7 minute read
FEATURE: FOOD FOCUS
From zero to 100
Catering HQ is bouncing back with new clubs, new concepts and a new 1600sqm warehouse
STEVE SIDD DIDN’T sit back and wait for something to happen during COVID-19. Instead, the catering industry veteran of 26 years decided to do something positive by planning a way out and looking ahead.
“There’s always something,” he says, after previously living through the acronyms of FBT and GFC.
Having started in fine dining in St Ives way back when, he moved into his first club, the Royal Motor Yacht Club, at Newport in Sydney’s far Northern Beaches and that was followed by winning the catering tender for Cronulla Sharks Leagues Club at the opposite end of the city. Something had to give. The move south was when expansion happened, with Club Central at Hurstville joining the fold, then Georges River Sailing Club at Sans Souci and Bundeena RSL, plus a little consulting on the side.
Moorebank Sports Club came on board 11 years ago. Castle Hill RSL, which had been run internally, was offered up three years ago. While they lost the tender to Trippas White, six months later, the club came calling.
“I spoke at a Clubs NSW seminar in Queensland with David O’Neil who was CEO (of Castle Hill RSL) and we were on a panel together about insourcing (catering) versus outsourcing and were going head to head and we still laugh about it that so many years down the track we are now doing his catering,” says Steve.
STEVE SIDD
After proving themselves, the group has now handed over Lynwood Country Club and Club Parramatta to Catering HQ. Sidd and business partner Albie Aldahawi have also recently taken over the kitchens and restaurants of Pittwater RSL, Ryde Eastwood Leagues and Wests Ashfield Leagues Club. Add to that several venues for the Mingara Leisure Group – Springwood Sports, Mingara Recreation Club and Mazi restaurant at Lantern Club in Roselands – which makes 11 venues, 26 dining concepts, 40 event spaces and 350 staff, although Steve admits they are still 120 employees short.
Despite that, Catering HQ took on the three new clubs as they worked through the pandemic, rolling out a new dumpling bar at Wests Ashfield, and launching two new concepts at existing clubs – an American-style bar and restaurant, Short Cut, at Castle Hill RSL and a Mexican cantina concept, tentatively called Spiked, at Club Parramatta.
On top of that Catering HQ is putting the finishing touches to a spacious 1600sqm warehouse and head office in Gregory Hills (see breakout). On top of that Steve has invested in Hospitality Genie, a cloud-based IT solution for hospitality and kitchen management.
“I think what happens with clubs now and what they come to realise is every area within the club has to be profitable. So the days when they used to fund the food outlets (through gaming), they can’t do that anymore. Not only that, clubs are now looking at expanding future developments, they do their staged works, such as here (at Castle Hill), independent living apartments… “Catering is too hard. The key difference between us and the club is that we only look after food. Our 100 per cent focus is on food, we have no other noise, no other distractions. They are looking at gaming, bars, amalgamations – there is all this other stuff going on.”
The first lockdown in March 2020 saw patronage go from “100 to zero just like that” and as the doors opened and closed, they minimised their menus.
“We’ve become resilient over the duration,” he says. “Albie and I still got up every morning we still went to our office, we still worked on strategies, (we asked ourselves:) What is this going to look like? What are we going to learn?”
The first decision was to give all their food to charity before riding the rollercoaster of various lockdowns.
“Then we reopened again with one dining concept at every club, the same limited menu across all the clubs and ran very tight, with limited staff.”
Supply chain and staff rosters had to be checked and reorganized daily, in the event they could reopen. While they lost alot of staff the first time around, before the second lockdown they had already reorganized their strategy. And when it did happen, they were ready and shut things off very quickly.
“When we came out of lockdown, we came out with the same menu as we didn't know what to expect,” he said. “Covid for us, although it was bad, it was hard and depressing, we didn’t sit on our hands and feel sorry for ourselves.”
The pair also got to work on a “Getting Back To Business” plan to be implemented as soon as the doors were allowed to open again. They still engaged with staff via online trivia nights or cheese making courses, delivering packs to staff homes and conducting the classes over Zoom.
“We kept that engagement,” Steve said.“Just touching base, just keeping connected, making sure they were alright.” Staff are also offered progression opportunities and training, as well as equity in the business, vouchers to help recruit other staff and working four days on three days off. And more changes are to come in the club dining scene.
Because of QR code table ordering, Steve says the casualisation of club dining spaces inevitable, but there will be no buzzers at Catering HQ.
“We call it casual dining, however, we still want to offer them a restaurant experience and the way our menu is presented with chips and salad or mash and veg. It’s not steak and three veg. And we still deliver to tables.”
Meanwhile, ShortCut has opened at Castle Hill RSL and features a pimped-American menu including, ribs, burgers, hotdogs and steaks, alongside plant-based offerings including “100-per cent Not Chicken” and a vegan fish dish. The Parramatta cantina, Spiked, is slated to open next month. Expect to see some ’grammable dishes posted from those venues sometime soon.
“We’ve got to be ahead of the game and keep things going otherwise you are always going to be on the back foot, that’s why we are throwing a lot of energy into the business,” he says.
“We don’t want to be the biggest, but we want to be the best.”
NEW HUB
A NEW multimillion-dollar warehouse at Gregory Hills will allow Catering HQ to control costs even further as it features admin and finance, plus a production kitchen, cool room, freezer and training rooms, says boss Steve Sidd.
“We will be buying directly from abattoirs, so we’ve got our beef and out pork – whole primal cuts. We are basically cutting out the distributors and the middle man because what we found during this time (of COVID) as well was that they were dictating to us, what products they wanted us to buy,” he says. “We want to stick to the brands. Say we want to buy the Ebony Black Angus brand from Kilcoy in Queensland?
“We buy direct, it comes to our head office, we portion, dice it, mince it for bolognaise, burgers, patties. . .”
Group Executive Chef Mitch Walton will work alongside club executive chefs to develop menus at Gregory Hills with the strategy to include a core menu of which 60 per cent will be the same across all venues, but customised by 40 cent to suit the individual club’s demographic. There are 41 items on the main menu, including the nonnegotiables such as burgers, steaks and schnitzels, but the menu changes every quarter. Hot trends are also monitored. Short Cut at Castle Hill RSL, for example, will feature the latest in plant-based offerings including “100 percent Not Chicken” dish and vegan “fish” dish.
“Plant-based is massive,” he says. “All our menus now have a vegan, gluten-free section at every venue. Everyone wants it.”
