You know, if someone comes in and says, you know, I had a bad entrée, you know, they
don't go, oh, I had a bad entrée by Bob in the larder section.
It was like, you know, I went to Ari and I had a bad meal, map, and we really didn't
know anything about the finance side of it.
And I remember, you know, months into it, we think, God, we're doing so well, we've
got so much money, but we hadn't been paying anyone.
Hi, I'm Sally Patton, editor of BOSS from the Australian Financial Review.
And welcome to 15 minutes with the BOSS, a podcast about success and failure and everything
And along the way, we're hoping to get some great advice from our leaders.
My guest today is Matt Moran, a chef, restaurateur and farmer.
Matt, hi, thank you so much for coming into the studio.
I'm just trying to think whether I'm the failure or the success.
You're the cook and the leader.
Now, Matt, you own 12 restaurants, including Aria, The Chop House, North Bondi Fish, and
Chiswick, and you have a staff of more than 600.
That sounds like an awful lot of meals you're serving every week.
Are you exhausted?
Well, I'm not personally doing every one, so, you know, if I didn't have all the incredible
staff that work for me, I wouldn't be here, obviously, but I wouldn't have a clue how
The Chopra Bar itself would be the biggest one, and yeah, that's thousands and thousands.
Yeah, it must be.
Thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to allowing us to spend
15 minutes with the boss.
Happy to be here.
As promised, we've only got 15 minutes.
Let's start the clock right now.
So my first question is about your morning routine.
What time do you get up?
Strangely enough, even though I get a bit late, I'm an early riser, so I'm generally
I live on the Eastern Beaches, so I tend to go to the gym downstairs at my house, or I
go to another one up in Waverley.
And then I love to have a swim afterwards, no matter what time of year it is.
To me, I just say if you get in the water every day, you just have a better day.
And do you do the wetsuit thing in winter, or are you just straight in there?
Straight in there.
Even if it's only for, you know, 30 seconds a minute, it makes a hell of a difference,
you know, it clears your head, I think.
And with the gym, how long do you do the gym for?
Oh, you know, around an hour.
In my profession, you know, you're eating all the time and quite easily could blow out.
You know, you have to have some structure, which I've always had.
But I also don't drink during the week, very rarely, unless I'm away, so very clear headed
from Monday to Friday.
But then comes the weekend, and you know, all bets are off.
So would you say that you're a routine person?
You know, the mornings and possibly the nights, but because I'm not just sitting in an office
every day, or I'm not just in one restaurant, every day is different.
You know, I have a farm, so I'm at the farm a little bit.
We breed cattle, we breed sheep, or fat lambs, should I say, and some pigs, which we use
in the restaurants.
Pretty much a lot of the produce comes straight into Sydney, into my restaurants.
There's not one day is like, and even the guys at work with me always say, you know,
every day is different.
So my next question is, has there been a pivotal moment in your career, which changed the trajectory
of what you were doing, or changed the way you lead people in some way?
Look, there's been lots of pivotal moments, you know, one from when I first left school
and a boy, young boy, 15 years of age, you know, living out at Blacktown, the Western
suburbs, and then cooking, you know, that was pivotal because young boys from Blacktown
didn't become cooks.
That was the biggest turning point, I suppose, when I bought my first restaurant, Paddington
in Bistro, that was a big turning point, all of a sudden, I had the responsibility of being
a business owner, and I was only 22 when I did that.
Wow, how scary was that at the time?
It wasn't that scary, to be honest, because I had no idea what I was doing.
You know, it was just a little bit of fun.
And I always thought, you know, I'm young enough, if something goes wrong, I can always
But I'd been cooking for seven years, and I was, you know, a head chef in a couple of
big high profile restaurants, and I just really wanted to do something for myself.
And at the time, I had a business partner, Pete Sullivan, who was a little bit older
than me, and he ran the floor, and I ran the kitchen, and we really didn't know anything
about the finance side of it.
And I remember, you know, months into it, we think, oh, we're doing so well, we've got
so much money, but we hadn't been paying anyone, with staff, obviously, but not the
So, you know, we decided to bring someone in who knew a little bit more about the finance
side of it, and then we're on our way again.
But in saying that, you know, I basically was sponging off people that knew more about
business than what I did.
So what did you learn from that first experience of running a restaurant?
There's more to it than just a kitchen and the floor, you know, a chef and a waiter.
And I knew that, but I just didn't really, you know, sort of comprehend it.
So did you learn something like the fact that you needed to have a really good team of people
around you who had skills that you didn't have to bring to the whole operation?
I still have that to this day.
The restaurant industry is pretty hard, and I've always sort of surrounded myself with
people that knew more about it than what I did, and that's how I learned to be the businessman,
So what's the hardest thing about the hospitality business?
Being in hospitality, it's a big ship.
You've sometimes got to turn that ship around pretty quickly, whether it's weather related
or whether it's COVID related.
You've just got to be really nimble.
A great example that people understand what I'm talking about is Opera Bar.
Coming in on a Friday night, there's the opera happening and there's, you know, people around
and tourists in the middle of summer.
It's an incredibly busy place.
And then you get a massive storm that will come over top.
