Real Talk: Can Restaurants Be A Force For Social Change?

Juliane Caillouette Noble: Morning, guys. Very nice to be here with you. So, if you don't mind just introducing yourselves and telling us who you are and where we are this morning? 

Jules Bagnato: Hey, I'm Jules Bagnato. I'm one of the co-founders with Dan of Brae here in Birregurra. We've been here for nearly 12 years. We actually moved to Birregurra about 12 years ago in a month or so. Wow. It's a tiny little town. We chose Birregurra because of its location; it's really close to the beach. We're about an hour and a half from Melbourne, so most of our guests come to us from Melbourne.  

It's also a great community. We wanted to be in a community that was really established in terms of people working together to create a community that was good for everyone who lived there. It's got a lot of good producers around who we were interested to work with as well. So, it ticked all those boxes. Mostly, we try to work in a way that supports the people of this area. 

Juliane: Let's talk a little bit about that: what does that mean, to be situated in this community and supporting people of the area? I've noticed that you've got a lot of cattle ranching, cattle farming and kind of a rural community out here. Talk to us a bit about that. What is the community at Brae? How do you guys interact with that? 

Dan Hunter: I think one of the key things agriculturally about this region is that it is a traditional Australian farming area. There are lots of smaller producers, lots of family businesses still — it's not a very industrialised area. It's a very natural area where people are farming in a very natural way.  

Specifically talking about the community of agriculture in this area, our neighbours are farmers. If we grow grain, we’re contacting our neighbours who have been growing crops and have a seed company for two generations here. If we're rotating paddocks and they had some livestock on them, our immediate neighbour is running sheep over to provide the nutrients required for an organic system.  

So, whether it be a small cheesemaker using organic dairy from another local grower or, you know, using heritage pork from someone doing regenerative practices just outside of Colac or free-range duck farms, it’s this type of thing. 

Jules: In terms of the community, we can see that the people immediately around us are our community: our staff, our guests who come to us every day, and the suppliers we know who are local to us and supplying us daily. 

But there’s also this feeling now, after some time, of understanding that our community goes beyond that. Our community is now the wider hospitality industry, for example. It’s the people we communicate with through our marketing, through our social media channels, who we’re talking to daily and telling our story to. There’s that layer of influence added to it as well. 

And it goes beyond that, to those suppliers we perhaps don’t know so well, but we know the purchases we make can influence the people connected to that supply chain. At the beginning, we understood our community to be what we could see; over time, as our influence has grown and we understand more how people use the information they hear about us, that has widened for us. We have a different outlook on what that community is now as well. 

This purchasing power that we have affects change. So, with that massive purchasing power relative to the footprint we have, we have both the opportunity to have influence but also a responsibility to use that influence in a way that's with purpose.  

We can very easily just think, well, we're just going to go along and think about what we're serving for our guests and making sure our guests have a fantastic time every day. But because of the purchasing power, because it has touch points, we have communities. We don't want to leave things worse off. We want to have a positive impact. 

Dan: It's important just to keep that somewhere in your objectives. It doesn't have to be a heavy weight or a burden, like you're ticking a checklist every single time you do something. But over time, with that understanding that that's how you function, it's just second nature. We're not going to treat this place in a certain way and then purchase from someone who we know has the opposite of your values. 

I think being a focal point, which we are to some degree, and bringing other people into that space, showing them what's possible, showing them that the values are still okay — doing things in a decent way for livestock, land, people — is good. Particularly at a time when that's getting swept under the carpet. Building that sense of community has value. Saying to those suppliers, let’s go back to that — seeing that they’re in your dining room, eating their products, and watching them have to leave to have a little cry. That’s powerful. 

We highlighted the fact that our database, our circle of influence, is large. Using social media as a tool for that—to advertise, to put on social media that we're doing this annual thing. Now that it's known we do this annually, people hang out for it, to win a huge experience at Brae, and now bring other people from the region into that project. The prizes are huge now. That has a huge impact. We've raised a couple of hundred thousand dollars. 

Juliane: I understand it's over $200,000 that you’ve raised over time. 

Jules: I think it's up to about $235,000. We started that in 2017—we started to cut raffles. We just realised that as part of a small community, it's a given that you need to do something for it. 

