June 5, 2025 โข 11 mins
In this Quick Fix, weโre joined by renowned chef and restaurateur Luke Mangan, straight from the stage to the van!
Luke shares his story of navigating the restaurant world, including how he faced near-bankruptcy, the relentless overheads of the industry, and what drives his success.
If you'd like to hear the whole chat, which includes Shane Fitzsimmons on leadership during the devastating 2019โ2020 bushfires, and Tim Martin on AI in business and life, just look up Episode 39 in the Podvan Podcast!
Oh, and remember, ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฟ๐๐ ๐๐ซ๐๐ง๐ฎ ๐๐๐๐ฟ๐ผ๐
and PATREON EXCLUSIVE episodes for members at http://podvan.com.au/members
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Hello and welcome to the Pod Vanpodcast.
My name is Rabbit and I do this podcast from within a 1967 retro
caravan that I gutted and built a podcasting studio inside off
and I can take it anywhere. In this episode you'll hear some
chats from when I took it down to Sydney while I was am seeing
(00:26):
a massive conference that was ondown there and they had a bunch
of real really interesting guests getting up on stage and
speaking for about an hour. And afterwards I'd ask them, do
you want to jump in the van and have a bit more of a chat?
And I'll tell you what everyone of them said yes, which was
amazing. Three of those guests are in
this episode. We'll be finishing up with Shane
Fitzsimmons AOAFSM. You know him.
(00:49):
He was the commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, the
chair of the NSW Rural Fire Service Bush Fire Coordinating
Committee and the Rural Fire Service Advisory Council.
He has received the Australian Fire Service Medal and if you
are based in NSW, in Australia you saw him on your TV pretty
much daily at press briefings over the Bush fire season
(01:12):
through 2019 into 2020, the horrific apocalyptic scenes that
we saw everyday. And amid all of that, there was
one person that was praised for his leadership and the way he
presented the news to us on the telly.
One person wrote online about him.
You've been there from the beginning, doing everything
within your power to bring an end to these horrific bushfires.
(01:35):
You are the only person that I and probably many of the people
of Australia have any trust in at the moment.
In the chat with Shane, he actually opens up about what it
was like for him. I mean, each day we saw him on
the TV giving us this, I mean, devastating news when
firefighters were losing their lives.
He was going and spending time with the families and then going
(01:56):
straight back in to deliver updates to the rest of us on
what was happening. It took its toll on.
And we'll chat about that shortly.
We're also gonna hear from Tim Martin, who's an expert on AI
and how it can be used in your business.
You may think I've got no use for AI.
Oh, no, you can. Even if not in your business, in
your personal life. It's really interesting chat
(02:17):
that's coming up, but we're gonna keep off with another.
Oami didn't even know this at the time I was talking to him.
I found out later that I'd had two Medal of the Order of
Australia recipients in the van in one day.
I mean, they probably didn't know that they were sitting
across from an OBNZ. Oh, I haven't really talked
about that much. What, You want me to tell you
what it means? All right, so the OBNZ is
(02:41):
ordinary bloke from New Zealand.And yes, I am 1 so.
But don't bring it up. I'm very shy about talking about
it. Number one of the OAM for today
is Luke Mangan. Ohh man this podcast gonna give
us 3 hours of. I have to read his bio.
Let's see how much we can get out here.
He's an Australian chef and restaurant tour.
He owns and operates restaurantsin Sydney at See on P&O cruise
(03:04):
ships. He's an ambassador for Coles
Supermarkets. And yeah, as far as the
restaurants go, you've got GlassBrasserie, you've got Lukes
Kitchen at the Kimpton Margo Hotel, Luke Sand, Lukes Table at
the Pylon, Lookout, Salt and about 400 thousand others.
As he was up on stage giving hisspeech at the conference,
someone said to me good luck getting him.
(03:25):
He is a busy man and literally about to jump on a plane to fly
down to Melbourne to go and opena restaurant down there.
