SPEAKER_02 0:00

Philip Curry is an award-winning pastry chef, author, and pioneer in plant-based batistery. For the past six years, he has served as head pastry chef at Harrods London, where he redefined modern pastry through his innovative approach to flavour, sustainability, and technique. Philip began his career at Key, one of Australia's most celebrated restaurants, before rising to prominence under Adriano Zumbo, the renowned Netflix and MasterChef Australia star. His work has been featured in The Guardian, The Times, and BBC Good Food. Most recently, Philip launched Couries, a luxury plant-based confectionary brand that reflects his signature creativity and craftsmanship. In our conversation, we dive into his journey of building a brand with purpose, the intersection of business and artistry, and why staying personal is so important in today's evolving food space. Phil, welcome to the Hospital Dojo Podcast. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Being based in London doesn't help.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

So I'm proud of you, bro. I'm really proud of you. And uh you've you've really you know shown people that it is possible. And today I just want to unpack that.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah, let's do it. Thank you. Thanks for having me, and thanks for those very kind words.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

So, Phil, you you you're born and raised in Australia, Lebanese heritage. That's right, not far from here. What's your favorite? I'm Jordanian, so what's your favorite Lebanese dish?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Uh it's quickfire. Controversy. Um I make hummus on a hummus on a weekly basis. Okay. Um I love tabuli. Yeah. Uh just the clean. So one dish. What's your favourite? Hummus. Hummus.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah, do you like do variations? Absolutely. Yeah, what's your favorite variation?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Variations with toppings. Yeah. It's actually pine nuts and mushrooms.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah. Obviously with the hot art and all the spices, but definitely you know what?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

I actually consulted a company called Fable Foods. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Oh, the mushrooms.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Yeah. I reckon that would be phenomenal because it's got that it's that shiitake mushroom. Yeah, with the pool, it's got that pulled texture.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

That would be nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Fable, let's send Phil someone if he can make you some homos.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Are they UK based as well? Uh no, they're Australian-based. Oh, brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

They're Australian-based, and they've uh they've just launched in the US. They're doing really well. So proud of them too. Uh, but yeah, I think that would be a kicker. Oh there you go. Phil just gave you guys a recipe idea. I'll get I'll get the marketing team to send you a box. But um, so yeah, homos with mushrooms and pine nuts. Yeah. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Just with some Lebanese bread to mop it up.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Beautiful. And uh what's your you know, where'd you grow up in Sydney? What's your sort of story?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

So I grew up um in Sydney, I'm I assume. Sorry, what is in Carlingford. Okay. And I went to school in North Parramatta. Um, graduated from my final year, two years of high school at My Brothers in Parramatta. The Lebanese tree, yeah. And up until that point, I went I then went on to do a communications design degree. Okay, and thought that that's everything that I wanted to do. Did that at Western Sydney and loved it? Yeah, what year? That was in that was actually in Penirath. Okay. Loved it. Uh had amazing internships, one at Naked Communications, then at um Interbrand. And I really thought that's everything that I wanted to do. But that whole time I'd been really passionate about baking, but only thought it was a hobby. And I made friends with some pastry chefs and realized, hang on, this is actually something you can do for work. And I think I was 21 when I started the apprenticeship, so 15 years ago. Um, kind of I felt like I was quite old for my class because I was ever, you know, everyone starts an apprenticeship between 15 and 18. And so I dove headfirst in, made up, felt like I was making up for lost time. I remember starting my first job at Key restaurant, and it's like I vanished off the face of the earth for about a year. Just went into a silo. And I mean that kind of happened for the next seven years until I went to until I went to Harrods. So from I was at Key for a year before I was unceremoniously fired. And then Shangri-La with Anna Polivu, then Zumbo, and then Harrods came calling.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Wow, that's you know, and what I really what enlightened me about your story is that mature age change.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

It's you're not mature, but you know, in the context of an apprenticeship, you went in as a anyone in that room would consider you a mature age student. Yeah, right. Definitely. It's like going to uni and like when you were doing your communications degree and someone that was 30 years old came and did your first use upcoming.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

I was 21, I was old, I was definitely like the oldest in the class. Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

So you felt you felt that that sense of oh, um, there's a lot of people that are younger than me in here, but again, but you know what's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

I was talking to Lauren Eldridge about this. Uh we did a pop-up over the weekend, and she kind of came from a similar place because I think she was almost finished uh or halfway through a psychology degree, and then started an apprenticeship like me at the same time in fine dining. And I think both of us being mature actually helped us progress a bit faster than than I guess normal because people expected more of us, and we were like so committed to the task, and it just helped us get ahead a bit faster.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

