Tips from Australia’s top restaurants

Staying afloat in the restaurant business takes more than just great food. It’s also about grit, perseverance and the ability to take risks.

Some tips from Bowral fine diner Biota, one of the restaurants named in the Australian Financial Review Australia’s Top 100 Restaurants Awards announced last Monday.

The owner James Viles said it was a “pure business decision" to open the month-long, city pop-up.

"Four weeks out from the launch, bookings were not strong and I was really worried," Viles told the Australian Financial Review.

What happened then was that the website all of a sudden lit up.

And for the first 16 nights of Biota Chippendale, Viles served 1500 people.

The experiment wraps up on July 11 and there are 200 people on the waitlist.

 "And not one of those people saw a menu before they booked," Viles told the Australian Financial Review.

Viles opted for a ticketed meal system that allowed him to charge diners in advance, requiring an up-front payment through a website.

He modelled it on on the Jetstar platform, creating a system that gives diners the option of adding extras, such as mudcrab ($125) or truffles ($45).

"Last week we sold 30 crabs," Viles told the  AFR. "We saw it as an experiment in finding out about people's spending habits," he says.

"It's the online shopping [part] that people seem to enjoy. You can just click away, it's fun, it goes on your credit card and then you forget about it."

Melbourne chef Shane Delia has signed his newly renovated CBD fine diner Maha to Liven, a crypocurrency app launched in Melbourne and Sydney last month.

"It's streamlining payments at Maha and it works well for the customer," Delia told the Australian Financial Review. "It's easier than having staff lug around an Eftpos machine and there's also a lot of data exchange with the app so we get the information we need to tailor our offer."

Leon Getler 29th June 2018.