I said Oh yeah, hold my chicken Kiev.
I gave him the quick pitch on the walk over to the pod van.
He said sure, let's do it. He jumped in for a quick chat,
which I am so appreciative of. And it is Start now.
(03:47):
Do you know Julie Goodwin, Master?
Yeah. Yeah.
So Julie's a good mate. And mine.
She did the show with me for four years on Breckey Radio.
And she's in here. She's been in here at least a
dozen times. She lives just around the corner
from me. Say hi.
Yeah. For ages.
I will. Yeah.
Definitely will. Yeah.
Actually, I picked her against Poe as Mas when I was judging
for MasterChef. Did you?
(04:08):
So I Yeah, Julie beat Poe. Yeah, that's right.
Back on the first season, the. Guest judged first season and I
said no to Poe and got Julian. That sounds like a slow say no
to Poe. There we go.
It's not a nice slogan. Hey, well thanks for jumping in.
I loved hearing everything. That your whole story in there.
Man. We both got kicked out of school
(04:28):
at 15. Beautiful.
Does well for some. It really does, right?
And you said that school is it'snot for everybody.
And for some it could be that the it's a trade that they wanna
go off and get into. Yeah, yeah.
You've got this inspired series that you're going around doing
and that's going into high schools as.
Well, take it to high schools, the tapes and things like that,
just to cause, you know, I, as Iwas at 15 and probably you, you,
(04:51):
you unsure what you wanna do, where you wanna be.
And I think taking our industry and taking industry leaders and,
and giving them AQ and a in front of 203 hundred kids who
are obviously thinking about what they're going to do in the
future. And I think it's a good thing to
be able to give people that opportunity.
Yeah. And and it hopefully steers them
in the right direction. And work experience does still
(05:12):
happen because I. Wasn't sure.
Yeah, when you said, I don't know if that still happens, I'm
mine. I did six weeks of Wednesdays at
a radio station when I was 15. Yeah, great.
And then I got booted out of school and the radio station
said, you know, can you drive? Well, can you drive a column
shift van? Yeah.
Didn't even have a license. Yep, I can.
What are you gonna do? You do what you gotta do And.
(05:34):
And away you go. And my daughter is about to do
work experience for our local mechanic down the road.
She wants to be an F1 engineer, right.
One day. So yeah, you're starting those
things. And, yeah, follow your dreams.
That's what happened. Yeah.
And you said in there as well about the young ones getting
into it, into your industry in particular.
Get in for your love of being a foodie.
(05:55):
Yeah, yeah. There's gonna be long hours,
Yeah. And not great pay maybe at the
start, but that's your message to people looking at that
industry. It's, I think it's any industry,
you know, you've got to give time and effort and commitment
to whatever it is you do, whether it's journalism or, as I
said, or, or or cooking or, or front of house.
So you've got to be committed and, and nothing comes easy.
Yeah. And nothing's given to you on a
(06:16):
golden plate or whatever it may be.
Yeah. I mean, interesting hearing the
stuff in there about how you gotvery nearly broke at one point.
And that was with salt, right? Yeah, yeah.
And no one knew at the time. No, we, we were were, you know,
things were happening behind thescenes and, you know, I'd sold
that part in Japan and things like that.
So that bailed me out in a way. Yeah, and there's a lot of talk
(06:38):
about mental health and and stuff at the moment.
How were you at that time? Ohh.
You know, I'm, I'm probably a bit different.
I, you know, came from a large family, seven boys, the
youngest. So, yeah, you know, I just kind
of get on with things and it's probably, yeah.
That's the right thing to say. No, no.
A lot of people can, but then there's a lot of people as well
who've struggled. Yeah, quietly.
(06:58):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a tough industry,
but you know, I my glass is always half full, so I I don't
know, that's just a lucky thing you.