You know, it's you I guess you have different priorities at that time, yeah, and you think that time is against you as well. Yes. So if I look at it in that perspective, whenever I've had somebody that's come to me for help that's in that transition phase, they tend to dominate because for them, this is all that I have. Yeah, I think this is like I'm giving up X to go in for Y, and this is everything.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Because literally you go from you know, quite a defined career path to starting from scratch, throwing throwing, it came in very useful, you know, a few years later, but throwing away the degree that you've just kind of finished, and then yeah, basically starting at the bottom on little to no money, and that's it's like that for a while. But yeah, it's uh it's an adjustment for sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

And you and how do you cope with that?

SPEAKER_00 6:55

I've been lucky that I yeah, that I had support around me because at 21 earning half the minimum wage is not feasible for a lot of people. So I guess I was definitely in a position of privilege to be able to um yeah to to go through those early years um yeah, with basically nothing.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

So you found your your parents and your support network at the time, they really dug deep and was like, you know, go chase her. Yeah, amazing. That's beautiful. And what was that moment during pastry that you found that aha, this is this is it?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Literally, my first day of class, I turned up, we put on our uniforms, you know, in pastry you always start with one of the pastry basket basics, uh, you know, shoe pastry, uh puff pastry, patsucray, all these kinds of things. And I remember our first day we were doing shoe pastry, and I was like, This is it, this is where I'm meant to be. This is it.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Yeah, yeah, that's you know, and a lot of chefs that that that start in their earlier phases find that aha moment at around your age that you started. You know, they go through the the trough and they they they really you know get their get their toes in and then they go like, oh, this dish is a one for me. But the minute that you walked in and you were able to put your you know your superman cape on basically, which was your chef jacket, you're like, okay, now I feel this is this is where I brought it.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

There was something that really appealed to me in the technical way that you study something in school. And you know, when you're when you're baking at home and you're reading books and you're trying to learn, um, these days we have you know a lot more content on YouTube and social media, but at the time you you had you only had books to read from. And so to be able to practically apply that and have an expert explain to you what you were doing and why you were doing it was like a complete revelation for me.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

And when when you were working with Anna and and Adriana, who I both deeply, deeply respect, they're both amazing human beings, and all always seem to, whenever we cross paths, they always find time for me, which is you know, with their busy schedules. What's one thing you learned from Anna? And what's one thing you learned from Adrian? Um Adriana, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

You know, Anna really set a great example for going above and beyond. There are so many things, like the lesson that I learned there was initiative will take you really, really far. Like, no one is gonna hand you the perfect opportunity or the perfect brief or the perfect product to develop that's gonna, you know, win you acclaim. Like it just doesn't happen. It has to come from within, and you have to really fight for what you believe in and what makes you happy. Uh and then yeah, so that and and and what's core to that is initiative. Uh and from Adriano Zumbo, I uh to date the most fun job that I ever had. I was about three or four months in working for him. I was mid-level demi chef, and he kind of just I was preparing for two competitions. I think he saw my work and just plucked me out of the kitchen and said, You're gonna help me um with research and development. And yeah, so like I jumped straight into just testing, developing things for the TV shows, for um for the menus, and then ended up running research and development for the whole business across all the categories that he um that we that we were doing. So everything from you know, bakery, pastry, uh, macarons, chocolate and confectionery, patisserie. So it was just the most expansive education that I could have ever dreamed of.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Wow. Yeah. My favorite cake to date, and I say this publicly, is the V8.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Oh yeah. You can't beat it. It's honestly incredible.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

It's honestly the best cake in the world. It's so good. I uh and I've traveled, and you can tell by the size of me, I've tried different things. But that V8 I've invested in my palate. And that V8 cake is probably and then I tried the V8 diesel. I liked it, but it still wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah, I think it was the first time locally that we'd ever seen that much vanilla in something. And vanilla is one of those things that gets so widely imitated in terms of flavorings, extracts, to use the real thing and the amount that he was using, and that to get that purity of flavor and convention is is incredible.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Well, you know, if you ever decide to push him to recreate it, please, please bring it back. Whenever you he's told me you would commission it if I come up to the Sunshine Coast. And I said, Okay. Do it. I said, I have to visit it. So so Adriana, you moved on to Harrods. Yeah. And they did they come and cherry pick you, or you how'd you go about that?

