Beyond The Pass | Would That This Blog Were A Time Machine

Let me ask you a question: if you had a time machine, what would you go back and change?

I know what I’d do. I’d go back and make sure every shot I had when I played football hit the back of the net. Granted, it probably still wouldn’t have pushed me to the levels of a Premier League striker, but I’d almost certainly be a Sunday league phenomenon!

But, for the purposes of this piece, I’ll pretend that my time machine only allows me to change the things I’d done in my hospo career.

And whilst I try to live my life with as few regrets as possible, I am very much human, which means my past is littered with dumb mistakes and the occassional family-sized serving of regret.

So that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

What things would I choose to change in my hospo career, if I had some weird, hospo-specific time machine?

Such a world of possibilities!

To make this thing easier to digest, I’ll choose a top 3 of my biggest regrets; a highlight reel of just how much a guy can get it wrong without plunging his business into bankruptcy.

And what better place to start than, in my opinion, the biggest oversight I’ve ever made?

Not finalising my D.A. before opening my cafe

Now, I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve never really gone into detail too much about it. You see, when I opened my cafe, we were still waiting for final approval on our D.A. to come through. Usually this would stop a person from opening their doors to the public, but in case it’s not absolutely clear by now, I’ve always been a bit gung-ho with my decisions; a problem that continues to this day.We’d just spent a bunch of money on fitting the place out, and I’d already quit my job a few weeks earlier, so I really needed some income to start rolling in, otherwise I’d become homeless.

Our landlord had handled the D.A. situation, but it was taking way too long for any kind of movement, and neither of us could wait any longer. So, the decision was made to open our doors, and the landlord explored other avenues to get council approval.

This meant that instead of the traditional D.A. approach, they enlisted the services of a contractor to get us a complying development certificate (or, CDC for short). This was a little bit more costly than a D.A., but the turnaround was a lot quicker.

The guy came through our cafe (which had already been open for a few weeks by now), and gave us a list of all the ways we’d messed up our build & fitout. And these were pretty basic things that anyone with a working brain would’ve known and prioritised over things like antique furniture, or shiny coffee machines. I’m talking tiles on the kitchen walls, actual flooring over the particleboard floor in the kitchen/coffee machine area, and maybe a fire extinguisher or two. You know, just the major stuff.

So, we got to trying to tile the kitchen before giving up and hiring somebody who’s actually done it before in their life. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and some linoleum flooring from Bunnings, and set about one of the most frustrating days off I’ve ever had.

Have you ever laid linoleum flooring before? If you have, do you remember the 1st time you did it? Well, I do because it was now. I had to rip everything out to do it too. The sink, the fridges, the kitchen benches: everything! And I thought I’d measured it all up correctly, but the good inch or so border around the outside proved otherwise.

But I just wanted to get it down, and I figured I could hide the gaps with all the stuff that was going back in, and I don’t know, pot plants or something?And that was that, for a time, until the CDC guy returned and told us that all of the work we’d done was pretty shoddy, and he couldn’t sign off on it. I promised myself that I’d get around to fixing everything, but I just…didn’t. I was too busy living the life I thought a hospo owner should live.

And so, when it came time to sell, our first deal fell through when the prospective buyer searched for our D.A. online and couldn’t find it. The guilt that I’d been pushing down all of these years came crashing through the surface, and long story short, we missed out on quite a few thousand dollars.

After trying to convince the CDC guy to come and finish his approval, he pointed out that it had been about 4 years since we’d last talked, and (I assume) blocked my number.

I talked to some people about it, vowing to remember the CDC guy’s name so that I could exact some revenge in the future (I didn’t), and blaming everyone except myself.

Thankfully, a friend pointed us towards the local council itself, who offered CDC approval for a fraction of the cost the CDC guy charged us, and they granted approval within about 2 minutes.

So yeah, if I had a time machine, I’d have gotten a CDC directly from the local council before we opened and saved myself a whole heap of money, and a fair few night’s restless sleep.

Not streamlining my menu from the start

This one’s tricky, because when we opened I had, what I thought, was a very streamlined menu. The thing only had 6 items on it, making other local cafe menus look like volumes of Encyclopædia Britannica.

