Tori Bicknell

Conversation with a chef: Hi, Tori. It’s lovely to be with you at Glory Us in Fitzroy North. Quincy Malesovas talked to me about you and said, “You’ve got to talk to Tori. She’s the epitome of hospitality.” When I walked in, you immediately said, “It’s a rainy day. Have a cup of tea.” I think that’s it, isn’t it?

Tori Bicknell: For sure. Hospitality is about guiding people and moving through what they’re experiencing. If you can read what somebody might be looking for on that particular day, that’s hospitality.

I don’t know that everyone understands that.

I don’t think many people understand it at the depth of particular nuances, whether it’s the weather, something changing in Melbourne or something happening in the climate or the world. All of that impacts people’s day-to-day experience and what they’re looking for when they choose to spend time with you.

You have two Glory Us cafes, one here in Fitzroy North and the other in Strathmore?

Yes, they’re very different pockets of Melbourne. The demographics, the aesthetics and what people are looking for are quite different and how the days play out. Strathmore is next to a train station and schools, and there’s a significant population of retired people. That influences what people expect from the venue. Then to try and align that with a hot pocket in the middle of Fitzroy North, right next to Edinburgh Gardens, so we’ve made significant adjustments to the menu to cater easily to dietary requirements and everything else that comes with that. Sometimes, having both cafes under the same name, I wonder whether I should differentiate them because they are so different.

I’ve read and heard that you’re big on community. You love knowing people by name and meeting their needs. When you’re opening a cafe, how do you get a feel for the neighbourhood? Which cafe came first, by the way?

Strathmore came first. Both cafes were accidental purchases, really. Mike and I had different roles in other businesses, and we weren’t looking to buy cafes. Strathmore was supposed to be a consulting job. We went in, looked at the business and thought it was a great little opportunity. The woman who owned it said she needed to get out as quickly as she could, so it was about seven weeks from first walking into the business to owning it and opening it as Glory Us. It was quick.

Do you scope out the neighbourhood first, or does understanding it come from being there?

With Strathmore, we’d assessed the demographic and what we thought the venue should be doing as part of the consultancy and what we thought the venue should be doing. Fitzroy was an opportunity that came up later, and we did much more research into the area and how the stores could complement each other while remaining under the same umbrella.

The name comes from your mum’s nickname for you?

Yes. Mum used to call me Glory. It was my childhood name, and it was what she called me my whole life. It was a few years after she passed away that I had the first thought that it wasn’t necessarily to name the venue after Mum. It was more because I realised that, when you lose a person, there’s so many things that can be lost for them, and the name glory was going to be lost with her. I wanted to retain the name for that. It’s a beautiful name, a great name for a venue. It’s incredibly special. I think, with my presence in the venues, because I do kind of have a very, robust, friendly presence, you always see me in different areas flitting around the cafe, so that, in itself, is Glory Us. It’s just the ultimate nod to someone that was so important to me as a chef, and obviously, everybody has a great relationship with their mum, so it’s nice to be able to honour her.

I noticed some very special touches on your website. You do bereavement packs and other thoughtful things for people.

We do. We have a very honest approach to hospitality and what people need. A significant amount of what we do through the business is bespoke. Obviously, we have catering menus and things people can order, like take-home soups or nourishing meals. But at this size, it’s important that we do whatever we can that feels personal and caring, rather than pre-manufactured. That adds to the care.

I’m working within my means and doing the best I can. It means far more to me to be the kind of operator who pays staff properly, looks after all my suppliers and has superannuation and everything else covered. I can gradually add aesthetic things to the cafe within my budget, but those basics matter more.

Tori Bicknell, Glory Us

You’re very intentional about the look, or perhaps the feel, of your cafes. Tell me about that.