SPEAKER_00 11:41

It was just one of those, like, I I always say that the minute I started following my heart, uh, the stars just kept aligning. And I remember finishing up at Zumbo and wanting to travel. And I was visiting London for a um over the summer, one year. Basically, I'd finished at Zumbo, went and did this rugby tournament in Amsterdam. You played rugby? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Came back to that's a little side quest.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yeah. And then went to Union or League? Okay. Went to London and then Kirsten Tibbles, who's been a longtime mentor of mine, was like, Oh, Harrods is reinvigorating their pastry program and they're redoing all the food halls, go in and have a visit. She lined up a meeting. I went with Mark McDonald, who works at Mayor's Fine Foods. We met Alec Alistair Burt, my then my who would who would eventually become my boss. And uh he showed me around. It was incredible. It was the closest thing that I had seen in the wild to Zumbo, which is a very rare set of operating conditions. And they two weeks later they said, uh, I got a message saying, hey, our sous chefs just resigned. Would you would you consider coming over? And I was like, absolutely. Well, yeah, I know. And the thing, the thing I always told people, like, you know, as a manager of I think we had 60 people in the pastry team, um, the pastry and bakery team, as you mentor young pastry chefs, you're always talking about the progression and giving them advice and coaching them through their career. And I always say it's half of it is timing, and the rest is just putting yourself in the right position so that when that opportunity comes up, you're the best pick. But um yeah, definitely the timing was on my side.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

And timing is one thing, definitely, but you know he studied comms, yeah, which also helped, I believe, because traditionally chefs are known to be introverted, creative, introverted, they don't really communicate and they don't have the opportunity to be able to communicate with many people at a time. They keep they're only communicating within most times. You know, you're rocking up to work, you're working 60 hours a week. How do you have time to network? Yeah, how do you have time to build relationships, right? So if you know, if there's a young chef who's who's going through their their apprenticeship at the moment, and I I I truly believe that the lead the leap to growth is is always for me anyway, your network is your net worth. And I and I strongly believe on that. And you will be opened up to opportunities if you can network well, but also you know, you have to deliver on your network too. You're not no one's just gonna say, hey, here you go and hand you something. You've got to obviously prove your worth to them as well. So as a chef and as a seasoned chef, what's one piece of advice you'd give to, or how how can you know a chef work on their networking skills in this space?

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Um, don't be shy to to message or uh reach out to people you admire. I think it's you'd be surprised how open and willing a lot of people are to sharing advice or knowledge or experience. And for me, you know, I I always wanted to work in the best places. And the great thing about an apprenticeship is that you are you have that opportunity and a bit of flexibility. No one's gonna judge you if you do something wrong. Um and the way I got most of my jobs was just by knocking on the back door, um and sending a DM. And yeah, it started with you know, I I remember not wanting to work in restaurants. When I went into pastry, I was like, I want to be like a petitier. This is the most rounded like pet type of pastry chef that you can be. That you can be. And we I said, if I'm going to work in a restaurant, it's gonna be the best restaurant that I can find. And and key was that. And I literally just walked up to the back door, I saw that where the staff would come out, knocked on the door, and was like, Can I talk to the head chef? And um, he's like, Yeah, actually, we might have an apprenticeship opportunity coming up in a few months. Then it turned out to be like a couple of weeks, and then it comes a couple days, yeah. And I think I was the only apprentice at the at the time, but it just came from me knocking on the door and the same thing, sending a message to Anna, and she was like, Yep, we actually have an opportunity coming up. Here's the link for the application, and yeah, it just pays to be be a bit proactive, take a bit of initiative. Again, these opportunities don't just come out, you have to seek them, and yeah, and I and another piece of advice I always say is um the same opportunities exist for everyone. Some people will reach out and take them, and others just kind of stick to themselves and be quiet, and unfortunately they get less opportunities.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

And I find that that um you know there's there is an art to well, not so much an art, but there's there's a layer of confidence that you need to have to be able to approach someone, right? And it's like ripping off a band-aid, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

So, of course, you know that there is gonna be pain at that point of ripping the band-aid off. But once it's off, it's off.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

What's the worst that can happen? Right?

