SPEAKER_00 0:00

Gareth, how'd you get into pastry? I think the reason I ended up on pastry was the first section I was put on as an apprentice. So what's one piece of advice you'd give to a young chef that wants to take that step and go overseas to get a job like you did?

SPEAKER_01 0:15

I work with the best, I expose myself the best, and I learned from the best, then maybe someday I might get close to them.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

I look at Instagram like a library. You know, at the end of the day, Instagram is all data driven. Yeah. Just like a business.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

I think, of course, there's like algorithm chat, but the integrity is just so important. Trust your process.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Our ethos is that we want to provide actionable guidance to people in hospitality. In today's episode, we sit down with Gareth Whitten, the creative behind Tartanon, a patriotization born during lockdown. Known for turning challenges into opportunities, Gareth transformed his fine dining expertise into crafting tarts that have quickly gained a cult following. From navigating high-pressure kitchens to building a brand that's redefining dessert culture in Australia. Gareth shares his inspiring story, insights on resilience, and the art of balancing creativity with business growth. Stay tuned for an engaging conversation with the chef who's sweating the culinary world one tart at a time. Gareth, welcome to the Hospital Dojo podcast. Thanks for having me. So excited to be here. Gareth, you uh you run a great institution by the name of Tartanon. Where'd the name come from?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

So it's a I wouldn't say it's a funny story, but ironically, we we we actually don't we don't like it.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Okay, you'd like to miss it.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

It's gone on it's come on too too far now that we can't get rid of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah. I just I thought I thought your name was Garathon on, so I just thought Garathon on. Yeah, mate. Well I mean that that that would be a lot better story than what the actual is.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

So I mean here in Melbourne, um, the lockdowns that we went through 2020 were pretty severe, um, particularly around that um September, August kind of period where we couldn't even go to the shops, me and my girlfriend, um, together. We'd have to like only one person. So we actually got followed home by the cops once because we were both walking back from Woolies with the groceries, and it was just as like we were like so. When we first finally broke through, and she strong armed me into doing this, and I was like, finally, and I broke, and I was like, okay, let's just see how it goes, um, which I'm forever grateful for. Um, we kind of wanted to seem like it was almost like Prohibition style.

SPEAKER_04 2:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

In America, where like, you know, the there was speakeasies, secret bars, and it was like everything was like and it was anonymous, right? And you were sort of you'd have to kind of like sneak out of your house and break your your five kilometer OGA radius slide an envelope under the door. Correct, the secret knock on the window, and then you get your tart, and then you'd just, you know, check left and right and then scamper home away from the feds. And that was kind of where it came from. We're sort of like tart none, we're sort of this sort of you know, speaking. Is that how it started? And it was, you just sort of you'd slide into our DMs, you'd place your order. There was, you know, we'd we'd have a lot of content on socials that was very much where we started. Uh, and then when people would come and collect, they'd either have paid through a you know, payment link or transfer in the bank account or came with some bit of cash.

SPEAKER_04 3:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

And then yeah, we'd have our little tr little trolley from IKEA that'd just wheel down the lift and then have out the front and be hand these things out. And I still remember some days, you come outside and there was just lines of people like scattered across suburban Richmond, and I was just like, this is it was a weird feeling, but it was very rewarding. Um, so yeah, the anonymous thing was like it was that, and I guess the other kind of like level to it was it's like that this probably seems a bit toxic in retrospect, but you know, you have your narcotics anonymous, you have alcoholics anonymous and where it's heart's anonymous. Right. So if you've got a crippling addiction to you know, crisp pastry shells with indulgent fillings, then you know, come here and we'll get you your badges. Oh god. So um, yeah, it's kind of where it's all started, and and I think we we did get to a point in our existence where I think we were just about to really you know lean into this decision and say, now I'm gonna quit my job, I'm gonna I'm gonna commit myself full-time to this. Uh, we'd already sort of gotten a lot of you know interest outside of like the the cult status community. Um, and and we thought, you know, this could be something we thought, well, can we change the name? Because I, you know, because I've come from this this background and I and even my my goals and aspirations I were were always aligned with something of quite a high caliber, indeed, like a something really elite. And I thought, is that the name? It's a bit kitsch, it's a bit like tongue in cheek, is a bit, you know, are we are we gonna find ourselves in the wrong category here? But I think at that point it was just too late. It's just round with it. Yeah, here we are. Garroth. It's not bad. And how'd you get into pastry? I think the reason I ended up on pastry was the first section I was put on as an apprentice. Because I'm a I'm a chef by trade, so I'd never actually done a formal patisserie apprenticeship or anything or formal patisserie schooling. Um, and I just got bunged onto the pastry, and I was like, oh, you know, I'll get to the larder one day. You know, I'll go and get into the hot kitchen too. And that was part of like a lot of young chefs, and that's usually how it happens, which is why I feel in this country pastry's got a little bit of a bit of a bad rap because this is where you put the commie, or you put someone, oh yeah, we're sick of him in the kitchen, chuck him on the pastry for a bit so you can chill out. Yeah. Um, and then yeah, was there for about six months as like a small town where I grew up, vineyard restaurant out in the sticks, and uh uh but I just loved it. I was like, this is great, and then I started like getting really feeding into it, and then I'm a bit like that. I've got that sort of mindset where I'm not only am I just I've got a very addictive personality, so I get a bit of a taste, then I'll just usually become obsessed, but I'm also like just disgustingly stubborn, and that I just can't be seen to fail. So I'll be like, you know what? I hate this, like life sucks. Like I used to feel this when I was working, some of the jobs that I had, I would be like, I would go in there and just be just abused every day, or I'd just be like, you know, just life would suck every day, but I'd just like nah, I can't be seen to quit because just didn't want to have that on me. No, I didn't, yeah, I just felt like that would just I would be letting myself down. So um uh, but then again, like with the getting into pastry, I just sort of immersed myself in books. Um and um Do you find it like an escape? I d I don't know. I because I didn't grow up in a culinary household, like mum and dad, like they they had you know enthusiasm for food, but like one of seven kids, food served a purpose. It was never the family, it was never a celebration, and we're you know, Aussie, pretty Aussie, like um there's the pretty much, yeah. Yeah, but we don't have a lot of like cultural influence, we don't like and there's no rich like ethnic diversity in our in our family tree. You grew up in Melbourne, no, no, I grew up in Sydney outside Sydney, Barrel, Southern Highlands. I grew up in Barrel, it's a very nice area. It's lovely, very nice.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Love Barrel, yeah. What a beautiful area. Terrific, yeah, I know. It's phenomenal. Yeah, there's a lot of rich history there, a lot of rich history, yeah, and a lot of good food, a lot of great food.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

