVID-19 crisis is the adoption of flexible working practices and the realisation that many of us are perfectly capable of working from home.
“I’m sure if the alarm went off at 8.30am most of us could probably sleep in and get to work at 10.00am. When you look at a big percentage of the CBD workforce it’s in areas such as corporate finance, banking and law, a lot of those guys are working on an international time frame anyway. The typical 9-5 doesn’t suit them at all because the guys they’re dealing with are in the states or Europe, so opening up the options is a great thing.”
What needs to change
To address the plague of no shows, Stuart argues that asking for a credit card when taking a booking needs to become adopted as an industry norm post pandemic.
“No shows are a nightmare at the best of times, but when we’ve got restricted spaces they can be devastating. We all heard the nightmare stories when NSW first instituted restrictions with a max of 10 people and six or eight didn’t show up. We understand in the CBD worker’s meetings go over time, or people get stuck in court. If people cancel within 2 hours of the booking we won’t charge you, but if you don’t turn up without cancelling then I’m going to charge you $50”
To get Stuart’s insights into the future of the Australian wine industry’s relationship with China in the wake of espionage allegations, as well as his advice to those interested in starting a restaurant, and of course his expert opinion on the perfect wine pairing to fried chicken, be sure to check out our full interview with Stuart here. You can also check out some of Stuart’s pieces for the Real Review here To keep updated on all the exciting things happening at Fix Bar + Restaurant be sure to follow them on social media
We plan to catch up with Stuart soon to further discuss the paradigm shift to remote work and whether this can indeed transform the hospitality industry and Sydney’s nightlife for the better so be sure to stay tuned.