SPEAKER_02 16:57

If someone doesn't reply, you just go again, you go to the next one, right? And for me, anyway, uh people have this notion that oh, if somebody's got a blue tick or they've got over 50 or 100,000 followers on Instagram, they don't check their DMs. I I can assure you, Phil He reads every single DM, and so do I. So it's it's as simple as just literally sending a message and just explaining who you are, what you want to do, and why. You know, it's the biggest thing is if you show your purpose, show your passion.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

People a simple hi isn't gonna cut it.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

Yeah, it's just like hey, give me a job. I get so many people messaging me, hi, do you have a job? And I'm like, what job? So you just tell me more about your exactly, you know. Um, but then I've had people literally um walk in our office and be like, hey, I love what you do. Um do you have do you have time? I I'd love to learn off you, or um, you know, I've got this skill that I really think that this could you could benefit from. There'd be no reason why I'd shut down that conversation because at the same time, we we came from places where we were given opportunity, or we had opportunities present themselves, we took them and we learned from them, vice versa, right? You you do want to mentor people, you do want to grow people. And um in Harrods, so you had a team of what 60?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Yeah, so uh at its biggest 60 pastry traps and bakers.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

And what were you doing?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

So Harrods, it's interesting. Harrods is the world's most luxurious department store, have a huge, one of the apparently the largest food and beverage operation in the northern hemisphere contained within a building. So if you think of I mean, I'll I'll just run through it. We had twenty seven restaurants within the building, and nearly all of them got their pastries from our kitchen. So whether it was the croissants or components for desserts in a plated dessert, it all came from one place.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

So for every venue you were running the pastry program. Essentially.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

So it's it it is it's a fascinating thing, and it's very rare. But yes, we would um some like for example, Bjorn Fransen opened a restaurant um a couple of years ago, two or three years ago, and they did run their pastry independently, but that was like the exception. So for the vast majority, and we do have concessions, but it's I think when I was there it was maybe uh 60, 70 percent own board and 30, 40 percent concession. So the concessions are less inclined, but they would still order things from us. Um but and yeah, and then the rest is own board. And the majority of that, by the way, the that the majority of our output was actually for the food halls. So I think we were roughly 70% just for retail. So you come in and you see the amazing food halls with all the food everywhere, and the beautiful patissery counters, the chocolate counters, uh the bakery counters, that was all made in-house by our team.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

That's phenomenal. And do you do you do you feel that literally under the food halls down there? Two floors down. Oh I wish I came and visited it.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

It was I think a lot of people were surprised when they're like, hang on, you do all this stuff from here.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Well, London and Sydney have a very similar problem. Space costs a lot of money. Absolutely. We don't have the luxury of the US. And I say this to all my US clients.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

And you know what, a big kitchen is not always a good thing. Like you said, that's more time running around, more time, you know, going from the you know, the dry store to the weighing room to the whatever. And so I I prefer small kitchens actually.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

It's more efficient. Yeah, you you want everything within arm's reach, I always say it. And it's a purpose-built facility and volume when you have the right setup, you can produce volume. And if you know, when the busy seasons come, obviously you need a plan for that. The only thing that you could get caught out on really is storage, storage, always storage. That's it. So, but then that comes down to your supply chain optimization. Can you increase the flow of your deliveries? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

And what's housing, we relied on that. We had basically we had our dry stores, but we had a huge warehouse facility, one on site and one off-site, that everything would come to in pallets, and then we would call off bits of stock that we needed um as we needed it essentially, because we couldn't store more than two or three days worth of flour in our store, and we were going through about a pallet every day.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yeah. That's crazy. It is crazy. I think the thing that was very unique about Harrods and about Zumbo was that both of them I always say there's three things in in in a production environment that are determine how the how the place works. It's uh the quality, obvious, uh quantity, and or the volume. And the range. So if you're doing lots of different products, uh, you might be doing smaller volume if you want to keep up the quality. Or if you're so anyway, there's those three factors, and they're always pushed up in different things. If you're doing keep going with that, because it's really good. Because if you're doing volume, you might only be doing a limited number of products, but you're pumping out volume, and uh the quality might be lower, for example. But at Zumbo and Harrods, and this is I think why they were both quite unique in the world and why one was a natural progression to the other, is that all of them are pushed to the limits. You've got super high quality as a priority, you know, um huge volume of product, and range. We were doing like 200 different items every day leaving the kitchen. Some would be 500 pieces, some might be 20, but it's just like everything is just yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

But now you've pivoted into your own journey. Yes. And now you're doing a couple items. Yeah. If not one item.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Yeah, so it's quite a change. In February, I left Harrods after six years and started my own company. And it's it was just for me the warm-up to what I want to do next. And that that's what I'm doing in 2026. But yeah, started a company named after myself called Curries, and we focus on chocolate and confectionery.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