In fact, I just I ran into it at Fine Foods the other day, the owners of the Gumlet Patissery, who we're actually quite good friends with, and they are like they are icons in the Highlands, and they're becoming icons of you know of Australia in terms of the pastry, and like they were someone I looked to up to when I was young. Another another thing that I was like that really kind of hinged on my like interest in pastry before I left. Wow, the Highlands.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

So you grew up in Sydney, you worked at a vineyard first off the bat in the pastry section, you loved it, and then you moved on, where'd you go to?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

So a mate of mine uh who I was working with at the vineyard, he went off, uh he was a bit older than me, and he went off to go work at Pier Restaurant in Rose Bay, which at the time was like the dog's nuts. Had three hats, it had been number one in the country, and gourmet traveller uh back in 2007, and then um he went, he he'd managed to snag a job there, went up, uh, was telling me all these stories about it, how like you know, crazy I was how much I'd love it. And I was like, you know what, let's um I'll give this a crack. I was like, yeah, fucking give me a job, give me give me a dig at it. And I went up there, did a trial, moved to Sydney, I was 18.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

So moving from the Southern Highlands, which was like an hour and a half out from town. That's it, yeah. And public transport would have taken me two hours. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

So now I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna go find myself a little dingy. I actually moved up with my ex-girlfriend, slept on her couch, and eventually, you know, we got back together as per. It's another story. But then um, yeah, they're living in Redfern, just like uh training out to Rose Bay every day, and then stuck there for two and a half years, which is I feel like what really was like I'll still think of myself as a peer boy, like still in contact with Grant, Katrina, Greg. Greg came down actually a couple of months back and saw us here, bought a tart. So just like it, it's it's nice when you have those sorts of things too. But um, yeah, they were such an important part of my own.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Shaping your foundation well.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yeah. Um, so there for about two and a half years, then I went on to Key for two years, and then from there, when I finished my apprenticeship, I um yeah decided to take the plunge and went to Europe. In the four years of your apprenticeship, you were you solely on pastry? No, okay, no, I spent a good chunk in the kitchen, in fact, the bulk of it. Um, but it was though, I think what happened was is because I had done about two years at the very beginning of my apprenticeship, and it was something that I had a bit of I felt like I was quite good at it. Um, that every place I went to, I always was sort of like so. At P for example, even though I was working fish, I was working on the garnish, you know, did some stuff on the raw and sashimi sections for a bit resource. And um, if the pastry chef went on holidays, I'm like, I'm covering, you know, or if they're going down during service, like I'll jump on.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah, so I was gravitating first initiative to push in there.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Yeah, I just I don't know, I just felt, and I think for me it was always it felt so organic. And I and I I don't want to say obnoxious in saying this, but I felt like it's just cooking, it's just all the same. You know, there's there's differences, it's it's there's big differences though, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Huge differences.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

One's like a chemistry, yeah, but then if you approach cuisine in the same way. Same methodology, then is it not also a science?

SPEAKER_00 11:07

It's very different. Well, I guess because you worked for Heston, you can say that. Indeed.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Well, oh yeah, you're right in saying that because at the Fat Dark at Dinner by Heston, we do approach things very similarly. In fact, the best example of this is where I used to work in the Netherlands, and they were just I I actually went there to to learn pastry. I was like, I want to come to a three-star restaurant in Europe and I want to learn to be a great pastry. So where'd you go? I went to Aldislaus in Holland, which doesn't exist anymore because Sergio is now expanded and he's got like gave up the three-star, now has like four two stars, yeah, as you do. Uh the Jane in Antwerp, and then the Pure Sean Cadson's just closed, but again, he's he's pristine cafe in Antwerp as well. So um, but that was that was on the list. There was something that Grant from Pier recommended. He said, like, you got to jet this place. This is like a visa machine. You'll do 40 covers for lunch, 40 covers for dinner, but you'll do like 17, 18 courses of the most detailed, like oriented, meticulous food, and everything is not only so clean, creative, and inspiring, but it's just just unf it's unbelievably delicious. Um, when he'd eaten there, and I was like, fuck it, put it on there, yeah, sent him to CV, did an email, and they were like, come on down. And I was still in City. So did you stage there? No, no, I got a job. No, you got a job. Yeah, got a job. Yeah, I was there for a bit over a year once my the visa kind of ran out. I sort of stuck around for a little bit longer than I was probably allowed to, and um, yeah, end up coming home. But uh, but it was that was I was the idea was to go to pastry, and then they were saying like, well, the fact that you want to go to pastry means we're not gonna do that. So you'll learn the kitchen. So I went back into the kitchen, and so I worked on the starters for about four months, and then I spent the rest of the time on the garnish section, main courses.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

