A saxophonist jives on a bartop. Influencers in sequins pose and pout. Cocktails are shaken while canape platters are passed through a who’s who crowd. There’s buzz aplenty in a venue’s opening night, whether it be showgirls sporting feather crowns, roaming Chinese lion dancers, or tables adorned with hand-calligraphed place names. The self-assured spectacle is, quite deliberately, all the outside world sees. Few are privy to the behind-the-scenes high wire: the dice-rolling risk, the sleepless nights and endless planning. Even with unprecedented closures and predictions of one in 13 hospitality businesses facing failure in the next year, it seems that just as many are primed to launch. But the reality can bite.

“Two hours before opening, our ovens decided not to work. And they were brand new,” says Jacquie Chan, the woman behind Perth dumpling and cocktail restaurants, Miss Chow’s, Lucy Luu, Lena’s Bar & Eats, and Lygon Lane. Her September opening, Moon and Mary – in a heritage building that once served as a convict lockup – is where disaster struck. “The main water pipe also burst. We still ran service, and had 150 covers of eight courses per person. I was out the front with the guests, so chef thought on his feet, the team made it work and I only found out the next day.”

Chan, a pearl and diamond dealer by day who has opened eight venues in nine years, says this unflappably, like it’s a walk in the park. “These things happen. No one died and staff came back to do the dishes the next day,” she shrugs. “We’ve had a few openings now, so I’m a little bit more experienced.”

Over the years, Chan has weathered the anxiety of receiving licencing documents at the eleventh hour, navigated a shopping centre tenancy (something she wouldn’t recommend to small businesses) and learned how to negotiate leases, all while employing several hundred people in an industry she’d never worked in before. “I’ve graduated from my L-plates to my P’s,” she says. “On my L’s, I paid a handsome sum in tuition fees, learning the hard way and making lots of mistakes.”

The cost indeed has been high. Having started out with partners, Chan is now the last one standing. “They thought the industry was too stressful and have all left,” she says.

Chan says the pressure on, and from, investors – particularly if they’re friends – can be withering. “It definitely impacts relationships. If you’re not from the hospitality industry and you want quick returns on investment, well, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” she says. “From an investor’s point of view, they might believe in your passion, but they might not be patient enough to wait for the returns.” A decade in, Chan has found that it’s easier to go it alone. “But if you’re in expansion mode, it’s difficult to fund everything yourself. Raising capital is not an easy task.” Banks are skittish around lending money for hospitality ventures, she says. Her advice on raising capital? “It’s hard. Do not invest what you haven’t got.”

Melbourne celebrity chef Guy Grossi is well versed in openings. Yet after four decades, he still has “stage fright and a few sleepless nights” in the lead up to launching. He’s amassed a few hacks to handle opening week setbacks. “We’ve had situations where maybe two hours before, the power goes out because you’ve got an overloaded circuit board. Imagine opening night with no power! Cooking by candlelight!” he says. “Now we have contingencies.” He always has the builder walking around on opening night, and people that can be called upon quickly to mitigate disaster. Someone is on site to ensure the music is programmed and the lighting is right. An IT person is present for a few shifts in case the computers refuse to comply. “We prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

In September, Grossi opened an exclusive, single-table restaurant inside the TIME • RONE installation, a way to dine among immersive art within the Art Gallery of Western Australia. On the day of the inaugural service, the kitchen was still being fitted. Grossi, who helms Florentino, Ombra, Puttanesca, Arlechin and more in Melbourne, Settimo in Brisbane and Garum in Perth, says he approaches such realities very differently now to what he did in his thirties. “I’m a lot more thoughtful about things and my mantra these days is ‘It is what it is,’” he says. “Freaking out isn’t going to help the situation, it’s just going to compound it. If you’re one of the leaders of the team and you’re losing the plot, your team will start to panic as well.”

While Grossi has a string of success stories behind him, he’s also tasted disappointment. In 2020, he shuttered Merchant Osteria Veneta, his Venetian restaurant at the base of the Rialto in Melbourne. “It was there for 11 years, and very successful. But after Covid came, there wasn’t anybody at that financial end of the city, so we couldn’t reopen it.” Grossi says it wasn’t as simple as just closing doors. “Sometimes there’s a lot of debt in a business that has to be recouped. We fight hard to ensure everybody gets what they’re entitled to.”

Then there’s the heartbreak. “There’s a very sad feeling walking away from something that’s been a very special part of your life, and anyone who’s experienced that will know exactly what I’m talking about,” he says.

James Sutherland has opened eight restaurants over the past seven years, in locations from Byron Bay to Burleigh Heads, Noosa and Newcastle, with another set for mid-2025 in Perth. Yet the man behind Light Years, The Smoking Camel, Moonlight and Pixie Food & Wine says he’s not a fan of new openings. “I don’t like to do it,” he says. “The goal is to get the restaurant open as soon as you can.” A trick he’s learned? “Never put an opening date on the hoarding of your building – it creates stress and anxiety. Just say you’re ‘opening summer.’”