They’re very considered spaces. I’ve worked in every facet of hospitality since I was 11 years old: front of house, back of house, coffee, pot wash, restaurants, cafes, wine bars, sandwich shops and production kitchens. Everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve noticed you have a choice about how you set up your venue. You can do it from an honest place, with integrity, and look somebody in the eye and give them honest hospitality service. I think too many people get distracted by numbers and put themselves in significant debt for things that I think don’t matter as much. That’s an arguable conversation that somebody could have with me, but to me the fit-out and how a venue looks aren’t as important as the way you feel when you come into the cafe. That’s what I want my cafes to reflect. Having a venue that I can afford to own, without taking on significant debt, puts me in a position where I can guarantee what you’re going to get when you walk through the door. I don’t have to sit, down at the end of the week, not being able to either pay my bills or pay debt or worry about looking after suppliers and the people that I need to look after, because I’ve been more concerned with how the cafe has come across on its aesthetics. I like the cafes to be really homely. I like them to be an extension of home. I’ve chosen to keep both kitchens at both cafes open. That can be quite difficult to navigate as a chef because you are literally one of the first people that customers can come and talk to when they walk in the door. You have to be able to manage that as a chef. But it’s an extension of home. So, I don’t want the kitchen hidden away and I don’t want people working out the back. I want it to encapsulate one room.

Melbourne has gone through a wave of shiny, Instagrammable cafes. There must be pressure on people opening venues to create that look. If they don’t have your experience, perhaps that’s part of why so many places don’t survive.

They don’t survive, and sometimes they’re operating from a place of dishonesty. It’s more important to me to do things right and within my means. If that means we don’t look as shiny as somebody else or don’t get as much PR coverage, so be it. I’m working within my means and doing the best I can. It means far more to me to be the kind of operator who pays staff properly, looks after all my suppliers and has superannuation and everything else covered. I can gradually add things to the cafe within my budget, but those basics matter more. I’ve worked in so many places both in New Zealand and Australia where the priorities were aesthetics and PR coverage. But I would argue, having worked in most of those places, the staff might not be paid legally, chefs could be doing unpaid overtime, superannuation might not be up to date, and as a chef, you’re on the phone to suppliers because you can’t place orders until outstanding bills have been paid. That’s not how I want to operate.

I often think about a book I read a long time ago, Like Water for Chocolate, translated from Spanish. It’s about a woman who pours her emotions into everything she cooks. That’s perhaps more from a chef’s point of view, but if a business operates with that level of stress and worry, surely it gets into the atmosphere of the venue as well.

It permeates the entire venue. If an owner-operator comes in and out and isn’t paying bills or doing things correctly, the culture isn’t right. There’s no trust or authenticity in the food or in how things operate. Unfortunately, I’ve worked in many places where that’s the unfortunate reality of how many cafes are choosing to operate.

You also see cafes being built into the bottom of apartment developments. I used to own one with that setup. Even then, it doesn’t feel right. Sometimes the ceiling is too high or too low, the light isn’t quite right, or the aesthetic has to suit the developer rather than the food or the venue itself. That’s really common in Melbourne.

It sets a tone for people to have a misunderstanding of what it actually costs to open a venue. A developer might offer somebody a nine- or twelve-year lease and contribute half a million dollars towards a fit-out, just to sell pastries. The operator thinks they’re getting all this money, but doesn’t realise they’re paying too much rent, too much in overheads and too much in outgoings. Essentially, the developer is buying a tenant.

And then the price of the pastries goes up.

Or it’s just not a sustainable business model. Then they have to behave dishonestly, and they might not do things correctly for staff or have a great culture or pay people because they can’t get their numbers right.  So many places aren’t across their numbers. They’re not across what they need them to be, or should be and they don’t manage it correctly. It can be the death of you so quickly if you’re not paying attention. We’re in an age, it’s no secret, we’re in a cost of living crisis. I entered hospitality when I was 11 years old. And even though that was in New Zealand, when I was 11 years old, that’s 33 years ago now. It was $3.50 for a cappuccino. That’s not a lot of change. I bought my first venue when I was 25 and back then, everybody talks to you about margins and numbers and what you need as an operator. The outgoings for any business now with insurances and all of the additional costs, it’s the most expensive time in business to be operating a business. Hospitality margins have always been lean, but they’re at a point where it’s, it’s not very sustainable. By any means. 

It still seems like a glamorous thing for people to want to do, doesn’t it? When you said you started with the idea of consulting, was that helping other people set up businesses? 