So then so the fact that you said you want to go to pastry, yeah. I said we're not sending you there.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

And there was another bloke who was doing who was like the opposite. He's a good mate of mine still, and he's actually now the head chef of um the oh, what is it? It's the chef's table at Brooklyn Fair in New York. Yeah, again, another three-star. Max Snap Mesnik, the Austrian guy, anyway. But he was like, I want to go and learn, like, learn the fish. I want to like, you know, see how Sergio cooks his sauces, like, fuck it, your own pastry. I know, and it was and it, and it wasn't like vindictive. It was like they had this expression, um, and it was actually stamped on the side of this minivan that we used to drive around to all of our storage areas, and it said Alleshever, which is Dutch for like give everything. And it was like, you are just if you come here, you are committed to the cause. Like you are part of this, you live and breathe it. And we would on Sunday nights, we'd finish service, we'd clean the kitchen, scrub it head to toe. We'd be out of there at 2 a.m. And then we'd jump in the midivan and we'd go to Antwerp and we'd party. Yeah, and we come home the next day, we close Monday, Tuesdays, and then we're back at it first thing, 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning, and then just full gas. It was like that was it was a very, very different world to what we experienced in Australia, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

And when you came back to Australia, where did you work then?

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Um, so I actually went back to Key. Okay because the plan was to actually because they had just opened their restaurant in Belgium so I could get a second visa to work in their work in Belgium and not have to like extend my Dutch one, which I don't think I was allowed to do because I was working holidays. And um, so I was like, alright, they just opened their Antwerp restaurant, I'm gonna go back and work there. So I went to Key, sort of like a bit of an interim thing. I was like, I'm just gonna apply for some visas, sort my shit out if you guys need a hand. They're like, yeah, sure. Yeah, 100%. Came back from it, it was great. Um, but then I met my girlfriend, who I'm still with and have a two-year-old with now. And so that kind of changed things a bit. Yeah. Um, but uh, you know, that's life, right? So instead I ended up going um to the UK and uh went to work at at Dinnerboy Heston there. So that was about that was about oh yeah, about eight or nine months later. Did a bit of time just sort of like, you know, going about it. I worked at you know, Love Supreme on Oxford Street in Paddington. Yeah, I went there for a few months with a mate of mine. He was the head chef there, he's trying to like do something. I was like, I'll come help you.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah, so what's one piece of advice you'd give to a young chef that wants to take that step and go overseas to get a job like you did?

SPEAKER_01 15:37

I I mean I'm not sure how much the world has changed since that. Because that was 2011 when I went. It was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

But I'm sure that I'm I'm still I still a big believer that that it's open. You just gotta put yourself out there.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

It's literally putting yourself out there. And like, don't get me wrong, I'm I'm very, very concerned about what people think of me. It's a fucking toxic trait of mine. Um but I was just like, I had you know, at no, like no, nothing's holding you back. Like for me, going to work, and it had to be a three-star, I don't know why. I mean, I know why, but it was like something in my psyche was sort of like I've got to go to the best. I started the best. I was like, if I work with the best, I expose myself the best and I learned from the best, then maybe someday I might get close to them. And that was it was just this motivation that I had. Um, so uh to go and work overseas was just like um, yeah, I think nothing could really stop me. And so send out a CV, like um, yeah, don't be afraid to I think I think the most important thing is the foot in the door. So again, super fortunate to get that foot in the door at somewhere like Pier, to take a gamble on an 18-year-old who's spent, you know, six months as a first-year apprentice in a vineyard, and it was nothing but KP. I mean, I'd I don't I've had one job in my entire life that wasn't in a kitchen. So since I was 14, I pushed, I collected trolleys at the local supermarket. Yeah, and outside of that, I've just been in kitchens my whole life. And then so to do that was huge, and so I'll always be grateful, Grant and and Greg and Katrina, for that because it's like to do two and a half years there means that I got that job at Key. And Key had just gotten top 30, I think, on the sample at that time at the year that I was there, which was huge for us as a team there, and um with it had that not had happened, then I don't think the guys that I'd slowest would have paid attention. So to it's it's that foot in the door. So you've got to look back and you gotta think, what am I willing to do to sort of create that opportunity for myself? Because like you've got to do it for yourself, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

