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St Kilda, Melbourne
Winners:
1993
American Express Award — Most Popular Victorian restaurant
1994 American Express Award — Best Metropolitan Victorian Restaurant
1995 American Express Award — Best Restaurant
1996 – 1998 American Express Award — Hall of Fame
Age Good Food Guide Most Popular Metropolitan Restaurant 1996
The Stokehouse is the jewel in the crown of Melbourne’s hospitality industry. Situated on the busy St Kilda beach, it is one of Australia's highest volume single location restaurants and one of the country’s most successful hospitality businesses.
Downstairs, the Stokehouse has a bistro/cafe that produces up to 600 meals a day, while upstairs is a fine dining restaurant that maintains an enviable standard while producing up to 400 meals per day. The business employs 35 full time staff and 75 part time and casual staff, and is seasonal in nature.
In February 1993, the owners of the Stokehouse, John & Frank Van Haandel, enlisted the help of Eldred Hospitality to restructure the management of the business and free them to devote time to other activities. Eldred Hospitality identified and specially trained an internal staff member, Rosanne Hyland, to take the place of the owners and commenced a program of strict recruitment, thorough training and regular performance appraisal for all other supervisory and management personnel. Eighteen months later, the Van Haandels were able to withdraw from the business and today only spend small periods of time on the premises overseeing their manager.
As well as providing on going training and management support, Eldred Hospitality also supplies the Stokehouse with regular customer perception surveys. These provide the managers, chefs and other key staff with a regular, objective, quantified measure of how they are performing in regard to service standards, product delivery and selling skills. This allows them to objectively compare their performance against previous performance and measure their standards against other hospitality businesses in their marketplace.
Summary of services to the Stokehouse:
• management structure • management and supervisory training • recruitment system • performance appraisal system • job descriptions • labour control system • customer perception surveys • weekly visit and review