Say in there that, you know, I think I was probably about five
times I heard you say luck and just lucky that this was like,
it's not really, though, is it? Because you've got to put
yourself in the right situationsand you've got to be open to
(07:18):
those conversations. When Richard Branson rings and
says, can we come in in 10 minutes?
Yeah. You got to be the type of person
that goes, yeah, yeah, of coursewe can.
Yeah, I mean it, it is like that, I suppose.
You know, I'm, I'm sort of, I'vegot this saying at work and the
guys will say, you know, you canalways do something about
something, right. And and I always say, you know,
(07:39):
they sent man to the moon in 1969.
So surely we can do this, you know what I mean?
That's my saying. So and they get me for that.
And I think it's there's gotta be a way around things and get
things done. So just don't put up brick walls
and barriers like a lot of people.
Do. Yeah, I like what you said in
there as well about meals in restaurants and things and how
(07:59):
they're going to 23 different ingredients all into the beds, a
real sort of trend coming through.
Yeah, I can see why you voted for Julie way back there.
She's very much just about the good.
Yeah, good, hearty, clean. Food good?
Yeah. Oh, hey, I know you're super,
super busy. Are you going off to open
another restaurant? We open a Bistro, Bisu tomorrow
night in Melbourne. Yeah, on the corner of Flinders
(08:21):
Lane and Spencer St. Yeah, Little French Bistro.
I love French food. I trained with that style of
cooking and. And yeah, looking forward to it.
It's wow, Melbourne's got great food, you know, great chefs.
It's got that European feel and it's got plenty of great
bistros, by the way. But I just think our twist on
it, a modern take on a French Bistro, is something different
(08:43):
as well. Is this one of these things
where you had to have booked a long time in advance to be able
to get in? Oh look, hopefully you got to
look mega.com to make a booking.But look, sometimes with recipes
it's at restaurants. It's like, is it going to work?
You don't know until you open the doors.
You know, you can believe that. Yes, we know we've got the food
(09:04):
right, the music and lighting, everything's right.
But is it the right location? Are people going to come?
And and the thing with Australianow, we've got so many great
chefs, so many great restaurants, all doing good
things. You've got to kind of keep up
with the Joneses and what you'redoing, if that makes sense.
So who knows if this is going towork, ask me to stop.
(09:24):
It I think The funny thing that you did say in there as well,
not funny thing, but three or four times you had restaurants
closed down, ones that you were working at early in your career.
Yeah, it's common, so. You've seen it happen.
It looked three and five restaurants go broke.
Really. Yeah.
That's that's that's the strike rate.
And it's your overheads. You know, you forget about the
(09:45):
rent. Well, the the diner, you know
that plate of food that you get?Oh yeah, you think you're just
paying 40 bucks for the lamb andthe veg.
Or I could. Buy that steak from the
supermarket for this much look. At the linen, look at the the
the the electricity, look at therent bill, look at the labour
cost blah, blah blah. There's so many things that we
don't think about behind the scenes and with with produce
(10:06):
going up, electricity going up, all these overheads going up,
you can't also put your food prices up because people that's
going to scare people off as. They know what they've always
spent. Yeah, when they go out for
dinner, yeah, suddenly it's costing this much.
Yeah, so you're gonna be. Yeah, it's a fine line.
And. And look, I take my hat off to
any restaurant who can stay openfor 3/3 to five years.
It's it's Yeah. Wow, it's a tough.
(10:26):
Once you're past that point, do you?
You then got. No, look, even now, I think, you
know, the next 612 months are gonna be hard for a lot of
restaurants. I think we're gonna see a lot
more restaurants close down, sadly.
Time. Yeah, well, not yours.
Hopefully not, but you know what, it's possible and and it's
always in the back of my mind aswell.
Yeah, we've got. Possibilities, mindset as well
as yeah, well, and if that happens, what's next?
(10:48):
Exactly. Yeah, awesome.
Luke Mangan, thank you so much for taking the time to have a
chat. Thank you all.
