Shannon Martinez

Conversation with a chef: Hi Shannon, it’s really nice to see you again.

Shannon Martinez: You too. Almost a decade.

I know, I can’t believe that. So much has happened for you. This is an empire now.

It’s slowly becoming one, luckily. The empire nearly fell. But we’re now moving forward and it’s all positive things now, so that’s really good.

Congratulations on having achieved so much. I remember last time talking to you and you’d put out a book, and you had Smith and Daughters, and you talked about how much passion you had, that you’ve been cooking since you were 15.

Twelve actually. Fifteen working in restaurants.

That’s right. With that quite full-on brigade kind of situation.

That’s right. Sofitel. Good memory.

Now you’re here and you’re launching nationwide with your food. Can you tell me about Made by Smith?

That’s a new arm of the business that we’ve started. We have such an amazing customer base, which is nationwide, really. We have so many people coming in when they come to Melbourne, and they stock up on stuff and take it home on the plane. We thought it was only right to try and get our meals to people’s doorsteps. It’s taken a bit of playing around, but we finally made it. Made by Smith is actually for restaurateurs and chefs. And then Smith and Daughters Deliveries is for our customers. We’ve just started doing deliveries all across New South Wales, Victoria, and launching into South Australia soon, hopefully. Made by Smith is a way for us to supply chefs with really high-quality vegan produce and products for them to use, because I’ve found, for myself, that it’s almost impossible to find good-quality plant-based products made in Australia.

Whenever anything happens in the world that disrupts general living, currently with shipping problems everywhere, a lot of our products just aren’t getting to us. And if you rely on those products every day, your consistency can become a real issue. So we’re going to start with a carefully selected range which will allow chefs to customise the products themselves. I’m thinking hotel groups, pubs, just restaurants in general that may not have the time to invest in a lot of R&D for a vegan menu, but know they need to have something of a particular quality, a higher quality. And we’re there to give them really good base products of a high quality, that they can vary or change to make them their own.

Because I just can’t find anything myself, you know, and that’s a problem with us. For plant-based food, your food costs are great, but your labour is out of this world. And when labour now is such a huge issue with the increase in wages, to make everything from scratch. We don’t really have the luxury of buying eggs and buying ham. We have to make it. Everything takes a really long time.

So if we can try and bridge that gap a little bit for chefs who want to just be able to throw on something really delicious without having to spend a whole lot of time on it, then that’s what we’re trying to do. I’ve been talking to a lot of chef friends asking for things that they think they’d be able to use the most. I’m trying to get as much feedback as possible from people. What would make their lives easier? Because after 13 years, we’ve pretty much done it all at one point. We’re able to do a lot.

That idea, to be able to make making plant-based food choices easy and delicious, is something we’re really trying to do in this space, in Degraves Street, because I think we’re living in a world of convenience at the moment because everyone is so time poor. But vegan food or plant-based food in ready-meal format is a lot harder to come by. I think if we can provide that for people, it will make lazy eating a whole lot easier to be plant-based.

Shannon Martinez, Smith & Deli

What are some examples of those things that they most need?

They’re thinking things like really good-quality cheese sauces that they can either flavour to turn into bakes of some sort or use in sandwiches, or whatever application really. Braises that they can turn into pie fillings or something like that. Bechamels too. If you haven’t spent your life obsessed with plant-based food, it can take a bit of work. And if your main focus, if your regular customers aren’t plant-based, you may not have the need to spend a whole lot of time on it, but you still want to have something that levels with the rest of your menu. Condiments too. Really nice aiolis, base sauces that they can either flavour with things like chillies or herbs or whatever they want to do to make them their own.

When we spoke nine years ago, you said that there was such a huge uptake with what you were doing that you almost then needed to have a factory just to supply. But how do you go from something that’s so iconically Melbourne and quite niche, how do you upscale it and maintain the integrity of it?