And for now. And your your your famous piece of chocolate is that beautiful Beirut-looking slab. The the the homage to to to Beirut there.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Yeah, so how that came about is in January of this year, someone we were doing a charity bake sale, and it wasn't even like my focus. I was doing a a pear trifle inspired by the preserved pears that they'd prepare in my dad's village in Lebanon. And someone asked me, Oh, can you do some Dubai chocolate? And I was like, why would I make a copy of something that already exists that someone else has made? So I was like, no, I'll do a beir chocolate. And it was a one-off. I did a hundred pieces, but I went a bit hard. I developed its own mold. Uh, we were making, you know, a buckle of a crunch, a bit level of a crunch with an orange blossom caramel, and it probably didn't have to be so good and so uh well packaged for something that was just one-off. But I posted this really rough video online and it just went completely viral across the Middle East. Yeah, I think there was one week where I just had like requests from every morning show on every channel in the Middle East from Dubai to Saudi to Qatar and Kuwait uh wanting to talk about beirroot chocolate. And they were like pitching it as like, is this the new Dubai chocolate? And you know, it was a really funny, funny period.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

And what what do you think really you know sets that tone for that virality, you know, like like the Dubai chocolate?

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Honestly, I could not predict it.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

Not a prediction, but what's the what's the what's the foundational like why did that chocolate work, from your opinion?

SPEAKER_00 24:56

I think it's familiarity. I just launched the Sydney chocolate bar this week on Av based on avocado and toast, and it's a really interesting, delicious tasting bar. But I think no one wants to have avocado toast into chocolate, right? Whereas backlover and chocolate is not too much of a stretch, it hits those nostalgic notes, the presentation is stunning, and uh yeah, I think it's a combination of things.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

And do you find that you know uh in your in your in your company now during this phase, where are you finding where most of your focus is going at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Product development. We we're doing one new flavor every month, and so while we only have one format and one type of packaging, it's quite a lot of work to pump out a new flavor. And we're a very small team, you know, we're four people in the whole company. So I lead product development and business admin and training, and then we have a team of three amazing pastry chefs who are just picking up the pro the development and running with it.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

And do you are you keeping those products on each month? So you you develop a product you sustain it.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Trying to figure out what our limit is in terms of storage, but the idea is to have around four flavours. One one will always be new, one will always be Beirut, one will always be London, and then one that just comes back. So Sydney will leave to make space for the flavour of next month.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Wow. And you know, for you for you during this process, what's been the biggest challenge setting up your own company?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

There were definitely things that I was not prepared for uh early on storage, but I'm really lucky that we're in a facility where there's lots of different units and probably 75 uh commercial units, and we are able to like flex and grow into others until we figure out exactly what we need. So we've got like a storage space, we might take on another space. Um but I think the hardest thing were is is business operations, you know. Like I'm I have extensive experience by now doing day-to-day operations, but I don't have experience beyond planning a budget and implementing financial control. Like it's you know, I can cost a recipe, I can budget for equipment, budget for uh labor, ingredients, all the cogs and everything, but it's um it's a different thing to actually manage those finances.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

And how have you learned to deal with those things?

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Well, I after three months I was like, I need I need a really experienced accountant, so it's all outsourced now. That was definitely the the learning curve. And even you know, marketing, um, we had a really phenomenal first uh month, and then as soon as my new book has come out, my focus just shifted and I d forgot to even talk about what we're doing, which meanwhile that's still ticking along, and we had a drop in sales, so it's just like oh shit, you know, just remembering uh all the different things that you have to be across.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Yeah, I guess when you you know when you're going down this journey of entrepreneurship where you're in in this space, juggling all these hats, yeah. But it's it's really important to know where your strong points are, and you might find along the journey that okay, I can't afford somebody to manage X. If I was to manage it, I I could save money. That's the sort of perception. Yes. The problem with that is that person that you're paying X for is probably done 10,000 hours plus in that field, like you have done with pastry. So if you're okay with burning your time to try work it out, then it's okay. But if time is not up your sleeve, then as an entrepreneur, you need to find that money to do it, like you did with the accounts. You started doing it, and then you're like, hold on, like you know, accountants, it's a waste of my time, exactly. And you know, any high performers in in any business world, their biggest value is time, and they always budget it down to how long is this gonna take me, and where I need to put my time and where I need to put my energy. And I think for you, especially in your in your growth phase now, you need to protect your time as much as you can. It's super important because that's gonna allow you to keep being present, keep travel, keep traveling, keep with the research and development and coming up with that creative idea. So what I always do with my you know, with any of my clients is I just map out, like you know, we get a we get a nice big paper and we write down all the tasks that you'll be doing personally, because it no two businesses are the same. Sure, you have the similar fundamentals, but just write them out. And when you write them out, you start circling the ones that you like doing and start writing crosses on the ones that you don't like doing. That's the easiest way to figure out.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