Right, that'll do us for this quick fix.
Remember, if you ever want to hear the full conversation it
comes from, just match the number in the title of this
quick fix to the full episode number.
And don't forget, if you turn onthe notifications in Spotify and
Apple Podcasts, you won't miss any episodes or extras that
(11:10):
you're a pod thing. Quick fix with rabbit.
Hello and welcome to the Pod Vanpodcast.
My name is Rabbit and I do this podcast from within a 1967 retro
caravan that I gutted and built a podcasting studio inside off
and I can take it anywhere. In this episode you'll hear some
chats from when I took it down to Sydney while I was am seeing
(00:26):
a massive conference that was ondown there and they had a bunch
of real really interesting guests getting up on stage and
speaking for about an hour. And afterwards I'd ask them, do
you want to jump in the van and have a bit more of a chat?
And I'll tell you what everyone of them said yes, which was
amazing. Three of those guests are in
this episode. We'll be finishing up with Shane
Fitzsimmons AOAFSM. You know him.
(00:49):
He was the commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, the
chair of the NSW Rural Fire Service Bush Fire Coordinating
Committee and the Rural Fire Service Advisory Council.
He has received the Australian Fire Service Medal and if you
are based in NSW, in Australia you saw him on your TV pretty
much daily at press briefings over the Bush fire season
(01:12):
through 2019 into 2020, the horrific apocalyptic scenes that
we saw everyday. And amid all of that, there was
one person that was praised for his leadership and the way he
presented the news to us on the telly.
One person wrote online about him.
You've been there from the beginning, doing everything
within your power to bring an end to these horrific bushfires.
(01:35):
You are the only person that I and probably many of the people
of Australia have any trust in at the moment.
In the chat with Shane, he actually opens up about what it
was like for him. I mean, each day we saw him on
the TV giving us this, I mean, devastating news when
firefighters were losing their lives.
He was going and spending time with the families and then going
(01:56):
straight back in to deliver updates to the rest of us on
what was happening. It took its toll on.
And we'll chat about that shortly.
We're also gonna hear from Tim Martin, who's an expert on AI
and how it can be used in your business.
You may think I've got no use for AI.
Oh, no, you can. Even if not in your business, in
your personal life. It's really interesting chat
(02:17):
that's coming up, but we're gonna keep off with another.
Oami didn't even know this at the time I was talking to him.
I found out later that I'd had two Medal of the Order of
Australia recipients in the van in one day.
I mean, they probably didn't know that they were sitting
across from an OBNZ. Oh, I haven't really talked
about that much. What, You want me to tell you
what it means? All right, so the OBNZ is
(02:41):
ordinary bloke from New Zealand.And yes, I am 1 so.
But don't bring it up. I'm very shy about talking about
it. Number one of the OAM for today
is Luke Mangan. Ohh man this podcast gonna give
us 3 hours of. I have to read his bio.
Let's see how much we can get out here.
He's an Australian chef and restaurant tour.
He owns and operates restaurantsin Sydney at See on P&O cruise
(03:04):
ships. He's an ambassador for Coles
Supermarkets. And yeah, as far as the
restaurants go, you've got GlassBrasserie, you've got Lukes
Kitchen at the Kimpton Margo Hotel, Luke Sand, Lukes Table at
the Pylon, Lookout, Salt and about 400 thousand others.
As he was up on stage giving hisspeech at the conference,
someone said to me good luck getting him.
(03:25):
He is a busy man and literally about to jump on a plane to fly
down to Melbourne to go and opena restaurant down there.
I said Oh yeah, hold my chicken Kiev.
I gave him the quick pitch on the walk over to the pod van.
He said sure, let's do it. He jumped in for a quick chat,
which I am so appreciative of. And it is Start now.
(03:47):
Do you know Julie Goodwin, Master?
Yeah. Yeah.
So Julie's a good mate. And mine.