Well, this is all new for us, so we’re currently working on that. When I say new, it’s very new. Degraves is the first time we’re really having to deal with something off site. So the meals that we make for delivery, they’re all made here already, so that’s kind of fine. Scaling up is just a matter of adjusting your recipes and ensuring the staff know how to do everything correctly. But with Degraves now, the majority of the food is made here in Collingwood and finished in the city. Because the city, like most places in the city, the kitchen is tiny. With the amount of people we’re feeding there, we don’t have the space. The cool room space, the kitchen space, to actually make anything. We’re making some things from scratch, but the things that take five hours, say, your braises. We’ve got a mushroom bourguignon there that takes so long. Bolognese sauce takes so long. We do all those in a 100-litre brat pan here in Collingwood.

We’ve had to buy a van, which is very exciting. We have our food dropped off twice a day, and then the chefs there know what to do to put the finishing touches on it. So it’s still made by us, just on a much bigger scale. But it will get to a point where we have spoken to manufacturers that are off site, just to help us make some core products, to take some off our hands. And that’s been quite an interesting development process. There’s been a lot of tasting back and forth because obviously when you start getting into the tonnes, things change. That process of sampling over and over again, to make sure that when it does get to those numbers, the quality is still the same as what people would expect if they come into the deli for lunch or are getting a meal.

It can be a big change in companies, and I’m really hoping we can try to avoid that as much as possible. But there does come a point where you need to get a hand elsewhere. There’s only so much a shop in Collingwood can produce. There’s only so many cool rooms. We’ve already kicked out the staff room. We’ve cleared that and turned that into a walk-in cool room, and we’re about to turn this office that we’re sitting in right now into a walk-in freezer. There’s only so many spaces we have left before we’ll be kicking out the customers and the staff. So we’re getting close to capacity. Not quite there yet, but we’re almost there.

I feel like the whole idea of vegan and plant-based has had such a turbulent ride in the last few years. There have been a lot of articles in the food press saying that it’s over and people don’t want to be vegan anymore. But there are still plenty of people who are. Is it more that we’re now on a great upsurge of people who want to eat more plant-based food, but not necessarily be vegan?

I think so, for sure. Before we opened Degraves, we spent quite a bit of time and finances doing some proper research into the market, because obviously there is a noticeable change in the way it’s viewed. Not by vegans, obviously, but by the rest of the public, I guess.

I think a lot of that has to do with this obsession with protein, and this carnivore diet came through. Everything goes through phases, right? And popularity in the way that anything is talked about. I think vegan food went from not being spoken about at all, to being spoken about a hell of a lot in the early days of Smith and Daughters, to now. Everything up and down, up and down. But we did research, and if you include vegetarians, vegans, pescatarians, and people actively trying to reduce their meat intake, we’re talking over 50% of the population. I think you’d be hard pressed…well, depends on your friendship group, I guess…but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t actively trying to eat less. Whether that be for financial reasons, or health reasons, or environmental, whatever their reasons are, the majority of people are starting to think a lot more about it.

We need to make sure that we can provide those really easy, high-quality solutions to that. Again, with people being so obsessed with macros and protein and fibre maxing, plant-based food is just naturally fibre maxing. We are the biggest fibre maxers of all with vegan cooking.

But I think a lot of people don’t quite realise how high in protein vegan food or plant-based food can be. So we have engaged with a food scientist who’s going to help us properly display exactly where our meals sit, because I think that may be something that’s stopping some people from even looking at plant-based food as an option, because they just think they need to eat chicken breast and rice. Or ground beef and whatever the hell they’re eating for breakfast. But you can eat plant-based and still hit a lot of those targets that you’re trying to hit in a more sustainable way.

What made you look at Degraves Street?

We didn’t really look at it. It sort of slapped us in the face, to be honest. We weren’t really ready to open the next deli. Kelly, my new business partner, had only been on board for a short amount of time, and it was in the cards to open the second location, but not when it happened.