Two tiny towns like ours—there are under 1,000 people. A small primary school of 100 kids. It's really underfunded. We have a small child preschool centre and other little community centres as well. For those to function, there aren't enough people in the town to do it. We all have to volunteer. We all have to contribute in some way. 

I think in the cities, it's much easier to feel like you don't live in a community. You can just go to your school, pay your school fees, drop your kids off wherever they go — and someone's doing the sports, someone's raising [money], and you don't think about the volunteers that make it all run. 

But it happens everywhere. It's just in the city, it's more hidden. In little towns, you know what everyone contributes. This is how human beings are. We need it. 

Dan: It's just a skill set. We don't just put food on the table and spend all day chopping chives. We do that, but we're communicators. The skill really is storytelling. We tell stories and we bring people together and we promote and communicate our values and the stories of others at the table. All of that is happening here anyway. 

Juliane: Talk to me about your staff and your team here. How do you involve them in this ethos or conversation? 

Jules: For me, to go back first to the land. The idea of all this is really easy to communicate when you talk about regenerating land. This is something we do here. We take our 20 acres and regenerate the land, making sure we use composting and biodynamics and organics in a way that leaves the land better off than when we first got here. We're not just using the resource and taking it away, using it up. 

With our community and with our team, we hope to do the same thing. It's a powerful message: regenerating whatever you use, instead of just using your community, your people, your team members as resources to be used, to leave exhausted, to have nothing left. 

This work with the community is about that for the team as well. The team really values the work we do with the community. They're proud of the work we do. They're proud to work somewhere that does this. 

Dan: You have a team briefing, and you communicate the value of what the annual fundraiser did for a small community. You see them light up. They've probably all bought a ticket. But as individuals, a $5 ticket isn’t the impact — it’s the cumulative [impact] of everything coming together. 

Jules: We don’t feel like it’s something we do on our own. It’s something we do with our team. We discuss with our team where these funds are going to go before we launch the next project. At the moment, we’re looking at this year and we've called on our team to contribute ideas. 

Juliane: Oh that’s cool — they get to propose a project or something they’ve seen? 

Dan: Jules might speak with people in the community, find out what’s needed, what’s a key project that’s underfunded or hasn’t been completed because of lack of finance, and then bring it to… 

Jules: And bring it to the team, ask what they think, ask for other ideas for either this year or next year. These sorts of things take time to think about, to talk to lots of people, to see what the impact is going to be. We choose things that are going to be impactful but also lasting. 

Juliane: Give me an example of some of the projects you’ve worked on. 

Jules: Over the years, we’ve worked really closely with the primary school. First on their computer literacy programme — that was literally financing laptops for the kids. That raised around $80,000 over a number of years. And then towards the end of our work with them, they had some building renovations they needed to do, and our last fundraising effort contributed to the landscaping for the new wing they built. 

That was really impactful. Last year the preschool was doing a renovation; they needed a new roof and a new internal space as well. We raised money towards that. 

We hope the projects we choose will have lasting benefit for the community, that a lot of people in our community will be able to benefit from them. It’s not just a one-off event or anything like that — these are infrastructure projects, education projects. 

Juliane: I’d love to hear more about things within the restaurant. I know you’re doing work creating opportunities for staffing, bringing in young people into the kitchen and the wider hospitality community. Dan, how does that work at Brae? 

Dan: When we talk about the hospitality industry as being our community, it most certainly is. There’s been a lot of economic pressure globally since Covid, and in Australia and Victoria we’re facing a tough time. Restaurants are suffering. It feels like a time when people are pulling in the extras, getting rid of them, trying to operate with minimal staffing — just trying to make it. 

We’ve also suffered in Australia with the education system for hospitality. There hasn’t been an amazing apprentice system or training for some time — probably just a lack of government funding. 

We’ve been trying to find ways to expose what happens at the best restaurants. It’s expensive. The actual dollar sign is large — 20 staff, everything handmade. Last year, we started a program offering a 50% discount on menu and beverage for anyone registered as a hospitality apprentice or front-of-house trainee in Australia. 

It’s been great. Midweek, young kids or adults in training come in and get a chance to see what’s going on. It’s been really well received: lots of restaurants sending their apprentices who wouldn’t have had the chance to dine somewhere at this level. A lot of single diners too — an 18-year-old, or someone and their mum. Just giving young people a chance to be inspired, to see that the hospitality industry isn’t dying. It’s worth the work. 