That's good advice.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

It's it's it's the easiest way to figure out like I actually enjoy doing this and I don't. Like, for example, I personally um I personally enjoy paying all my stakeholders. It's not that I don't want my bookkeepers to do it. I feel like, hey, Ben did great work for me this week. This is his remuneration. That's just my way of saying, you know, yes, I'm accepting the transaction and I'm doing it. That's something that I still keep on doing. And it's just to make sure I'm in touch and I never want somebody else to be left out financially. But there's a whole piece of of, for example, my ads, I like it, but I'm not good at it. So what do I do? I get my ads guy to manage the ads because he knows it really well, and if I tried learning it, I'd be lost in time, lost in in so much time and energy. Yeah, uh, but what's really important along this entire line is when anyone's doing a task for you, though, during your growth phase, is you need to work out certain e-markers. So, you know, work out top top three or four e-markers that will tell you, you know, where that task is at, so you can keep track of it. Because micromanaging people also becomes an issue. So you've managed a lot of people a lot of times, but when you go into the business admin side, it's like it's a different level of things. It's no longer just output, it's like task-driven or paperwork or accounting or finance. So, yeah, just you know, do that, do that A3 paper. You'll you'll you'll you'll thank me. You'll go, oh yeah, no, this cross this fills time. Yes. And that's what I always found that that that works for for my clients anyway. And but yeah, that that that that's on that end. So do you have any your new book? What is that?

SPEAKER_00 31:59

So while I was at Harrods, I got special permission to write a book. And you had to ask for permission? Yeah. Really? Yeah, I think I was the first person to ever do anything like that. And you know, when you work with in a big company like that, a big brand, they're very protective of of their image, of um, of their apple and their IP. So for example, maybe people don't know this, but whenever you join a major employer, any IP that you generate uh automatically becomes their property. So in order to sell my IP to a publisher, I have to get basically uh a permission to do that. And so I'm really passionate about, you know, I'm a classically trained pastry chef. I while I was at Harrods, I was doing everything. But around eight years ago, I had a conversation with someone when they asked me, oh, what about vegan pastry? And I was like, ah, it's impossible. You know, everything we make relies on eggs and dairy. And it just saying that made me question if that had to be the case. And I think when you spend as long in the industry as the longer you spend in the industry and the more you see how ingredients are made and where they come from, uh for me it was a case of realizing that hang on, we have an over-reliance on some ingredients, and there's a lot of other ingredients that we're not actually fully utilizing. And so it was, and also I wasn't happy with the direction as I did some research into vegan baking. I wasn't happy with the the approach that that uh was being taken, uh, which is to basically find substitutes for ingredients in the recipes that that uh that exist. And so my whole shtick is that we have a lot of ingredients that we're not fully utilizing, we just need to create new recipes and frameworks for them to shine. So I always talk about, for example, a pound cake. A pound cake is a classic ratio of you know, a pound of flour, pound of eggs, butter, sugar, and when when you when flour is hydrated with a liquid, it gels. When that liquid is eggs, eggs also gel. So you need all of that fat to actually create a nice tender cake. And so when you just say take out the eggs, because eggs are not uh yeah, we we um we end up hydrating the flour with say water or milk, and there's a whole lot of gelling, let there's a whole lot of there's a whole lot less gelling that's happening, and as a result, you need to reduce the fat by up to 60% to allow the flour to do its work, yeah. So it's just about rebalancing things, and I have a rule in my work that I don't want to use ingredients or rely on ingredients that are that are new or novel, so I focus on things that we've had for at least 150 years and just expand our boundaries and and horizons for what's possible in sweets and patisseries.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

What's the most underused ingredient?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Flour, 100%. I struggle with gluten-free. I can do it, but I just find it so useful as an ingredient, and it can do so much that uh yeah, flour. We we think eggs need to do all this stuff, but really flour can do an amazing amount of stuff too.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Is there any particular flour that's underutilized?