She did the show with me for four years on Breckey Radio.
And she's in here. She's been in here at least a
dozen times. She lives just around the corner
from me. Say hi.
Yeah. For ages.
I will. Yeah.
Definitely will. Yeah.
Actually, I picked her against Poe as Mas when I was judging
for MasterChef. Did you?
(04:08):
So I Yeah, Julie beat Poe. Yeah, that's right.
Back on the first season, the. Guest judged first season and I
said no to Poe and got Julian. That sounds like a slow say no
to Poe. There we go.
It's not a nice slogan. Hey, well thanks for jumping in.
I loved hearing everything. That your whole story in there.
Man. We both got kicked out of school
(04:28):
at 15. Beautiful.
Does well for some. It really does, right?
And you said that school is it'snot for everybody.
And for some it could be that the it's a trade that they wanna
go off and get into. Yeah, yeah.
You've got this inspired series that you're going around doing
and that's going into high schools as.
Well, take it to high schools, the tapes and things like that,
just to cause, you know, I, as Iwas at 15 and probably you, you,
(04:51):
you unsure what you wanna do, where you wanna be.
And I think taking our industry and taking industry leaders and,
and giving them AQ and a in front of 203 hundred kids who
are obviously thinking about what they're going to do in the
future. And I think it's a good thing to
be able to give people that opportunity.
Yeah. And and it hopefully steers them
in the right direction. And work experience does still
(05:12):
happen because I. Wasn't sure.
Yeah, when you said, I don't know if that still happens, I'm
mine. I did six weeks of Wednesdays at
a radio station when I was 15. Yeah, great.
And then I got booted out of school and the radio station
said, you know, can you drive? Well, can you drive a column
shift van? Yeah.
Didn't even have a license. Yep, I can.
What are you gonna do? You do what you gotta do And.
(05:34):
And away you go. And my daughter is about to do
work experience for our local mechanic down the road.
She wants to be an F1 engineer, right.
One day. So yeah, you're starting those
things. And, yeah, follow your dreams.
That's what happened. Yeah.
And you said in there as well about the young ones getting
into it, into your industry in particular.
Get in for your love of being a foodie.
(05:55):
Yeah, yeah. There's gonna be long hours,
Yeah. And not great pay maybe at the
start, but that's your message to people looking at that
industry. It's, I think it's any industry,
you know, you've got to give time and effort and commitment
to whatever it is you do, whether it's journalism or, as I
said, or, or or cooking or, or front of house.
So you've got to be committed and, and nothing comes easy.
Yeah. And nothing's given to you on a
(06:16):
golden plate or whatever it may be.
Yeah. I mean, interesting hearing the
stuff in there about how you gotvery nearly broke at one point.
And that was with salt, right? Yeah, yeah.
And no one knew at the time. No, we, we were were, you know,
things were happening behind thescenes and, you know, I'd sold
that part in Japan and things like that.
So that bailed me out in a way. Yeah, and there's a lot of talk
(06:38):
about mental health and and stuff at the moment.
How were you at that time? Ohh.
You know, I'm, I'm probably a bit different.
I, you know, came from a large family, seven boys, the
youngest. So, yeah, you know, I just kind
of get on with things and it's probably, yeah.
That's the right thing to say. No, no.
A lot of people can, but then there's a lot of people as well
who've struggled. Yeah, quietly.
(06:58):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a tough industry,
but you know, I my glass is always half full, so I I don't
know, that's just a lucky thing you.
Say in there that, you know, I think I was probably about five
times I heard you say luck and just lucky that this was like,
it's not really, though, is it? Because you've got to put
yourself in the right situationsand you've got to be open to
(07:18):
those conversations. When Richard Branson rings and
says, can we come in in 10 minutes?
Yeah. You got to be the type of person
that goes, yeah, yeah, of coursewe can.
Yeah, I mean it, it is like that, I suppose.