Yes, and I still do consulting. I do quite a bit through both Glory Us and also on my own. I’m really selective with what I do. I can do a menu for somebody or discuss what it looks like for a kitchen build, or ongoing support or mentoring for chefs. There are so many different levels of support you can offer. But what I won’t do is work with people who don’t know what they’re doing. I just won’t. It doesn’t matter how much money you’re choosing to offer me. It’s unconscionable for me as an operator to put somebody else in a position I don’t think they can sustain. I wouldn’t look at it as getting them set up and going and then coaching them for X amount of time, because you can easily see how many people don’t know what they’re doing. There’s so much to lose by doing it wrong. Not just for you, but for suppliers, for your staff, the surrounding area and for hospitality itself. It’s so important people pay attention to doing it right, so that the industry can learn to sustain itself and reset what it needs to reset. 

Otherwise it ends up being all these large groups who can afford to open new places, and the small guy or girl loses. There needs to be a lot more education. 

People really need to pay attention to not just where you’re going, but making sure you choose to support small businesses that are doing it right. I have a lot of inside experience with where I operate and what I know. I could give you a list of operators in Melbourne who don’t do things honestly. For the industry to change, the industry really has to change. Everything I’m choosing to do, I have to dig my heels into the ground and stick on the path I’m choosing. I don’t do this to make a significant amount of profit. I’d be better off taking a six-figure salary and going back to being an executive chef for somebody, if that’s all I was doing it for. But to try to change the industry and to be a female flagship making change in the industry, you have to really choose your lane. 

Let’s go back to when you were 11 in New Zealand. Whereabouts are you from? 

I grew up in Hawke’s Bay. It’s a very beautiful part of the world. My mum relocated to Taupō when I was 11. When we moved there, my stepfather’s family owned what was then a Robert Harris cafe right on the lakefront. In the 90s that cafe seated about 120. We had a base staff of around 40, but Taupō’s a heavily tourist-operated town. We’d get up to 70 or 80 staff through the summer months. I went in at 11 washing dishes, and then I was on a section doing cooking and pastry and coffee. That in itself was a machine. For anybody going into hospitality, that particular business was a big one to go into and learn from. 

Can you remember how your 11 year old self felt being part of that?

I remember my first day at work at 11 years old very poignantly. I knew there was so much about hospitality to love. The engagement with people, how you make people feel, the camaraderie, the teamwork, the sense of achievement. It can be a really horrible industry, but there are also so many beautiful parts. I remember very clearly driving to work along the lakefront in my grandfather’s van, and I remember the drive home thinking, ‘I’m going to do this for a really long time.’ Both my grandparents were very influential in my hospitality career, but more so for my work ethic. They had quite a bit of money behind them, and they worked very, very hard for it. They were the first people at work and the last to leave. Growing up in that, I didn’t have a choice in my behaviour. That’s how I had to be. I paid for my food. I couldn’t be late for work. I worked three to four days a week my entire teenage life, and they sold it when I was 20, but I was working there on and off the whole time. And it was part of a family, which in itself was an extension of my family. That was really nice. 

What drew you in particular to chefing over, say, front of house? 

I went to uni in my early twenties, ironically to study performing arts and literature. What a segue! And then when I finished, I went back to Taupō and was doing some stuff with Allpress Coffee, moved in and out of Auckland, and had an opportunity when I was 25 to buy a restaurant with two friends of mine. Everyone else was going off to London, and that’s what I did. I bought a restaurant and opened it with two friends just before I turned 26. I was the business partner who was the all-rounder, hands-on developing food with the chefs in the kitchen and overseeing the front. We had a cheese room, a charcuterie area and a big deli down the wall. Not long after opening, the chef working for us was cutting corners and throwing food in the bins. With everything I was trying to manage and navigate, it was clear that, for me to set the tone for the food and do things right, I had to be the person in the kitchen. From that point, I permanently stayed in kitchens. I’d always been all-round, front to back and whatever areas I was doing, but from that point on. I did that up until we sold and got ready to move to Melbourne when I was 30. 