SPEAKER_00 35:14

No, just uh I mean the number one that I use is just a plain flour. You know, around the 10.5% protein mark, and just it doesn't have to be any specific fancy brand. I think, and the reason for this is that I've seen the way that we've shifted and agriculture and uh farming to rely on these products, you know. The average chicken, for example, used to lay uh I think it was 60 eggs a year. Now they lay one egg per day, which is around 350 eggs. And that's because we've bred them to do that, and they live in pretty horrible conditions and all the rest of it. I don't need to go into it. And cows, for example, we I love butter, but you have to milk a cow for a day to get the 20 liters of milk to get 250 grams of butter, which only makes eight croissants. But you can order it from your supplier, or you can go to the supermarket and pick up a block. And I think when we you become disconnected from the process of how that ingredient was produced, we you it it just spawns an unsustainable practice. So for me, it's just about expanding the horizons and now we make them with olive oil. But we would have problems if we were making all croissants with olive oil too, because then we'd have an over-reliance on olive oil and olive oil farming and you know monocultures and all the rest of it. So it was really important to yeah, just broaden our horizons and give people more options. And I I really believe that you can't preach to someone and tell them that this is how you should do things, you just have to make them give them good options and they can make their own mind up.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

And how can someone, you know, when you're in that business environment like Harrod's, how can you drive sustainability in that environment?

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Yeah, so for example, for me it was through developing plant-based recipes. So when you make an apple pie that's plant-based, the carbon footprint, even if the olive oil was imported, is half that of using butter because of all the steps and reduction that you get to make butter. And so that's like the easiest way is to just have more plant-based options. And in a place like Harrods, which is so tradition-bound, you I didn't set out to make vegan pastries. I just set out to make great pastries that happen to be vegan. And so in a place like that, the only thing I could do was just develop a great apple pie that happened to be vegan, and people would taste it in our tasting sessions, and it would go down well. And all of a sudden we have an apple pie on the menu that does plant-based. But I mean, there were other things, it was mainly patissery, but it makes it sound so simple, guys. It's just about making the options so compelling and so good that no one bats an eyelid.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

Yeah, it's not like you have to overmarket that it's vegan.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

You know what? Well, we learnt a very hard lesson early on. Our first product launch was like a tropical uh moose dessert, and we the buyer had wanted to put vegan something something because it was trendy to have vegan options, and it did not sell because the vast majority of people are not interested in vegan things. But uh, in that first week, we took it out of the title and just put it as at the end of the description in brackets, and the next thing it's the top seller and it's been on the menu for seven years. So it's just like make it good, focus on what's good about it and not on other things because there are the vegans will find it. Yep, um, everyone else just needs to buy a nice piece of cake.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

I I totally agree with you on that. I I find that you know focusing on such a you know when you're hyper-focused on on communication with with certain specifics, it it tends to ice you out and it's sort of puts you in a niche category. Yeah. Where if you just say this is a beautiful passion fruit slice, for example, if I feel like passion fruit, you feel like passion fruit, passion fruit's in season. You'll try it. We're buying a passion fruit slice. No matter, and then once I'm taking the first bite, it's like, oh, this is actually vitaed. Oh, this is actually gluten-free. Oh wow, this is you know, um, this has no no nuts in it, for example. And then all of a sudden, um it plays against that um it plays against that that that card of well, hold on, this this is now acceptable um to a lot more people. Definitely. So re reframing that I find is is that's probably where the communications degree comes in handy.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

A hundred percent. The motivation is different as well. Like for a lot of people, developing things that were vegan was out not out of choice. They did it because they either were vegan or they had intolerances, and so they're developing it from a framework of trying to make the most of what they have available to them, and maybe they're not professionals. So for me, it was just about expanding horizons and finding new ways to do things. It was almost a professional challenge at first, and um, you know, I'm not I'm not technically vegan. Um I'm maybe 90-95%, depending on the time of year, because I still insist on trying things that are not. You know, I don't cook meat at home, for example, but if it's at a tasting or if I'm invited somewhere, I'll leave, I'll be eating it. And um it's yeah, I just want to keep my frame of reference open and up to date. And yeah, I think I serve hopefully I'm serving the vegans well anyway.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