You can't just especially now when a lot of the world so much about everyone's instantaneous. You want this expectation to have stuff available to you because a lot of stuff is so easy to get, but like opportunities like this you kind of got to graft for, and there's there's no there are there are too many other ways, but there's no way that is proven to work the same way that like just taking a risk start at the bottom and graft. And I did. I worked on the I I started off as as a as a kitchen hand at the vineyard. I went in as a first year shit kicking on the pastry. I then you know I went to commie status back again to the beginning. I've spent days where I didn't even put an apron on, and I was sent under the restaurant at Pier to clean the grease trap, or like scrub out underneath the stairs, or organise a dry store because it was because we were quiet and I was like, I'm just a cleaner today. Um, like again, I'd come as CDP from you know the pastry section at you know Australia's best restaurant, 27th best in the world, but now you're on the canopies, mate, and that was my section. So understand that like every next, every pond you go into is always just treat it as a big pond and don't be afraid to be that little fish. Because if you grow, and if I left as a CDP at it uh in in Holland and had I was in charge of like you know, a whole section, yeah, you know what I mean? And but like if you're not willing to take that that first step and sort of take a hit, really, say life's gonna just be a little bit difficult just for a little bit, but you know, fucking if you just shut up and put your head down, then it'll it'll pay dividends. So yeah, I think that's my advice is just you you gotta just be willing to to be uncomfortable, go outside of that zone.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Couldn't have put the words better, mate. And when you move to the UK and you worked with someone like Hester, who's it sort of changed the way culinary was perceived at the time. How did you feel, you know, uh taking a step out of your comfort zone again, but being challenged to uh all new heights? Did you feel like you went back down to ground zero? A little bit.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

I think um what I had really aspired to at that point was again, I was I was young, I was about 26, 25, 26 at the time. I was a bit cocky because you know, again, like I'd put myself in those positions and and it had been successful. So I had this idea that I wanted to then start growing the next phase of my career, I wanted to learn how to manage people. It was all good being the best chef the party, you know, um which is I think such an amazing thing in itself. And I will say that like to be the world's best CDP was something that was like a goal of mine, because you know, sous chef can obviously you know go and do all the sorts of things, and then you earn that position, you learn to manage people and you have other tasks outside of that. But if you're CDP, if you're 100% on the tools but you're the best at it, there's something so satisfying about and rewarding about just because that's just cooking, like you are literally just cooking, you have no other responsibilities from that. Um that aspiration that I had to sort of fill that kind of goal of mine. I thought that I'd come close to. In retrospect, I kind of regret saying that, but or thinking that way. But I felt at 26 I was like, cool, I reckon I could run a section, I reckon I could teach people, I reckon I can, you know, um nothing service and do the next step. So the intention to go to Heston was to be take that step into my next phase of my career. Um, so um going there again was a little outside my comfort zone. Um there was actually again another kind of thing that retrospectively has changed the way I think about food a lot there. And I remember like going and expecting I knew dinner was gonna be a little bit more that sort of upscale like a brasserie, like it was just it was it was simple uh food, but Again, it's at high-end execution. I kind of expected to go there and I was going to learn all these amazing things. I'd heard stories about friends from friends who'd worked there before about like the fat duck, they do all this and that. And then there's dinner by hest, and it's this new project, and it's gonna be really, really different, but it's basically fat duck style things, sort of larger scale, more simpler format. I was like, oh, that sounds pretty cool. So I go there, and then we were doing things that were like, oh, you know, four or five components, and I was like, where's all the where's all the science? Like, how come it's not exploding? And this, where's and this is just gelatin and cream and and eggs, like where's the 100? You know, where's all this like techie shit that I was like reading about? Uh and it never came. I was like, oh fuck, but then you know, um, eventually after spending six years with the team, I was just like, okay, yeah, yeah, it makes sense. You spent six years. Yeah, so a year and a half over there, and then that was the four and a half, the four and a half years that we had in Melbourne before, you know, all the wage nastiness happened. Right. Yeah, yeah. But that was that was the that was I think where I really learnt to manage people. And I learned not long, not only learning to, but I was learning about.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

So you were there for a year and a half, and then they offered you the head chef role. Head pastry chef. Pastry sous chef role. Oh, pastry sous chef role here in Australia. Yeah, that's right. Right. And then where'd you move on after that?

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Well, once the once the restaurant was closed and were all made redundant, I then went to go. I wanted to sort of get out of the industry. I was actually a little bit burnout, and I felt like I I didn't want the antisocial hours anymore.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

What made you feel that?

SPEAKER_01 23:37

I think closing the restaurant was pretty tough. It took a lot, it was a big mental toll on a lot of us. Um it was getting to a point of its existence where uh we could see the cracks starting to show, and there was a lot of, you know, before the you know, the the whistleblowers um, you know, alerted the ombudsman to some of the shifty dealings at the back end, we were like, this is it's we're not busy as we used to be. Um we're not as profitable as we used to be. And the head chef was feeling the pinch and putting the pressure on the senior group to monitor that, to maintain the profitability of the restaurant, which is you know, obviously a great thing to learn as a manager. But if it's coming out of necessity and you're feeling pressure from that, and like how can we cut the wage, like the wage costs, your head count's gonna go down. Like, can you bargain more with your dear with your um suppliers to try and get better prices? Can we stop using this product instead of that? Which is coming from a company that would basically just throw cash at any problem back in the early days when we were just like full every night. All it really took for us was something like this to happen for us to really understand the differences in landscape, and that's something that I'll always say to people is that like you know, uh it's a different world, like Europe is just a very different world, UK included, you know, um, and there are so many reasons why. Um, so yeah, of course, like when uh a UK-based company comes over and says basically we're gonna operate like we do in the UK in Australia, which is a very different space. Um it it really was kind of like, oh guys, we shouldn't be doing this, like you know, we can't actually get that product. So why are we going to pay squillions of dollars to get it imported from the UK when there's perfectly good local stuff? Which was always a frustration for the executive suite. I felt like the guys who were basically because we were micromanaged from the UK, so I was like FaceTiming head pastry chef um of the group, you know, fortnightly, monthly, liaising with them. Um the you know, Ashley Palmer Watts was coming over every couple of months to sort of spend a few weeks in the business and sort of working with us, usually on product development, and you could really see the disparity in mindset. And um, even though what we had done and evolved and adapted to our environment, um it was it was really straying away from what the UK was, which is kind of interesting to observe. But um, I I felt like after a while when we started to make the right changes, and it was strange because towards the end, before we were put into liquidation, we um we were actually making money, we were profitable, it was the best we'd ever been, and we'd really leaned into our environment and we started to change things, and like we were given carte blanche because I think even like Ashley stepped down as director and left the business or the company, um, and the board of directors changed up a little bit and they had a very different mindset coming from the UK.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