I hadn’t been trained, so everything I’d done up until then I’d kind of taught myself, and I hadn’t really worked in restaurants per se. It was more wine bars and other places, rather than restaurant kitchens. Two days after I got to Melbourne I had two trials. One I didn’t go to, and the second one was at Stokehouse. On the third day I was working at Stokehouse on pans. 

Wow. That must have been intimidating. Was that an encouraging kitchen at that stage? 

Yes, it was. I wanted to move to Melbourne to get into restaurant-style cooking, and I felt like I had to prove that to myself to become that kind of chef. I had a complex about being a woman and not having any classical training. But it was evident to me very quickly, and to the other chefs working alongside me, that I was a much better chef than some of the people who’d got qualifications. I really enjoyed my time at Stokehouse. I found the Van Haandels to be a great family to work for. I was lucky to work alongside some great names there who are still good friends of mine. I’m proud of what everybody has gone on to achieve since then. But I also started to struggle with having a passion for cafes and for restaurant-style cafe food. I like daytime service. I don’t really like nights and split shifts and the culture. For someone with a strong work ethic who works a lot, if you start doing doubles and then lead into triples, the hours can be really difficult. It’s easier to maintain it if you’re doing a shorter service style. 

That’s right. When I moved here about 15 years ago, some of the early people I spoke to for the podcast were Andy Hearnden and people like that. 

He’s a good friend of mine. We worked together at St Ali. 

That was the real wave of restaurant food in cafes, where it all started. And then the challenge of keeping it under a certain amount. I think that’s incredible. 

It is, but it’s also hard. I love that style of food and that elevation of service. But I’ve also found, given the change in overheads and where the industry has gone in the last ten years, when you think about Auction Rooms and where St Ali was getting to and Premises was up and coming, because I went to Premises after Stokehouse, it almost encouraged a really false reality. It was the first time cafe operators had to look at things and think, ‘Oh shit, this is not sustainable.’ We can’t provide sparkling water or table service at that elevated level for a $13 price point. That, to me, brought in an extra element of why I’d like to see a reduction of that elevated service in cafes, and bring in this homely, more approachable style of service. 

What’s on the menu here? 

Both cafes have a pretty strong sandwich menu and an à la carte offering. With Fitzroy, for example, I specifically decided not to build a full kitchen here. It’s modelled on short-order service and done pretty quick. We’ve got induction, we do most things on the toaster, and we’ve got a little benchtop fryer for any of our fried goods. I don’t want to spend $200,000 on this venue. If I can have a short, punchy menu delivered by one chef and somebody assisting them, that’s an easier kitchen setup than trying to find four chefs and have a menu that’s difficult to deliver. I think the specialty of what we have on the à la carte menu is Glory Us-style food, which is healthy, vibrant, fresh and light. It’s a movement away from the idea that a breakfast dish needs to be focussed around bread. I like the food to be really vibrant, and short-order so we can punch it out in under seven minutes without difficulty. If you want bread, that’s what the sandwich menu is for. 

I was looking at different things you’ve appeared in, and I saw you in that chip butty article a couple of years ago. I think it must be growing up in a family that comes from England. Your mum’s from England, is that right? My parents were both born in Scotland, and Mum was a great fan of the chip butty as well. It’s so good. 

It’s the epitome of simple food done well: really good butter, crispy fries, soft white bread and a punchy, yummy sauce with a little bit of tang. It hits all the marks of nostalgia as well. It’s so good, and you can share it. It might seem like it’s a little bit much and a little bit rich, but I’d argue it’s because it’s not a sourdough sandwich. A soft white loaf is much more complementary to the sandwich itself because it doesn’t dominate the flavour or weigh you down. A lot of our sandwiches are moving away from sourdough and trying to incorporate different styles of bread because I think it offers so much more to the sandwich. 

We’re using Noisette bread at the moment. I’ve had relationships with most bakeries in Melbourne through different places I’ve been. I used to co-own Rustica. I feel that Noisette has the most comprehensive range of bread and bread products, which suits the brand and what we need at the cafes. A lot of places move significant volume and may not have fresh product. It’s easier for us to manage when we’ve got a supplier whose range ticks all the boxes. They’re really good for that. 

I love this big table, this big wooden, country-style communal table. 

My ex-business partner Mike built this for me when we took over the space, and it was such a good decision. We do a lot of dinner parties here in the evenings and private brunches. We can take up to about 17 people, and it’ll be in this venue until the day we die. You can come in in the morning and have a couple of people sitting here. It works well for families because they can mix and match. You can have somebody on their laptop for three hours, and then the other tables can turn every hour or so. Or when we’ve got a group in the evening, turning the lights down, lighting candles, pulling the curtains across and having the room with 20 of your friends is just. We had a wonderful friend of the cafes call me a couple of weeks ago on a Monday. He was getting stitched up by the venue he wanted to use for his wife’s fortieth. They weren’t compromising on what he was looking to do for their private dining space, and he said, ‘Are you still doing private dinners?’ And I said, ‘Whatever you want. What do you need?’ Within two days we’d put together a personalised menu for the evening, and within four days they had 20 people there, with an incredible wine list and beautiful wine to pair. It was phenomenal. Every time we do it, I’m bombarded with emails afterwards, because people are walking past at night being like, ‘Oh, what’s going on there?’ It sells itself. It’s really relaxing, and you get the whole space yourself, so why not? I did quite a bit of private dining before moving back into cafes, and I really enjoyed that style of cooking. Either intimately inside one of the venues or going to people’s houses, doing retreats or heading down to an Airbnb. 

I was thinking about you leading the charge as a woman, and standing up for small businesses and all of that. Does that get tiring? 

Yes, very much so. When we had to make the decision about how to navigate Mike’s departure this year, there was so much to consider. I hadn’t put myself in a financial position where I was considering buying out my business partner. I wanted to make sure the staff could sustain employment. I wanted to make sure I didn’t have to make any decisions that would put me in a place of dishonesty, and I wanted to be able to do it without borrowing any money. I managed to do all of that, but at the same time nearly every single day something presents itself as an obstacle or something difficult. Any career has challenges, but in the last few months, with the industry changing so much, staff being so difficult at times to navigate, suppliers difficult to navigate, it feels like the world is really working against you. But I’ve chosen my path and I really want to do it. Every time something comes up, I have to remind myself that if I’m not here doing what I’m doing, and my staff aren’t working for me and don’t have somebody in their corner, and they go to work for somebody else who’s going to rort them, what’s the point of everything I’ve done for the last 30 years? What I need to pass on to the people who work for me is to know that there are people out there who operate honestly. There are people out there with the best intentions, making sure they’re looking after them. It would be really easy not to do it. But it’s the path that I’m on. 

And is there still joy? 

Yes, very much so. When I was running large kitchens, the joy for me would have been meeting budgets or making sure my COGS were good, or having a great service, or looking after a VIP client. But the joys I have now are the team I’m building and the people who have employment. Somebody might come in inexperienced and it might be difficult for the staff to absorb them for the first four weeks, but if they’ve recently arrived in Australia and struggled with employers, and they’ve found a place that will look after them, there’s joy in that for me. If somebody comes to me without experience and I’ve given them employment and upskilled them, I’ve got joy in that. Those are the things I get a lot more joy from now than I used to from a great day of service or cooking.

I usually finish with this question, and it might be slightly different for you, but what advice would you give to a young person starting out in the industry?

To do the research on the people they’re going to work for. Morals are significantly important, and it’s really easy to end up working for people who don’t do right by you. I’ve started telling people when they come into the team at the initial interview stage, before I bring them in to trial, that it’s really important to know what you’re coming into. I tell them to do any research they want on me and the businesses, and that I’m also on trial. It’s important for people to know you can find good hospitality operators. You’ve got to have a list of things you need, and they need to check that list for you. But I should be on trial more than anybody else, because my culture and what I’m building for them to come into is what they need to align with. Doing that research would change where they start in hospitality and wherever they go thereafter.

Glory Us, 73 Reid Street, Fitzroy North & 62-64 Woodland Street, Strathmore Essendon North