So yeah, you definitely I I I believe you are, and I I see that you're doing it in a different way. And one study that I looked into was the type was the um the strength of the veto vote. So the veto vote is generally in a group of people, you might have one person that's you know positioned as a minority in the group, someone that's got, you know, if we're going out to eat and someone's you know anaphylactic, for example, but there's a group of five of us and we're gonna go to eat. If that place that we're gonna go to eat is gonna trigger that anaphylaxis, well, all five of us aren't going. So one of my really good friends, Dan, um, who's a great chef in Sydney, always told me that he's he focuses so much on the vegetarian and vegan options on his menu and makes them taste, you know, he he puts so much time and energy into those dishes so that anyone could eat them and anybody could enjoy them. But at the same time, it really controls that veto vote because you know, as a group, when you go to eat, especially in Australia, you're not going alone. It's not like we have a Japanese culture where we'll just go eat out by ourselves and keep going. Yeah, it's generally in a group environment. And I find that businesses don't focus enough on those things and just push things to the side where where they're just focusing on the mainstream stuff. Yeah, you you need to offer it, you don't need to scream it, but like you said, the vegans, the vegetarians, the pescatarians, they'll find their way.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

You'd you you know you'd be surprised. We have in the UK one of the largest consumer groups is vegetarians. And if you say you're vegetarian, the technically you won't be having gelatin. And even if you're okay with gelatin, as soon as you say that to a member of staff at Harrods, they will, it's it's a black and white thing. They will put the thing on the iPad, and then all these things are cut out, and you can't have these things. And then there's there's no discussion about, oh, are you okay with fish gelatin or this or that? It's just no, all of a sudden their options got a lot smaller. And so it's just about keeping that in mind and developing more options for for people. And I think what was really interesting, oh, I've forgotten where I'm going with that.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

Anyway, well, that's okay. You don't you don't have to you don't have to worry about that too much. If we'll we'll we'll we'll tie this up for you. If there's someone that's listening to this podcast right now who is about to do a step change in their career and want to open their own business, what's one piece of advice you'd give them?

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Go and work somewhere as similar as you can. I remember when I was when I first started saying um to my dad, oh, I want to go and open a crep restaurant. And he's like, Why would you do that? Uh, you've never had a job in a cafe, you've never done anything like why would any investor like put any money behind you? And then I literally went and got a job in a Max Brenner and then a cafe, and like you have to get experience and you have to start somewhere. I think I have seen people who dive into it and learn the hard way, but in my experience and from my perspective, just starting out in in the field is really important, and just getting any job and yeah, not being afraid to knock on big doors is really important.

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Yeah, especially if you want to open something specific. Yeah. Go work somewhere that you aspire to be like, if not better. Yeah. You can learn the systems and the operations there. See what they're doing wrong, see what you'll change.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

It's not you know, I uh one of the biggest lessons of my career was has been you learn more from seeing how things shouldn't be done than necessarily seeing the right way to do things. It's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:17

That's a that's a great perspective. And I preach the same values. Now we are going to go to our quick fire. Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

I'm not good with this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

That's okay. So uh so we're wrapping up with Phil Curry in 60 seconds. These are quick questions, one-line answers already. Are you ready? What's your favorite pastry to eat?

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Milfoy.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

What's the most underrated ingredient?

SPEAKER_00 44:47

Chocolate. Is it underrated though? Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

One book or mentor that changed your thinking?

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Pierre Romer.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

A hospitality trend that you're excited about.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

Single concept shops. Shops.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

A lesson from failure you're grateful for.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

A lesson from failure that I'm grateful for. Uh hire an accountant.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

What's the weirdest customer request you've ever said yes to?

SPEAKER_00 45:14

There was someone who had like a in uh an aversion to the color orange. They just didn't want anything orange. It wasn't because they were allergic, they just didn't want to eat something orange.

SPEAKER_02 45:23

And what pastry trend needs to retire already.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

That's a tough one. Uh that's put me on the spot.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

Um you're not gonna hurt anyone's feelings. This is a communications line coming out right now. Doesn't want to chew his own words. It's okay, you don't have to answer it. I know you have something in your subconscious.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

There's definitely something in my subconscious for sure.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

I'll let you do that. That's it. Well, Phil, thank you so much. We really appreciate you being here. And um, you know, I wish you nothing but the best for your future travels. And like I said, if you ever need anything, we're always here for you. Uh but we're proud of you. We're really proud of you, man.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Thank you. It's been really nice to be back in Sydney. Uh it's my favorite place in the world.

SPEAKER_02 46:14

Give us some lead time next time you're back here so we can actually take you out for a meal, take you out some from some falafel, maybe. Yeah, always down for falafel. Awesome. All right, man. Bless you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone.