Eleven years ago, Tim McDonald and his business partner, Dave Youl, saw a gap in the market and opened Fonda, the bright, happy home of Mexican street food in Melbourne. From the flagship venue in Swan Street, the business has grown to nine venues across Melbourne and now also, Sydney, but the pair ensure that the original concept of the Mexican fonda, a welcoming home that serves food to the community, remains at the heart of all they do. Tim and I talked authenticity when it comes to street food, the importance of wellbeing in hospitality and he did mention his favourite dish, grilled chicken quesadilla, a number of times which has put a trip to Fonda firmly on my list of things to do this week. You can listen to the podcast here.
Hi Tim, how are you? We probably want to be channelling a bit of Mexican heat in this kind of weather. We have gone back down to the cold weather again.
I know, after such a lovely weekend.
Now you launched the first Fonda the year I arrived in Melbourne, 2011?
Yes, November 2011 we opened.
And that was on Swan Street?
Yes. That's right.
I'm interested in the fact that you have a background in law and commerce and I am also a languages teacher as well as a writer and I was very pleased to see that you have a diploma in Mandarin.
I'm probably a bit rusty now but I did do it through school and Uni.
I saw that you and Dave saw a gap in the market for Mexican and healthy food. Why did you think that you were the ones to fill that gap, given that you don't have a background in hospitality?
Good question. I had always wanted to run a business so part of it was an entrepreneurial thing as well. I was in the States in 2007 studying and living there and I really saw this fresh, vibrant interpretation of Mexican cuisine and what stood out was the simplicity of it. The simplicity allowed us as non-chefs to be able to have a look at doing something ourselves, whereas if it was more of a complicated cuisine that stood out to me I would probably have thought, this is a great business and I'm sure it would fly but I don't think that we are the people to do it, because it is pretty technical. But also we have taken a pretty collaborative approach to this from the start and so we were never intimidated by our lack of culinary experience because we always knew we would be working with good people and it was about finding the right chefs or product development consultants to build up the products. We owned the business and had the vision, and we didn't see it as a blocker that we didn't have the technical experience with the food. We are also not architects and we had to design a restaurant, we are not builders and we had to build a restaurant, we are not HR managers and we had to hire 30 people, so it was really about collaborating with a team of people throughout the journey and finding someone that was great at whatever aspect of the business we had to do and leaving them to it.
That's a really great point and I was thinking as you were talking that obviously for food businesses and hospitality, you want them to work because you want people to love the food and the ambiance but perhaps if you are a chef owner, you are a lot more passionate and less about the money side of things. Maybe it is a really good balance, as you say to have the specialists and a collaborative approach, maybe that's what the secret is.
You are cooking food, right. So being a chef helps with that. But the other thing you are doing is running a business and that is a totally separate function and a totally separate skillset to braising pork and making a taco, so both help. But I am more surprised at chefs who start restaurants with no business experience than I am for me or Dave starting a restaurant with no chef experience because it is far easier to get chefs involved when you need them. Thats not just food though, that is all businesses. You get mechanics who run their own workshops and they are fantastic mechanics but not necessarily great with business and that can mean that they can have some struggles.
That is a really interesting point. Now, I am interested in your research trip to Mexico when you were working out your concept. How did you choose what you wanted on the menu? You talked about simplicity but how did you distil what you saw in Mexico to your menu?
We had the advantage of doing Mexican street food, so from day dot we confined it to tacos, burritos, quesadillas, which is really what Mexican street food is and then we were thinking about fillings. We had so many tacos while we were overseas; whether it was flavours, or ideas or processes that inspired us through our travels that we implemented. We did a lot of product testing back here and got a lot of feedback from locals to make sure that the product resonated. We wanted it to be authentically Mexican, but we didn't want it to be so authentic that it was intimidating or it wasn't accessible to people and they didnt understand what it was or it was too spicy. So it was a combination of keeping it simple, trying a bunch of stuff overseas and talking to chefs over there and noting it down and then bringing it back and trying it out on locals.
It's a great menu. I have always loved going to Fonda. I have perhaps always gone to the same two or three Fondas near me, but they are always busy and Fonda is still so popular even after all this time. Now that you have nine venues and in different cities too, how do you manage consistency of product and happy atmosphere and all of that?
I think you are right, to keep it busy, it is about consistency and it is also about evolving the product. I think those are two conflicting interests but to keep it interesting and evolving, we are constantly looking at ways of updating the menu and introducing new things, whether that is from subsequent research trips or cookbooks or recipe ideas, we are always looking for something new on the menu. And to achieve the consistency, it sounds really boring but it's about having really tight systems and processes and training back of house. The new product thing is really interesting because a lot of the time we will introduce a new product or take away an old one and it often disappoints more people than it pleases. We would love to be more evolving and changing the menu a little bit more but there is a reason why the Big Mac has been the number one bestseller on the Maccas menu for 30 years, people know what they like, and consistency seems to mean more than anything else. It is like a scientist and an artist constantly in the balance; the science behind it all is what keeps it consistent and the art is about keeping it different and relevant and having variety on the menu, but it is a balancing act between the two.