And have you found skills transfer over from that role to where you are today? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Like I think still we kind of operate, um, we kind of operate still as as I don't know, almost like a subsect of Dinnerboy Heston. There's so many of the recipes, even the way that we we format like our costings, the way that we like write our um like our recipes and like in spreadsheets, there's all things that we've learned from from the restaurant. I've got a couple of my team who are still with me from Dinnerboy Heston days. It's like seven years in the making. Um, and they get it, they get me. They know how you know how we did that together, we went through it together. Um, and the fact that we're able to implement those same things is into into here is is like such a such a positive thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

And like, you know, coming out of a dark period together and then now coming to something with some light, right? Yeah, it shows that as a team you guys can obviously.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Like pressure makes diamonds, huh?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Yeah, and we we saw the we we learned from mistakes, and I think that's probably some of the best advice I could think I could ever give anyone is that like if you want to learn from mistakes, if you want to be in a position where um you are taking risks, you wanna you want you want to open your own business, you have a concept, you have an idea, you you have the capital, like everything seems to be right, but you don't have the experience, like why would you not want to make mistakes and learn from them on someone else's money? You know, like having me having the opportunity to sort of learn all the ups and downs and almost experiment a little bit to potentially like see what my future would look like by doing it um in a in a massive company like that. Like, I think that's that's given me so much value because I know that like, yeah, that's not gonna work because we saw what happened, yeah. You know, and to experience that first hand.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

So you you'd advise anyone that you know someone might be as confident as you were at 26. Yeah. That right that turns around and says, you know what, I can go do this. You tell them that point that you can do this, probably stop. Yeah, don't go do it, go work for someone and do it for them. Yeah, no, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Because yeah, without a doubt. Like, I think it's what do they say? It's like the more you know, the more you realise how little you know. You know, so like you get to a point where you're like pretty cocksure and you're like, yeah, fuck, I can do this. Like, I've been told by a few of my seniors I'm pretty shit hot, they let me run the section uh uh on their on their nights off. It's a Tuesday in the middle of winter, but like whatever. Yeah, you know what I mean? Anything, oh fuck, I'm ready, guys. Like I can go do this on my own. Um I mean, sure you can. And this is the other thing too, is that like there's a lot of there's a lot of people out there who've thrived at a very young age, and you never want to take that away from them. I mean Renarin Zeppi was like 26, you know, and open Noma. That's bang, that's bonkers, right? But like he's a he's a one in a million.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

It's a mindset thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:48

That's you know, and like he used to say, like, if you have if you have the opportunities and you got the people around you to make it happen, sure. But like if you want to be the owner operator who's 100% integrity, who who does everything that they feel is doing it the right way, does stuff from scratch, you know, doesn't take out you know hundreds of thousands of dollars in in loans, doesn't have to pitch to 10 different investors just to sort of get the capital to get your dream venue off the ground, you can do it all on your own back and do it successfully. Um yeah, you're probably gonna have to break a few eggs to make that omelet, and that's not necessarily gonna happen, you know, at the at the ripe age of 26, unless you are that 100 million, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

If there was one piece of advice you'd give to yourself before you went over to the UK, because I feel like that UK step for you was like you were mature, you had this mindset, you had like the the passion, the drive, like I'm gonna fucking go own this. Um at that mature, uh what you thought was mature point. What's if you could go back and give yourself that piece of advice, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 30:59

I would I would tell myself to I mean I think the same thing that a lot of young a lot of chefs would go and tell the young selves like pull your fucking head in. Like literally, like pull your head in. What you have achieved means nothing to these people. And I'll say that from someone who is now in a position where I need to recruit. And I get hot shots come in to my business or to you know my my kitchen when I was when I was the head chef. And I need to, and I was like, I've got I've got a JD that I need to be filled, I've got a budget that I can't go above. I don't give a fuck about like how shit hot you think you are. There's a job that needs to be done, and no one's bigger than the big picture, you know. If you find like a unicorn, latch onto it, like nurture them, you know, like guide them and like hope they don't think that they're too good for it and then you know fly the roost too early and like get them to sort of make your life as easy, humanly possible. But understand that is no matter how good you think you are, there is so much more that's happening outside of your little world that is not important. And if you think that you're being hard done by you're not given the right opportunities, you're being told off for that the wrong things, or like no one's sort of you know, like making you feel like the way that you think you should be feeling, um, it's probably because there's other stuff that's going on. And I think when I was 26 and I was in that position as a CDP at dinner in London, I just thought like this is bullshit. How come he's getting the opportunity to run the section when I feel like I've proved myself to be? And it's like, well, it's probably a thousand reasons. Yeah. And you know, um, the only person who's in charge of that, of of of changing those reasons, is you. So yeah, pull your fucking head in. And I think that would have been that probably would have served me. And like, don't be wrong, I had an incredible experience, and it opened so many doors, and I've still like again in contact with people who I work with back in London. Still in those days.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