It’s very rare for something on Degraves to come up, and you don’t really get more iconic than Degraves when we’re talking about Melbourne CBD. I spent so much time around there as a teenager that it just felt so right. Collingwood/Fitzroy is another area where my whole family grew up, and Degraves is where I spent all my goth teenage years, at Flinders Street Station and on Degraves. The foot traffic is just unmatched there. It’s the best opportunity for us to get the brand and what we do in front of as many people as possible. The tunnel to the staircase that goes down to Flinders Street Station, that’s under us. So we have people coming to work and swinging past and grabbing a coffee and a vegan egg and bacon muffin on the way to work, or on the way back, getting tubs and then grabbing a frozen lasagne to put into the oven when they get home.

That idea, to be able to make making plant-based food choices easy and delicious, is something we’re really trying to do in this space, in Degraves Street, because I think we’re living in a world of convenience at the moment because everyone is so time poor. But vegan food or plant-based food in ready-meal format is a lot harder to come by. I think if we can provide that for people, it will make lazy eating a whole lot easier to be plant-based.

Would you have ever imagined…because I feel like when I spoke to you, this all came about because people were asking for more options at a venue that you were cooking in…did you have any idea that this was going to become your whole career?

No. No, not at all. That was 20 years ago now, to the year, when I first put that vegan parma on at the East Brunswick Club. I didn’t think, by putting a vegan parma on the menu, that my entire life would revolve around plant-based food this entire time, pretty much. I never would have thought. I’m glad it has, and it’s never boring, that’s for sure. The whole reason why I love cooking plant-based food stays the same to this day. It’s a complete challenge, consistently challenging. Cooking a roast chicken is easy because the chicken did the work, right? But making a chicken out of flour will continuously be tricky and finding new ways. I think maybe the first ham I made was 18 years ago and I’m still consistently trying to make it better and trying to find new ways to improve things. If I was just buying a kilo of ham from a supplier, that wouldn’t be the same. So I think it just does something for me in the way that my brain works, of constantly being challenged.

It means a lot to me that the business is still here after all this time. We’re going to turn 13 soon. There are a lot of vegan businesses and hospitality businesses in general that haven’t made it, and we were very close to being one of those until Kelly Jarrett came along and saw something in the business that I’ve seen the whole time, and the reason why I had fought for so long to keep it going. A smart person would have closed this a long time ago. But I’m stubborn and too passionate about what I do and believe in this brand too much. So I held on for dear life and just hoped that someone was going to come across it, believe in it as much as me, and at the last minute someone came across, and that was Kelly.

She believes in what we do and has given us the ability to grow. I think we had kept it in this space with the money that I was able to make to keep this going. The things that we couldn’t do that were going to help us move to the next level came down to finances, and Kelly has the most incredible business brain. Numbers brain, finance brain. I’m creative. I like to talk to people. I like to cook. I like to just be there, doing my thing. Sitting in an office is not my strong suit at all, and I’m more than happy to tell people what I am good and not good at. But she is incredible at it. It’s what it needs.

What’s being made really clear to me lately is that chefs are not trained correctly in terms of building sustainable businesses. If you’re training chefs purely to just go out and be a part of a brigade and cook food, great. But in terms of business owners, the information is old. Running a business these days is just wild and close to impossible for a lot. It wouldn’t even matter if you were the best chef in the world. If you haven’t got your numbers right, it doesn’t mean anything. I think it’s a worry, and it’s something that we really need to address at some point, the way we educate chefs at schools in how to effectively cost your products.

My apprentices…well, they’re qualified now…would come into the kitchen and show me the work they had to do, and nothing has changed since I was doing my apprenticeship in the mid-90s. It’s a totally different world. We can’t be costing things the same way that we used to cost things. It’s just not sustainable. To have someone who’s not from a hospitality background look at these numbers and be like, what are you guys talking about? This doesn’t work. Sure, your food costs plus your labour costs equals your percentage that you put your menu items on. But where does the money for the rent come from? And where does the money for the front-of-house staff come from? And all these things.

It started getting to a point where I really didn’t have the answers, and I was quite hesitant and pushed back a little bit at the time because it’s what we do. It’s how we’ve been taught. It’s how I’ve always done things. But then I couldn’t answer these questions she was putting forward. I was like, shit. I think there’s a reason why it’s so hard for us. But it’s also tricky, because with those numbers comes a lot of things that make me, as a chef and a professional feeder, slightly uncomfortable with. It’s charging more for things that I don’t particularly want to charge more for, but at the end of the day, it’s either that or we don’t exist. So I think it’s a lack of understanding of all of that from the public as well. Not that we can really train the public as well.

