For some struggling Victorian restaurants the future is in retail

If 2020 felt like one long blur of lockdown, for Victorian restaurant owners 2021 is the year of whiplash. In the past month, restaurants have been able to seat customers for just 17 days out of 30, after snap lockdowns followed one another in quick succession.

Reflexes have become lightning fast as owners examine their business models to try to survive.

Some operators are building bigger boats to weather the storm, including St Ali, which was founded in 2005 as a coffee brand but today is forging a new reputation as a specialty grocer.

From being an early stockist of hand sanitiser in 2020, owner Salvatore Malatesta has grown the online store into a purveyor of artisan goods from Victorian businesses like Four Pillars and Yarra Valley Caviar.

"When all this started, all of us thought it was going to be bad but only for a short period. So everything was reactionary. What's happened over time is that business has evolved," says Malatesta.

Today, St Ali even makes its own food products and has hired a food scientist. Using those learnings, it now acts as an incubator for other Victorian businesses, offering lab testing, packaging assistance and advice on health and safety standards. The St Ali team has helped bring to market Collingwood restaurant Chotto Motto's range of chilli oils, author and presenter Alice Zaslavsky's Tumami spread and Italian chilli condiment Bippi.

"All this started out of the sanitiser pivot. It's stuff I wouldn't have really thought of if I hadn't been backed into a corner," says Malatesta.

Joseph Mammone, owner of Bar Carolina, also believes the future is in retail. His customers still ask about the 12-hour lamb shoulder and roast chicken that were staples of the restaurant's finish-at-home menus in 2020. Soon they'll form part of a permanent retail range Mammone is working on, after more than 20 years running restaurants in the city and South Yarra.

"What I learnt from one of the first lockdowns was setting up a grocer at Carolina worked. But to make money from that, you have to go big."

At the other end of the scale, Tuckshop by Comma is a new 15-square-metre bagel shop in Moorabbin that Adam Cruickshank and his partner Megan Kwee have established just eight months after opening wine bar, Comma.

After initially declining the second site when his landlord offered it last year, Cruickshank saw the potential for a revenue stream that could buffer any future closures of the wine bar. Since then, Melbourne has seen four lockdowns.

"It's a bomb-proof business model at the moment," he says of the sandwich shop.

The pair were due to open Tuckshop this Monday but when lockdown 6.0 was announced, they went full steam ahead to get it open in time for the weekend.

"It's win-win. It gives people something new and breaks up the lockdown, and it keeps our wheels turning and gives our staff shifts."

For many restaurants, that's the main driver behind the takeaway menus they were posting to social media within an hour or two of Premier Daniel Andrews' announcement, a routine they're now well accustomed to.

But speed doesn't equal ease.

"Every time you reopen a restaurant it's like you're opening for the first time. The checklist is the same," says chef and restaurateur Victor Liong, who runs fine-diner Lee Ho Fook in the city.

Liong has tried every takeaway concept imaginable over the past 18 months, from weekly meal boxes and live cookalongs to a wine cellar sale. For now, he's watching and waiting to see what the rest of 2021 brings.