That's amazing, and it's just yeah, and you but but one thing that one thing that I can truly say that you've done that a lot of people won't do is you seen the writing on the wall, but you stuck it out. Yeah, like you knew the ship was sinking, but you still continue to play the music.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah, exactly. We actually joked about that.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

I've got the the violinists and the Titanic stand there, you guys kept on going down, and I think that that to me, like as an outsider, shows your integrity as a person. You don't run away from a problem. Yeah, like the cards are the cards, this is what I'm dealt with. Yeah, let me just play it out. And I think that that allowed you to shape yourself as a person, but now as a business owner, it actually gives you more um, I think that gives you more cred, to be honest, and it and it actually gives me like you know, I respected you, but now I respect you even more to see you actually go through that and transition and continue to grow. Like I've seen business at all forms and all different levels, um, even from a young age, and I've seen shit go sour and I've seen shit go great. And I find when you go through those experiences, um, especially challenging ones when you have to see staff been let turned down and let go and redundancies here, or you know, um, you know, whatever the case may be. And I and I've seen businesses where we've had to assist them in restructuring and and whatever the case may be in forfeiting leases, it's it's it's a stressful time. Um, but the fact that you know you guys were exposed to all that but managed to continue to keep your head up and you actually actively tried to save the business, yeah. You could have just said, mate, I'll just go next door. Yeah. Right? Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, right. So um that's you know, I I you know sometimes you've got to stop and smell the roses and go, man, like, you know, I I I did a good deed then. And I guess this is where it sort of comes back and shows shows where you are today. Now, transitioning to you know a business that started on the gram. Yeah, yeah. To think that, you know, working in all these fine diners, three Michelin-style restaurants, the UK, the EU, Sydney, and then starting a tart business from home in a lockdown on a social media platform. How instrumental was Instagram to you?

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Oh, it's I would say I mean I don't have like a resent any resentment towards social media. I know it's very easy to you know jump on that bandwagon and dismiss it as toxic. I think it's it's an amazing tool. And it's just the people, right? It exists. Social media is a thing. It's like, what are they, what is that? It's a transient? No. It's like not it's not a living thing. You can't it's the people. People make it shit. Yeah, you know, it's a great, it's a such a tool. It's a platform. It's such an asset. Correct. It's just it's an amazing thing. And we we I think we utilized it well. I don't ever want to dismiss the hard work we've done to say that it was all luck. We've been very, very fortunate though. We've created it, I've worked pretty fucking hard to establish it up and post it, but it's the next thing to deliver, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Yeah, I'm just saying, like, as a platform, you know, just to the power of it to be able at such a bootstrap budget to well, we don't understand how the algorithm works.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

I don't, I don't get it. We we've tried people like, oh, so apparently if you post it at 9 a.m. and not six, is it you can actually get, you know, like it's it's it's because we're like trying to go, oh, six six pm on a Sunday is like your perfect engagement time and all this sort of stuff. And yeah, so I don't know how it works. I don't understand. I know that like um there are certain things that you can do and all the hashtags and this to sort of be able to reach, but the fact is that anyone in the world who has a smartphone can access you and what you're doing if you want that to be the case, in some cases, even if you don't. Um I mean, what I mean, this is like a marketer's dream, right? You say this like 40 years ago, and they'd be like, you know. Yeah, what are you talking about? Yeah, like this is perfect, and there are so many of these things, and if you if you get into the right space where you're around the right people who believe in what you do and you manage to get there's just a couple of good little little boosts, a few little extra feet in the door, then it's it's amazing how the floodgates open, but it is just sort of I think of course there's like algorithm chat, but the integrity is just so important. If you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall, just fucking hoping that something sticks, uh it's not that that that's not gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

No, you need to be able, you need to like follow through on what you're saying, trust your process, yeah, definitely. And I feel like you know, the algorithm I I look at Instagram like a library. Yeah. So if you've got, you know, fictional, non-fictional, historic, yeah, and then you start hyper niching, right? You might go like World War II, yeah, and then you might go into the tanks of World War II. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? You get down the rabbit hole, man. You go down the rabbit hole, right? But that's where, that's where, like, for example, where you're situated is, you know, at the end of the day, Instagram is all data driven. Yeah. Just like a business. And if people engage with your content that like tarts or like dessert, then Instagram goes, okay, this person that likes dessert likes this. So then we'll show that, show it to them again. And then if they like it again, then they'll show it to them again. And then the algorithm will go, oh, there's a someone that's similar with the same sort of liking behavior that might like desserts, might like tarts. So then we'll show them this. And if that person likes it, great. Then all of a sudden, you know, it looks at the people that follow you. And if people that follow you uh, you know, uh have common traits or chefs or restaurateurs or whatever the case may be, it will just start showing your profile to people of similar nature. And that's how you organically grow. Because at the end of the day, how does a you know, how does a how's it a how does a platform know how to segregate things? Well, it's just like a library. And if you treat it like a library, yeah, and you you keep posting and you stay true to your word, like you're doing tarts. The minute you go off and you start doing bacon egg rolls, it's gonna go, okay, he wants to do bacon egg rolls, but is he gonna be running on bacon egg rolls? Yeah, like is that where he's going? Yeah, because that's where he's going, then we'll just whack him in that section. Yeah, okay, you belong in the bacon egg section, yeah, been there before. Right? Okay, so like that's how I found social media, yeah, and that's how I found Instagram is to look at it like a library. And uh, I learned that from someone that that that taught me uh a couple things, um, and that's where we try to stay true to our world. Like our word is our ethos is that we want to provide actionable guidance to people in hospitality.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

