Turning the Tables

The hospitality industry has never been more challenged. Off the back of COVID, which decimated restaurants, bars and cafes, came a severe staff shortage followed by the current cost-of-living crisis. Across the country, big-name restaurants are shutting shop and chefs are bemoaning the rising costs of doing business.

But Adam Flaskas, who transformed the historic but crumbling wharves on the Brisbane River into a thriving entertainment precinct in 2018, is doubling down on his business. The founder of Artemus Group is continuing to develop Howard Smith Wharves (HSW) — which incorporates 13 restaurants, cafes, bars and event spaces and a hotel — and last year bought Sydney’s Manly Wharf and the adjoining Manly Wharf Hotel for $110 million. “We have a very clear focus on our five-year forward plan,” says Flaskas.

COVID put the brakes on some of those ambitions. HSW was shut to customers, but still had to meet significant overheads. “Our approach was to be proactive and give them what they needed,” says CommBank’s Jon Coombes, a general manager of business banking in Queensland. “We wanted to help give them some certainty in a time that was very uncertain.” The bank approved a preemptive $5 million overdraft to provide it with liquidity it could tap into if needed.

Flaskas says the key to surviving COVID was adaptability — “learning how to spin on a five-cent piece” — and innovation. The introduction of the me&u ordering system, which allows customers to order food and drinks from their phones instead of ordering from a waiter or queuing at the bar, has been a game changer for the business.

“It’s giving customers choice,” says Flaskas. “If they’re spending time with their friends, they want to spend every minute with them, not waiting at the bar. It’s been great for our business because customers receive their food and drink at a faster pace” — an average speed of three and a half minutes for drinks to be delivered anywhere in the precinct — “therefore improving our revenue and bottom line.”

Flaskas is now firmly focused on making HSW “the most environmentally sustainable precinct on the planet”. It’s a significant investment, he says, “but we’re choosing to put aside budgets for this.”

Artemus Group approached Origin Zero some 18 months ago for help to achieve its carbon reduction targets.

Origin Zero — the business unit inside electricity generator and retailer Origin that helps large customers transition to net zero — started with an assessment of the major sources of carbon emissions across the HSW operations.

Unsurprisingly, cooking and refrigeration used large amounts of power, as did air conditioning.

From there, they established a roadmap for transitioning to net zero and a range of initiatives the business could undertake. The first was purchasing GreenPower to match HSW’s electricity use with accredited renewable electricity that is fed into the grid. HSW started GreenPower in 2024 and will increase to 100 per cent GreenPower in 2025.

Origin Zero also identified the opportunity for 162 kilowatts of rooftop solar generation, significantly larger than the five to six kilowatt systems most homes use.

“We worked back from that carbon assessment, understood what their sustainability targets were and then rightsized the solar system for the footprint available at the site,” says Liam McWhirter, a general manager at Origin Zero. “The solar was sized to meet a lot of their daytime usage.”

Heritage considerations were also paramount when installing solar panels at the 1930s complex.

Origin Zero carried out what’s known as power factor correction, where it makes changes to the metering and submetering arrangements to make the power flow more efficient. This can typically deliver corporate power savings of two to five per cent, which McWhirter describes as “low-hanging fruit”.

HSW is also cutting down on waste with innovations such as diverting tonnes of oyster shells to the OzFish Moreton Bay Shellfish Recycling Centre to help restore marine habitats. It has 17 different waste streams across its venues, including glass, cardboard, food waste, spent grain, compostable waste, cooking oil, coffee and ice-cream cups, steel food tins, polystyrene boxes, e-waste and batteries, soft plastics, recyclable containers and general waste.

HSW’s sustainability ambitions are supported by the Commonwealth Bank with a sustainability linked loan. Under the loan agreement, HSW committed to meet predefined sustainability targets in exchange for a slightly lower interest rate.

The first target was further reducing waste. Second was reducing energy use. Third was to partner with the Independent Indigenous Tourism Operators of Queensland to provide opportunities for First Nations Australians in the tourism sector.

“The close relationship we hold with HSW and our deep understanding of their goals and financing needs has been integral in delivering timely solutions in support of their business,” says Coombes, “whether it be funding certainty in the early stages of COVID lockdowns or structuring a sustainability linked loan supporting their sustainability journey.”

“Our whole team is passionate about our sustainability vision, from the cleaners to the chefs,” says Flaskas. “So it's really part of our DNA and we're so glad to be banking with CommBank, which is just as passionate and so supportive of these practices.”