That could mean that your revenue that night is 60, 65% less than what you thought it would
So you've still got all those staff.
You've got to move very quickly and be very nimble.
Does that mean you've got to ask the staff to go home early or you've just got to find
savings from somewhere else in the business?
For all of those things.
You know, they have to do X amount of hours and the full-time staff obviously have to
be there, you know, and then you get them to do other things, whether it's prep for
the next day or cleaning.
But you know, those casual stuff, you try and get rid of as many as you possibly can.
And you know, you're losing money that day.
There's no question.
So I guess you've also just got to be prepared for that financially.
Yeah, absolutely.
And cut costs when you can and try and make that margin.
It's all about margin in our business.
But at the same time, that margin, you've got to be careful because if you try and cut
things too much, you know, food quality or service, you know, that'll come back and bite
Being nimble is a very good piece of advice.
My third question from this section is what's the best piece of career advice you've ever
I always say to people, you know, if they want to come into hospitality, you know, you've
got to love it because it's damn too bloody hard to make money.
I'm just very lucky that I fell into it and I have a real passion for it.
The famous saying is, you know, do what you love in life and you never have to work another
Don't get me wrong.
I have the odd bad day, but I can honestly say that I love what I do.
And you know, that's something that I've tried to instil in my kids.
Don't do something because, you know, your parents are doing something and do it for
And if you're not happy doing it, you know, change.
So when you talk about putting people in around you who have got skills that perhaps
you don't have, what do you think you, what are your core skills besides the fact that
you can cook extremely well?
I'll be really honest with you.
I surround myself with people now that are probably better cooks than I am.
And I think what I'm good at these days is, is managing people.
So with managing people, is there a secret to that?
Yeah, absolutely.
You've got to give them some sort of ownership.
If they don't, you know, they won't stay, if you're dictating to them all the time,
you know, you've got to let them be creative, otherwise they will leave and go somewhere
You know, I've had probably 20 or 30 chefs that have been with me for over 15 years.
That's not just, you know, paying them properly and looking after them, but it's obviously
giving them a say in what we're doing and let them feel as though that they've got,
you know, a say at the table.
So give them autonomy.
Well, thank you on that note.
We're going to take a short break.
And when we come back, we're going to open our chatterbox.
Welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss.
I'm here with Matt Moran, a chef, restaurateur and farmer and a boss.
Now, Matt, it's time for our lovely game called the chatterbox.
In front of you, you'll see this lovely brown box inside, which are 15 to 20 questions all
folded up on little bits of paper.
I'm going to ask you to pick out them one by one, have a forage and I will then of course
Put them all on the top, the ones you want me to answer, it's the one on the bottom.
Ah, what's your pet hate in the office, perhaps in your case, in the restaurant?
I do have an office, but let's go back to the kitchen.
There's always a lot of people around you in the kitchen, as obviously it's the heat
in the kitchen and there's a lot of stress.
I always say back in the day when I was in there full times, if things did get a little
bit heated, don't take it personal and just move on.
And it's just, you know, a quick blip in what we do.
But also, you know, pet hates used to be plates that were dirty and going out of the restaurant
or a waiter picking them up in the sauce, you know, running to one side or not looking
There's a million things in restaurants, I suppose.
When you are a perfectionist in the kitchen, you want everything to be perfect.
And then they pick up a plate and it, you know, sauce runs off a little bit or the plates
got fingerprints on it.
That's a pet hate.
And I think it's really good advice.
Don't take something personally.
Just move on with it.
Like we all have our moments.
That's probably something that we could all use a little bit in our lives.
Yeah, look, you know, kitchens are, you know, they're highly stressed.
You know, you've got a certain amount of time to get a dish out and they've all got to come
And it's like an orchestra, you know, the conductor at the front, I suppose, the person
that's doing the pass and it's all down to seconds.
You know, if someone comes in and says, you know, I had a bad entree, you know, they don't
go, oh, I had a bad entree by Bob in the larder section.
It was like, you know, I went to Ari and I had a bad meal, Matt Moran.
So back in the day, I was probably a little bit more full on than what I am these days.
But you've learned to calm that down a bit.
Oh, it's no questions.
I have for a long time.
I think kids started that many, many years ago.
Speaking of stress in the kitchen, have you seen the bear?
Yeah, look, I have.
It wasn't really for me because they were just sort of running around the kitchen making
out that they were busy, but they actually weren't doing anything.
And if any of my staff spoke to me like that in a kitchen, there would be there'd be fireworks,
So they weren't actually working that hard.
They were just spending time doing not much.
They were making themselves look incredibly busy, but they actually weren't really doing
You know, knowing kitchens inside out, you know, you just know straight away that, you
know, they're not real chefs.
Tell me about a time where you failed at something.
How did you recover?
And what did you learn?
You know, I have failed.
There's been some businesses that haven't gone well.
I started a big pub up in Brisbane called the Little Big House and sort of misread the
location and had it for a couple of years and sort of struggled on it.
It was in a precinct that there are other tenants that were meant to be leased out and
So the area was kind of doomed.
And the thing that I learnt out of it, probably most, is to make sure that you know that there's
going to be other businesses around you and location.