Yeah, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

So you can go to my page and you can learn something about hospitality.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

So if you're in hospitality, then I think you need to be you want to be open to learning about hospitality, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

So if you want to, if you're if you're seeking guidance, you're opening a restaurant, um, you're looking to transition from different roles, you can go on my page and you can learn something. Or about efficiency in kitchens, that's where my forte is. I help people optimise and design kitchens, that's where they can go, and they can learn cool things about different kitchen equipment.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Right? So that that that's that's how I have found, you know, sort of Instagram to be for me anyway. Yeah, that's sort of my take. But I guess where I want to just really hone in and touch on now is that you've had this business now for close to three to four years. Yeah, that's it. And now you're in this location, um dealing with all the different nuances that comes with it. How do you, first of all, how do you see your how how do you show up every day? Even when times are shit.

SPEAKER_01 41:55

Yeah, um I think it's the same philosophy that I would would have taken when I was a young chef as well. Is it like well if I don't, then what does that look like? And it's probably part of my like, you know, innate desire to be liked, which I think a lot of people who probably won't be open to admitting it have, but I want to be able to show up every day and just be the rock and be the person who's consistent and also acknowledge the responsibility that I have to, you know, my customers, my team, you know, my family, and knowing that like going through and just like you know, just putting in that little bit extra to make things profitable, to make things more comfortable, to make our our product that more appealing, is this gonna you know better everyone else's life? And it it is it is also just like just the satisfaction. There is a lot to take from that. I get a lot of fulfillment from coming in every day. Um, you know, I'm a sucker for just like doom scrolling on the for you page pastry, usually, and like oh I've got all the you know all the big names, yeah. Antonio Basure and you know Michelack, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

I find I find it's it's so important now. Like, you know, if you if if you have an Instagram page and you you you wonder like if your feed is full of different stuff, that's fine, that's what you're probably into. But if you're like hyper fixated on wanting to learn something, um I would to in order to change your algorithm on Insta, you would unfollow everybody and follow the people that inspire you.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I always find myself just like liking things, and then I'll sometimes just go through my whole my whole feed will literally just be like pastry, pastry stuff. And I'll just like just just look at it and I'll just absorb it, and then I'll think, oh fuck, that'd be. Yeah. Can I like make my own spin on that without it not looking like a cut and dry copy? Can I be inspired by stuff? That's inspiration, isn't it? Minimitation is the greatest form of flattery and that sort of thing. But like if you can take inspiration, but like if you if you're just if you don't know, yeah, I don't know, we can go back to what we were saying before about like taking that plunge too early, you know, and not having the inspiration and like the understanding of your product, then you end up just copying stuff because you don't know enough.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

But and and how do you think that you know being your passion being pastry and you said a word before profitable, keeping your business profitable too? Yeah, how do you keep that passion alive while maintaining that profit?

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Because I think that there is some I mean for you, I'm a consumer as well, so I know what I what I would like, what I would want to eat. I think about the people around me, I think about our customers. I think we've worked out like Melbourne's a very a really good place to it's a it's a really easy place to work out. I think you know, like it's easy to to know what the people in Melbourne want, you know. They're not as fickle as Sydney, which is hard. It's a hard market to crack, I reckon. What do you mean by fickle? Just think that like they're not they're I don't think they're they're always gonna be there for you. You know, it seems a bit naff, but it's true. I think the revolving door of what's trendy, what's hype, what's fashionable is so much faster up there. And I also feel that culturally speaking, there is there's not as much of a focus on. I mean, in me, it's always this old rhetoric that you know Melbourne's a bit more like Europe, a bit more European in terms of its culture. Maybe it's the shit house weather. I reckon it's probably what it is. It galvanizes the people of Melbourne. You get like, you want to kind of, you know, I've thought about going home. I was like, I do it. I got friends who are running pastry shops up there, and they're like, oh, it's tricky, Monday Tuesday's clothes, it's just too quiet. I'm like, fuck, do I need that? We thrive on a Monday Tuesday. I know places around here you do, and everyone, there's this culture of eating, so um yeah, I guess the weather plays a big part.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Yeah, like you know, to think I'll give you an example, and this is like going real basic. A1 bakery. Yeah, you've heard of them? Okay, so they're a traditional Middle Eastern bakery in Sydney. They open at 4:30 to 5 a.m. Yeah, wow. These guys here start at 7. Huh. It's a dream. I'm like, that's a lazy bakery, man. Like, yeah, but it's the culture. They go, he goes to me, man, there's no one here before seven. Yeah, there's no one on the street before seven. And I'm like, in Sydney, you've got to be open from from from you gotta be in there at 4:30 to open the doors by five. And I think that's really important, is understanding your market and what you've done is you've responded to what the market wants. Yeah, and that's obviously shown um your success through. You've released a book. That's it. And how's that?