You know, I'm, I'm sort of, I'vegot this saying at work and the
guys will say, you know, you canalways do something about
something, right. And and I always say, you know,
(07:39):
they sent man to the moon in 1969.
So surely we can do this, you know what I mean?
That's my saying. So and they get me for that.
And I think it's there's gotta be a way around things and get
things done. So just don't put up brick walls
and barriers like a lot of people.
Do. Yeah, I like what you said in
there as well about meals in restaurants and things and how
(07:59):
they're going to 23 different ingredients all into the beds, a
real sort of trend coming through.
Yeah, I can see why you voted for Julie way back there.
She's very much just about the good.
Yeah, good, hearty, clean. Food good?
Yeah. Oh, hey, I know you're super,
super busy. Are you going off to open
another restaurant? We open a Bistro, Bisu tomorrow
night in Melbourne. Yeah, on the corner of Flinders
(08:21):
Lane and Spencer St. Yeah, Little French Bistro.
I love French food. I trained with that style of
cooking and. And yeah, looking forward to it.
It's wow, Melbourne's got great food, you know, great chefs.
It's got that European feel and it's got plenty of great
bistros, by the way. But I just think our twist on
it, a modern take on a French Bistro, is something different
(08:43):
as well. Is this one of these things
where you had to have booked a long time in advance to be able
to get in? Oh look, hopefully you got to
look mega.com to make a booking.But look, sometimes with recipes
it's at restaurants. It's like, is it going to work?
You don't know until you open the doors.
You know, you can believe that. Yes, we know we've got the food
(09:04):
right, the music and lighting, everything's right.
But is it the right location? Are people going to come?
And and the thing with Australianow, we've got so many great
chefs, so many great restaurants, all doing good
things. You've got to kind of keep up
with the Joneses and what you'redoing, if that makes sense.
So who knows if this is going towork, ask me to stop.
(09:24):
It I think The funny thing that you did say in there as well,
not funny thing, but three or four times you had restaurants
closed down, ones that you were working at early in your career.
Yeah, it's common, so. You've seen it happen.
It looked three and five restaurants go broke.
Really. Yeah.
That's that's that's the strike rate.
And it's your overheads. You know, you forget about the
(09:45):
rent. Well, the the diner, you know
that plate of food that you get?Oh yeah, you think you're just
paying 40 bucks for the lamb andthe veg.
Or I could. Buy that steak from the
supermarket for this much look. At the linen, look at the the
the the electricity, look at therent bill, look at the labour
cost blah, blah blah. There's so many things that we
don't think about behind the scenes and with with produce
(10:06):
going up, electricity going up, all these overheads going up,
you can't also put your food prices up because people that's
going to scare people off as. They know what they've always
spent. Yeah, when they go out for
dinner, yeah, suddenly it's costing this much.
Yeah, so you're gonna be. Yeah, it's a fine line.
And. And look, I take my hat off to
any restaurant who can stay openfor 3/3 to five years.
It's it's Yeah. Wow, it's a tough.
(10:26):
Once you're past that point, do you?
You then got. No, look, even now, I think, you
know, the next 612 months are gonna be hard for a lot of
restaurants. I think we're gonna see a lot
more restaurants close down, sadly.
Time. Yeah, well, not yours.
Hopefully not, but you know what, it's possible and and it's
always in the back of my mind aswell.
Yeah, we've got. Possibilities, mindset as well
as yeah, well, and if that happens, what's next?
(10:48):
Exactly. Yeah, awesome.
Luke Mangan, thank you so much for taking the time to have a
chat. Thank you all.
Right, that'll do us for this quick fix.
Remember, if you ever want to hear the full conversation it
comes from, just match the number in the title of this
quick fix to the full episode number.
And don't forget, if you turn onthe notifications in Spotify and
Apple Podcasts, you won't miss any episodes or extras that
(11:10):
you're a pod thing. Quick fix with rabbit.
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