Have you been back recently to Mexico?
Not since Covid, but actually we are finding that we are getting more inspiration and ideas out of America. And this is going to sound weird, but our observation is that Mexican food innovation in Mexico in recent years is more about copying Americas interpretation of Mexican food. So a lot of the leading brands and restaurants in Mexico are actually taking inspiration from how US restaurants are doing Mexican food. Mexico is such a big part of American culture and cuisine but we are finding that so many Mexican restaurants are coming up with some amazing ideas. It sounds weird to say that we are doing our research trip in the States but that is where it is all happening.
What we have taken away from the States and modern Mexican cuisine is that as long as it is in a tortilla, quesadilla, burrito or taco, there are actually no limits or boundaries to what you can do with Mexican street food. In Mexico, what you put in a taco is whatever you can find and is accessible. People think that beef cheek and ox tongue are really authentic Mexican cut of meat but it is because it is a developing country and they use every cut of an animal that they can. If you want to be really technical about what is authentic to put in a taco, it’s about whatever you can find and is local and accessible.
Do you have any examples of that on your menu at the moment?
The chicken quesadilla. The jalapeno basil aioli came from an American consultant chef we worked with. Without giving you a specific example, What we have taken away from the States and modern Mexican cuisine is that as long as it is in a tortilla, quesadilla, burrito or taco, there are actually no limits or boundaries to what you can do with Mexican street food. In Mexico, what you put in a taco is whatever you can find and is accessible. People think that beef cheek and ox tongue are really authentic Mexican cut of meat but it is because it is a developing country and they use every cut of an animal that they can. If you want to be really technical about what is authentic to put in a taco, it's about whatever you can find and is local and accessible. I remember early on we had a kangaroo burrito on the menu and most people loved it, but we got a little bit of criticism with people saying, hang on, you're a Mexican restaurant, how have you got kangaroo on your menu? But that's what it was about, it was about knowing that in Mexico, cuisine is about what you can find and what is local as opposed to anything else.
I think that is so true and I have been having chats to chefs lately about that whole concept of authenticity and often in those other cuisines that we see as different ethnic foods, their food is, as you say, about using what they have to hand and so why cant we use their techniques and apply it to the food that we have. I think that's a good point.
We have a jalapeno basil aioli on a chicken quesadilla. That is not authentically Mexican at all but it tastes delicious, the flavour profile works and its fresh, so we do it.
I am very interested in wellbeing in hospitality at the moment and I did read that it is important for you to nurture your teams and build a positive and engaged culture. How do you do that?
First of all it is about communicating and re-communicating to the whole business that our culture and wellbeing of everyone in it is paramount in everything we do which is why we went with the name and the concept of a Fonda. A Fonda in Mexico is a home that opens up as a restaurant, so we are like an internal family that delivers these meals to people coming in, just like a Fonda in Mexico. That's the top line; reinforcing it as one of our values and what our business is all about. Practically it is about recruiting the right people who have the right values and character and who will be positive contributors to our culture and a positive contribution to our family and avoiding the kinds of people who might be a bully or more prone to being not as in line with our culture. Recruitment is number one and then making sure that our own internal training and processes and the behaviour that we recognise and affirm as the right behaviour is in line with that. I worked in the local supermarket and the local pub as a teenager and in my early Uni years and I was shocked at how many places had a terrible culture, and I was shocked at how many hospitality workers, myself included, and a lot of my colleagues got spoken to really poorly. It was incredible how rife it was. We wanted to change that and I wanted to prove to myself that you can have a hospitality concept that doesn't involve chefs throwing saucepans at somebody's head and managers screaming at people for making a mistake. That stuff is really not on in my books, I have zero tolerance for it. We don't always get it right and as you grow as a business and you get bigger, it does become harder to instil that calibre of culture and we have to constantly evolve how we are instilling that as we get bigger, but it is definitely achievable.
I agree with you and I am a firm believer that anything that is going on in the kitchen and front of house, all of those feelings go into the food as well and it affects the experience of the diners.
Absolutely.
It's good to have that as your ethos.
That's a good point, it is more than just an internal thing, it is part of the guests experience.
What's your favourite thing on the menu at the moment? Do you have a go-to dish?
It would be the chicken quesadilla. The jalapeno basil aioli really adds an amazing element, yes, it is definitely the grilled chicken quesadilla.
I will put that on my list of things to do this week, to get down to the Hawthorn Fonda, which is my local, and try that out.