What I didn’t factor in was the prep time to get my menu from the page, and onto the plate. 

This was, after all, my very first kitchen job. Again, it seems, I’d thrown myself into the deep end, trusting the skills I’d developed in my home would translate to commercial cooking.

They did not.The night before we launched our food menu, myself and my sidekick (shoutout Jos), didn’t finish prepping our ingredients until 1am.

I’d filled my menu with quite a few dishes that required a lot of pre-cooking. This was because I made the idiotic decision to offer some delicacies from my motherland for the great people of Sydney to sample. Because nothing’s more appealing to the outside world than traditional British cuisine, right?

I had things like Bubble & Squeak, only I had to prep it from scratch rather than use leftovers from a roast dinner. There was Corned Beef Hash which required me to slow-cook a whole slab of cow overnight, and make enough mashed potato to feed a small village. Not to mention that Corned Beef Hash looks like a greyish-pinkish blob when plated up. And our Gammon & Egg Sandwich: my way of making the much-loved Australian bacon & egg roll more British. This one was a success, but it had a pineapple relish that took an age to make, and I think I’ve explained what gammon is enough times to an unknowing public to last a lifetime.

And being the walking cautionary tale that I am, it stayed this way for well over a year. That was when I consulted an actual chef (Cube Piper, I love you), who advised me on putting together a very prep-light, vegetarian menu.

And guys, the difference was night and day.

I suddenly had a manageable, cheaper to produce menu! I had more spare time, and I learned so much more about food than any amount of sliced ham could ever teach me!

So yeah, if I had a time machine I’d definitely consult a good chef before deciding which way to go with my menu.

Look, this part’s about finance, okay?

If the Wolf Of Wall Street has taught us anything, it’s that the finance world is a high-paced, exciting landscape, and that every day is a party if you own a boat and a white Lambo.

If reality has taught me anything, it’s that the financial world is the complete opposite.

Have you ever read numbers? What am I saying? Of course you have. But have you ever read a whole bunch of them in, perhaps, a document about finance? It’s enough to make your dreams about white lamborghinis revolve around diving in front of one, rather than sitting inside the thing.

It was this hurdle that caused me to overlook key parts of my situation upon receipt of my 1st (and only) BAS rebate. It was after our 1st quarterly lodgement, and all of the equipment that we’d bought brought with it a nice little rebate come BAS time. Being the tax novice that I was (still am, I think), I did the opposite of what you’d call a good decision, and I spent this unexpected injection of much-needed coin on things I absolutely shouldn’t have. If memory serves, I bought a ticket back home to visit my family, and a Playstation. When BAS time rolled around again, for some reason I was kind of expecting a similar outcome. I had nothing to back this expectation up with, more just a hope really. So it came as a blow when I was slapped with a tax bill for way more than I had in the bank at the time, and the honeymoon period of hospo ownership was officially over.

Luckily, the ATO provides for idiots like myself with convenient payment plans. And so began the weekly payments to the ATO that are still ongoing today.

How did it get to this? Well, I have a tendency to ignore things if they cause me any amount of stress whatsoever. Naturally, a huge tax bill stressed me out, so I ignored it until I started getting scary letters and panicked phone calls from my accountant.

By this time, the amount of money that I owed was far more than that initial rebate, and the weekly repayments quickly became my biggest outgoing.

So, if I had a time machine, I’d hold off on the trip home, and maybe even the Playstation. Instead, I’d have saved it to be used exclusively for taxes. It would have comfortably covered that first BAS bill, meaning that I could’ve paid that immediately and prevented the financial snowball from building up.

Better yet, I’d have talked to my bookkeeper and my accountant, and we could have used our books to calculate how much money I’d have to put aside each week to cover BAS, and I’d never have been in debt to the ATO ever!

So there you have it, 3 big regrets from the greatest bullet dodger since Fidel Castro. Just remember to square your place off with the red tape brigade before you open, work within your limits when it comes to the day-to-day operations, and don’t be a complete idiot every time you go near money, and you’ll be fine.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the local oval to work on my finishing. Wish me luck!