And if you look at a lot of my businesses, they're all in iconic locations, whether it's
Bondi Beach or Chiswick Gardens in Malara or North Bondi Fish or Opera Bar, right in
front of the Opera House and looking straight at the Harbour Bridge.
So you know, location is a key part of having a great business.
And is that advice that you give to other restaurateurs?
Look, the advice I'd give to other restaurateurs is, you know, obviously it's not always going
to be on the water.
And, you know, I've got things like Chop House and the Art Gallery.
Try not to be one thing.
You know, restaurants, it's a lot more competitive these days and you need to be lots of things.
You don't just need to have good food.
You need to have good service.
You need to have a good wine list.
You need to have good acoustics.
You need to have a nice padded seat.
You need to have great ambience.
There's a multitude of things that you need for a successful restaurant these days.
You don't have to be the best in one category.
But if you can sort of be average in all of them, you're going to do all right.
Oh, this is perfect for you.
How did you choose this one?
What's your favourite meal to cook for a dinner party?
When I cook for people for dinner parties, I always think about, do I want to be stuck
in the kitchen the whole night or do I want to have everything prepared earlier?
You know, I can put some salads in the cool room and they're all ready to go.
They only need to be dressed.
I tend to always have like a potato glit or some sort of baked potato thing that I could
do and it's just reheating.
And then all I'm really doing at the end is finishing the protein, which could be a couple
steaks on the barbecue or it could be a maraca lamb that's probably already done and I can
And a dessert tends to be something that's possibly out of a bowl or a tart or some sort
of cake thing that I've made.
Tiramisu is quite common.
So at the time of the dinner party, you're really trying to sort of spend maximum time
with whoever you've got around rather than being in the kitchen.
Yeah, no one wants to be in the kitchen all night, you know, and I don't want them looking
I might give away too many secrets.
I was going to ask you for a salad secret because salads are my favourite thing.
I always go into a fruit and veg shop with no preconceived idea.
And generally what is in season is an abundance and it's also a lot cheaper because there's
And then I just make it up in my head from there.
For instance, now, you know, you go in and it's still tomato season, you know, tomatoes
are going to be fantastic.
You know, you've got some heirloom ones and you go, all right, well, what's going to
go great with a tomato?
You know, olive oil, you know, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.
So there's your basis of your dressing.
And then you think, right, so what else is good?
So you might go to the dairy section, you might see some burrata, you might see some
And what also goes with tomatoes, then you go and get your basil and then you might blanch
some beans if they're in season, some little baby peanuts, which they are, we're growing
them at Chiswick at the moment.
And you might sprinkle them over the top and then the basil on top and then you've got
I'll take that home with me.
On that note, well done.
You have survived the chatterbox.
I now have one last question that we ask all our guests.
And that is, if you had 12 months off, unencumbered, you could do anything you liked, what would
It still worked to a certain degree.
I love the farm and I love how much I'm learning about farming, you know, even though I grew
up on a farm and my father obviously ran it for a long period of time, but it's my happy
place and I love being there.
Even though it might mean that I'm working a little bit, I think if I had a year off,
I'd love to do that.
But then again, you know, I wouldn't mind traveling for a year too.
I was that kid that left school at 15 and got straight into work and doing a hundred
hours a week and never really stopped where a lot of people that I knew, you know, were
doing the backpacking thing and going over Europe.
So I don't know whether I could backpack anymore, maybe five-star backpack for a year, but that'd
I'd like to go somewhere for six months and learn a little bit more about the language
and the culture, which would be nice.
So your five-star backpacking would be pretty much anywhere or is it somewhere that you
haven't really explored that you really want to see?
I like the idea of basing myself somewhere in the south of France or Italy and just going
to the markets every day and, you know, getting fresh produce and whatever they've got and
bring it back and cooking it.
And you know, I've done that on holidays prior with other people.
We might have a house for, you know, a couple of weeks and I have to say, you know, I go
to the local village and I become friends with the butcher, I become friends with the
fruit and veg guy and I can become friends with the baker.
I was in Hakka Bar skiing, someone told me about a Wagyu wholesaler and all of a sudden
I'm in his factory, you know, trying to communicate with him, you know, no Japanese at all and
he's broken English and you know, all I was doing was buying Wagyu beef off him.
That year he'd paid the most amount of money for a Cuccos Wagyu.
There was a record for that year in Japan.
So I'll give you six months travelling around Europe, making friends with all the
bakers and the butchers and the fruit and vegetable sellers and then you can have six
months on the farm and it'll be perfect.
And then I'll try and grow their fruit and veg.
And on that note, Matt, our 15 minutes is up.
I've loved chatting to you about the way in which you've had to become really nimble
to operate your business, the fact that you have to act fast to steer the ship, you
don't take things personally, you've just got to move on.
And thank you so much for your dinner party tips, your salad tips and for allowing us
to spend 15 minutes with the boss.
Absolute pleasure.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
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This podcast was hosted by me, Sally Patton, produced and edited by Lapfan.
Our theme is by Alex Gow and our executive producer is Fiona Buffini.
The Australian Financial Review.