I had a really great chat with Mia Coady-Plumb at Bar Magnolia in Brunswick, and she really explained what’s on the plate…things I hadn’t really thought about. The food in front of you also represents the person who did the washing up, and the rent, and the electricity, and the person that polished the glass that you’ve got. All of those things go into one thing.

Once you start thinking about that, you think, that’s right. There’s no way that $6 croquette has paid for everything. There is a real pushback. You can see The Age or someone will run an article about how hard it is for hospitality. All you have to do is read the comments section about the potential for a coffee to now be $7 a cup, and the feedback, or the pure anger coming from the comments section, like, “I won’t pay that, it’s not worth it. They’re just making money.” We all wish we were making money. We wish we were making money, you know?

Also, I hadn’t considered how much food waste costs, and the fact that for some farmers, it’s cheaper for them to allow their fruit and vegetables to rot, than to sell to market.

There’s something wrong with the whole system. Really wrong. And the more things you want to do right, the more money it costs you, unfortunately. It seems the cheapest alternative for a lot of things is to do it the worst way. Whether that’s highly processed foods, or whether that’s disposing of things in a not sustainable way, just chucking it in a tip or throwing the bags of trash into a compactor without any extra thought. There are so many better ways we can do absolutely everything. But everything costs a whole lot of money these days.

Even with writing menus at the moment, the menu writing is less about what I want to cook and more about what can I make that won’t get the cost to a point where I’m outpricing my customers. Oyster mushrooms, for example. Lion’s mane mushrooms. I think people think vegan food should be cheaper. But those mushrooms are $40 a kilo. And a 200-gram piece of mushroom doesn’t look like a lot. So you charge 35 bucks for a piece of mushroom, you’re instantly ripping everybody off.

That’s right, but if we were to go and buy those mushrooms and cook them ourselves, they’re expensive.

That’s it. They are expensive. I think maybe also the general public think maybe we have things cheaper. But a lot of the time we’ll buy booze from Dan Murphy’s because it’s cheaper than from the supplier. Or Vic Market. We don’t have a huge decrease in cost. We pretty much pay what the public pay a lot of the time, if not more, sometimes, because we’re particularly looking for an heirloom variety of carrots, as opposed to generic carrots, or whatever it may be. There’s a lot in it. I’m not trying to be negative at all. These are just things that are happening in the industry. And then you add being a plant-based business on top of that, and the bracket gets even smaller. For survival, your chance of survival gets even smaller. And I think if it wasn’t for our customers being so loyal to what we do, we would have been in even more trouble.

But we are a feisty bunch here and we’re not going to give up without a fight, that’s for sure. Now we’re looking very positive, and hopefully all that work that I’ve done to keep this business open will now pay off and we can start making some changes that we’ve wanted to make for a really long time. We want people to understand the impact that they’re making from eating the food that they choose to eat with us.

So you’re still on the pans?

Sure am.

And you still obviously get a great deal of joy out of doing what you do.

I do. I’m tired, though. I’m tired. It’s been a very intense few years for me, with having cancer twice, and then COVID, and all of that, and I haven’t really had a chance for my body to relax yet. So I feel ready for a bit of a sleep in it. For maybe a week or two.

Can that happen?

Well, it was going to happen before Degraves, but then Degraves happened sooner than expected. So hopefully before the next one. But the stresses that we have now are positive stresses, which I haven’t had for a long time. It was stresses of despair before, of never enough, never enough. Whereas now, the stress is like, “Oh shit, we didn’t have enough food for the 50 people that came in today.” Amazing stress. I am very, very happy about good stress. If it’s problem solving because things are growing in a positive way, then that’s all I could ask for really.

Smith & Deli, 107 Cambridge Street, Collingwood & 16 Degraves Street, Melbourne