There’s been a bit of demonising of the industry over time — sometimes rightly so. But this gives kids a chance to see what goes on and to be treated well.  

Juliane: You’re showing them it can be something different than maybe those stories or reputations from the past. 

Dan: Things can be better with a little bit of thinking, working with each other, thinking outside the space. It probably seems ridiculous to slash prices for people at this point in the economy. But where else is the team of the future going to come from? 

Jules: Along with that, we’ve really changed the way we work. This happened a long time ago now. When we first started, we were like every other restaurant: classic fine dining, seven services a week over five days, everyone working a lot of hours. Over time, we realised this is not sustainable. We don’t want to work like this. We don’t want our team to work like this. 

It’s been many years now that we’ve only operated having guests four days a week, Wednesday to Saturday. Our team has a very balanced lifestyle. We close for two holidays every year. Everyone has their annual leave every year, and it’s a time where they don’t have to put in for their leave or be worried about it. 

Dan: We’re looking at our older staff, wanting to keep our leaders in the business as long as possible so the younger guys have people to look up to. They’ve had a career path. They speak positively about their experiences. If they disappear from the industry, who’s teaching? Where’s the legacy? 

We’re looking at people in their 40s who want to have children, who have partners who may not be in the industry. Hospitality has often been all-encompassing, and because of the difficulty of it, you end up with people from hospo — it becomes insular. That breeds inward-looking and not bringing other people in. In a basic sense of community, you want people to have other life experiences. I don’t want to hear someone say, “I can’t see my partner because we don’t have a day off and I’m 40 years old.” I want women to be able to work in hospitality. 

Trying to build a model of a restaurant that’s super equitable, that has a fair and reasonable expectation of working hours, with opening and closing guides, and having the broader community and guests understand that’s how it works — I think that’s the next step. I don’t think we’re quite there yet. There’s still a lot of pressure on making things accessible from a price point. We need all levels. If we don’t have all levels, we don’t have the industry we need. We still need the training grounds. We still need aspirational restaurants. We need the business to be aspirational. 

Jules: It’s whether or not you choose to lead by some set of values you’ve defined. We’ve spent a lot of time over the years doing that work — defining what our values are, really wanting to find a greater purpose to what we’re doing other than just turning up to work to serve guests. Which is a very noble cause, and we’ve got a group of people here who love doing that. But that isn’t the be-all and end-all of life. 

The profit isn’t the end game. The profit is the tool to help you do something. What is that something else you want it to be? If you’re going to have a successful life… 

When we talk about our purpose, our reason for existing, it’s not just to put food on the plate. It’s to leave things better. And when we say leave things better, we’re talking about everything we’ve talked about — our team, our town, our land, the hospitality industry, the people along the supply chain, the producers we support. It’s about having an impact that’s positive so you can sleep at night. You can be proud of what you do. I wouldn’t be proud of what we do if we were the best restaurant in the world, made lots of profit, but along the way we didn’t care about who we worked with. 

Juliane: If you had some advice for others looking at this, inspired by what you do but also facing the day-to-day pressures, where would you start? 

Dan: It’s important to surround yourself with other opinions. Restaurants are full of people coming from different parts of life. Bring people into the story early, get opinions, love them. Be aspirational. You may never achieve it, but if you don’t put it out there… if you achieve even 1%, you did something good. 

Know your place. Find out what’s in your place. Speak with your community. Bring people in. It’s not just transactional. Even in a kitchen, you’re going to find a supplier, it’s a person. Their livelihood is connected to yours. We put so much care into guests sometimes, but they’re only one part of who we should be looking after. Your team, your suppliers, your growers, your farmers — all of those people. Don’t forget that it’s very human-on-human. 

Small business is becoming less and less [common]. Hopefully not, but businesses owned by people with real struggles will find ways that can benefit the broader community. 

Juliane: Thank you so much. We could keep talking for hours. I really value the experience you’ve shared, and that sense of collaboration you both have. That non-transactional way you think about community — it’s so clear in the way you both speak. Thank you so much for chatting. 

Jules: Thanks for visiting!

Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel here.

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