Knee-deep in flood water, assessing the damage to his newly refurbished business, Charlie Rayner did not imagine that twelve months on he would be recognised by the Launceston City Council for hosting Community Event of the Year.
When Charlie bought the Inveresk Tavern in late 2015, there were no existing customers and the business was struggling.
He closed the doors and spent $30,000 upgrading the property, but just one month after opening in December, 2015, he was forced to close again following the flood.
He says it was surreal having to close the doors for ten weeks to clean, dry and refurbish for the second time, just after reopening.
Despite knowing the damage would be covered by insurance, it was no substitute for being open.
“It was a reality check that it wasn’t going to be handed to us on a plate and in that respect, I treated it more of a blessing than a setback,” he says.
“I’ve always said for a number of years in this industry that if it was easy then everyone would be doing it.
“And there’s are a number of people who make that mistake in this industry and think it’s a licence to sit back, earn money and relax – it’s anything but that.”
When the doors reopened in winter 2016, customers started to come in and were leaving rave reviews about the positive atmosphere of the bistro on Facebook and TripAdvisor.
But Charlie wanted the Inveresk Tavern to be more than a successful business – he wanted it to have a positive impact on the wider community.
Together with Migrant Resource Centre CEO Ella Dixon, Charlie organised a twelve-week community kitchen program to help people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds feel welcome and to develop wider cross-cultural understanding in the community.
Each Sunday, a different community group would have access to the commercial facilities at the Inveresk Tavern to make food to sell to patrons.
The response from the public, Charlie says, was “overwhelmingly positive” and what was initially a trial quickly became a weekly event.
“It seemed to hit a nerve – people seemed to be very interested and it just proceeded to gather more and more momentum until now, every Sunday is community kitchen. That’s an encouraging and rewarding sign of people’s attitudes towards programs like this,” Charlie says.
“The idea behind this is that it makes interacting with people from other cultures part of everyday life and in my experience, the more time you spend interacting with people, you forget about what country they come from, the colour of their skin or the fact that so and so on the radio thinks they’re coming here and stealing our jobs.
“You spend time and develop a personal relationship with an individual at which point the stereotypes and preconceptions dissolve away.”
The Inveresk Tavern takes on a market-like atmosphere of a Sunday afternoon and Charlie says patrons use the space to socialise and meet new people, much like the way pubs were used in days gone by.
Charlie says he has mixed emotions about being recognised at the Australia Day awards earlier this year for the community kitchen initiative.
“It’s a little bit awe inspiring to be recognised so quickly on that level but at the same time, it also means that potentially there’s not that many people out there running unique events or thinking outside the square in terms of ways they could contribute to the community,” he says.
“I think community kitchen is a really good idea and it has a lot of potential. Despite the fact I don’t think it’s a big thing, apparently some people do and it’s nice to know we’re having an impact.”
The community kitchen demonstrates that beyond traditional business models focussed on market share and profit-making, there are approaches that are good for the business and the wider community.
“The world’s becoming a pretty scary, hateful place and the people who scream the loudest seem to get the most attention. It would be nice to think that people could stop working off spreadsheets and five year plans and reconnect with others and discover a little bit of compassion and empathy.”
This article was first published in Lume Magazine, May 2017.
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