SPEAKER_01 47:10

That's that's been awesome. I think it's really uh it's it's been cool that it's like a chronicling of like the first sort of two years, two and a half years of our existence as a business. Um the style of our pastry's taken a little bit of a not a deviation, but that it's it has evolved a lot. Um, but it's quite interesting in that like the book was essentially submitted almost at this sort of line of the sand, and now everything on the other side is kind of like a little bit different, which is great because it means it's like opened up for a sequel, which is you know unreal. But um, yeah, it's it's been super well received. We've had so many great people behind us.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

And what was that experience like going through writing your own your first book?

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Yeah, it was it's hard, it's a lot of work, yeah. Trying to like to just uh come up with 50 recipes that we thought we may have had, but we're like, it's a few things you know we might need to kind of you know make up and try once or twice, like all right, that'll do, you know. Oh, we did that one thing, remember we hate it? I was like, Yeah, I was like, put it in the book, so it's a bit of that, yeah, but no, it was everything in there we believe in 100%. But um yeah, the writing of the recipes, like we essentially had to take like a week-long holiday just to get away from the shop and basically go somewhere where we could have someone look after our child who was one at the time, just so that we're because we went and had a nanny at a resort in Fiji, and then the rest of the time, it's a great way to write a book, by the way. If anyone's doing it, take a week off, go to Fiji, sit by the pool and type your recipes there. Little cocktail breaks it's as soon as the clock strikes two. But um, that that part was was really challenging. Um, we did it whilst the shop was open. I did it whilst I was on the tools. Um, even photo shoot day. I was rostered on here at five for the bake up in the morning, open the shop, portioning, prepping. Oh, the photographers get in here. Okay, guys, we need one of these, one of these, one of these, one of these, one of these. Shot it all here in this room. So we could just bring it upstairs. You need anything, give us yell on down there, prepping with the team. Finish shooting that. Okay, cool, take it downstairs, put it on the counter. And I was like, yeah, so we're actually making extra money. It's like, oh, it's photo shoot day, yeah, extra tarts around. So yeah, that was it was fun. I think it was pretty unique in that sense. A lot of people, you know, they tell me their experience. I've worked at four different places now where a book has been written slash shot compiled whilst I was working there, which has been pretty cool. So I was seeing the guts of it. Okay, and I know, but particularly with the peer book was funny. Like Grant was like making stuff up as he went and he's like, Oh, there's a sauce on the whiting dish that's actually just like milk foam with espresso in it to give it a bit of colour. Like, we didn't have a dish, so we just sort of whipped it together. Things like this, like there's consummane, one of the um Madelot of Eel dishes, and it's a fucking tea, I think it was. Yeah, which is just awesome. But that's like you see how this sort of stuff happens, and then you have the other end of the spectrum when Sergio wrote Sergioology, which is that place in uh the word I worked at in Holland, um, it was like done to the nines studio booked out for a month, you know, custom crockery, you know, three different photographers for different aspects. Like he had like uh one that was doing all the stills, one that was doing some more like landscape stuff of him and someone, someone's like digging into it. Yeah, yeah. It was it was it was insane. So yeah, good experience.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

And what's next for you?

SPEAKER_01 50:41

So right now we're we're really just like, I mean, I think the hospital industry is in a bit of a tough spot. We know that like if growth, if you can afford to grow, it's a great time to grow because there's a lot of sadly a lot of empty shops around. Um but we're we're we would love to open a third venue, um, but but we're currently just I feel like we're we're on a bit of a roll in terms of of like collaborations. I'm trying to focus a little bit more on my own personal brand as such, but but definitely my own personal trajectory. Um I want to get into more demos.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Yeah, personal brand's a good way to put it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

Yeah, I mean I guess so. Like we want we would we could try and align with other brands and do collabs that are um more like sort of high-end corporate catering, you know, where where the products are showcase, where we can do, you know, big events like racing carnival, um, you know, the Australian Open and showcase the product as opposed to just be, you know, the finger food. We want it, we want to really celebrate like because I think what we have is a pretty unique product, and I think we we can really take it from you know the very easy to access slice of tart on your way to work to go through coffee to um a showcase dessert at the end of you know a three-hat meal or something equivalent, and and we we think that not only because of the format but also our style, it transcends all of those genres and can fit into anything. So um we're really well positioned in that way, and not only that, but because we have a format that can lend itself to literally anything. I could, I could you just name me a brand. I reckon we could work out a way that we could collab, that I could show off their product just by turning it into what's just as long as I bring the pastry, you just we'll we'll work out how what we're gonna put inside it and it's tat, right? So it's it's a it's so versatile and it's so great to be able to have this because it just makes you approachable and accessible to so many people.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

So and that taste is like tasting the tasting the brand, right? That's it.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

And if you can if you make their brand recognizable or um like familiar and like people will be able to notice the synergy as long as it appears in a bit of pastry with my or our Tartsanon sort of touch, um, then it's a bit of a pretty dreamy collab. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

Well, guys, Gareth is open for collaborations. Yeah, exactly. Hit me up. Go to tartanon.com.au. Well uh Gareth, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thanks, mate. And uh it's great to see you grow. Thank you. Is there any final words you'd like to say?

SPEAKER_01 53:29

The one takeaway, I think, is that that there's always just so much to learn. And I think even though as as generic as that sounds, you know, that the more you know, the more you realize how little you know mantra is just so real. Like there's there's always something out there that you can take. So never feel it like you've you know you've sorted it out. Thank you so much. Right, thank you. Appreciate it. Being awesome.