Sutherland’s biggest tip is to do as much planning as possible before the lease starts. “With Light Years Perth, it took us from February to the end of August to get the planning done. That’s an extreme, and apparently it’s because of the heritage element,” he says. It dovetails with his second biggest tip. “You’ve got to anticipate what could happen, when you’re sitting down and doing the lease,” he says. “We’ll negotiate a rent-free construction period and a rent-free opening period – normally of about three months each. The bigger landowners are open to that and it’s generally relative to the rent and the size of the restaurant.”

Chan wholeheartedly agrees, advising there’s wriggle room in lease agreements. “Know what you’re able to push back and negotiate with landlords on,” she says. “Signing personal guarantees are a deal-breaker for me. Everything, including your house, is on the line. It’s always hiding in the fine print.” She says getting a good lawyer to go through all the documents is essential. “Mom-and-Pop businesses may be trying to save on costs, but a lawyer will save you way more money in the future,” she says.

Sutherland agrees that supportive lease deals can be the difference between success and failure. “If the build and planning process is on your dime, the rent-free period is diminishing and costs are blowing out, that’s really stressful,” he says. “Sometimes it can be because of things you don’t realise. There might be a slab of concrete you didn’t know was under the floor, or the walls are not structurally sound when you expected they were. You can be really caught out, and if you’re paying rent you’d be absolutely devastated.” 

Tip number three? Budget in at least 20 per cent as your cost buffer. “You can sit down, plan a build, design it, quote it and then eight months later, start procuring materials and find they’ve gone up 30 per cent,” he says. “We opened around Covid and that was just crazy. We had a couple of blow outs that we weren’t happy about.”

Sutherland says that when that happens, there are levers to pull. “You might substitute marble for something similar but cheaper,” he says. “It’s a hard thing. You can destroy the quality of what’s been designed, which can have an impact on your brand. But if costs blow out, that’s an issue.” And there’s more that can go wrong. “If restaurant doesn’t do the numbers you’re predicting, you’ve got a real problem. It can take a long time to get your money back.”

Melbourne hospitality icon Constantine Christopoulos says there’s a lot of pain and suffering hidden behind the glitz of opening nights. “The public don’t see the risk and the assessment, or the strategic thought process,” he says. “A lot of restauranteurs are more like artists, they do it from the heart, they want to create a beautiful product. They might be trading for a few years and not realise they’re not making money.”

Christopoulos, who has The Melbourne Supper Club, The European, City Wine Shop, Siglo, Butchers Diner, Kafeneion and more in his back catalogue, has learned to balance creativity with cost management. “With margins being as tight they are, wages are a serious issue, so we’ve reverse-engineered the last couple of businesses to reduce our wage percentage,” he says. That includes August opening Bossa Nova, the Brazilian-Japanese mash-up led by two-hat chef, Victor Liong. “A sushi train is essentially a buffet: you go up and help yourself, so your front-of-house costs are slashed,” he says.

Christopoulos observes that having a busy venue doesn’t necessarily equal survival. “It’s not hard to fill your restaurant, but it is hard to make money,” he says. “Payroll tax applies now that wages have gone up; in Victoria it’s five per cent. That’s a big chunk of your turnover.” The MFWF Legends Hall of Fame member advises thinking laterally. “To get a liquor licence takes minimum of 26 weeks. If you’re signing a lease and you can’t negotiate a good rent-free period, and you can’t sell booze for 26 weeks, then you might say ‘Ok, I’m better off buying an existing business.” He’s also found that collaboration takes a huge weight off, especially if you have cash in hand. “I’m ‘money bags’, so I cover the risk financially. For me it’s a sharing of emotional risk,” he says.

Given the reality of what it takes to open a venue, why do these operators do it? Chan says it’s a combination of passion, an appetite for risk, and moments of madness. “You’ve got to have an element of craziness in opening multiple venues,” she laughs. “It’s a tough gig.”

Sutherland relieves stress with ocean swims and keeps the bigger picture in mind. “Watching restaurants do well, creating jobs, building teams and growing the business has been a great thrill,” he says.

Christopoulos is fuelled by endless ideas and the love of personable venues enriching the fabric of Melbourne. “Of course it’s stressful, but it’s good stress. I love it. Your senses are alive,” he says. “Is there a better industry? Where else can $50 or $100 make you feel like a king?”

As for Grossi, the definition of hospitality is that the show will go on. “It’s meant to be a party; that’s what we create,” he says. “There’s an Italian saying, ‘La Sprezzatura.’ It’s keeping it looking seamless and easy, but behind the scenes, it’s lot of hard work.”