Same instinct. New tools.

My grandfather came to Australia after the war and ended up in a restaurant kitchen. My dad followed him in. I grew up between the tables, packing takeaway boxes for whoever came to the counter, answering the phone before I could see over it.

Twenty years later, I'm still in it. Cafes, bars, multi-site venues, a decade running my own place.

Somewhere along the way I worked out what I'm actually good at. Finding the things that get in the way, and clearing them so the people doing the work can get on with it.

I run OTW Studios now. Same instinct. New tools.

The early years

Before he was displaced, my grandfather had been a baker, a fisherman, a few other things life made him become. In Australia he found his way into restaurants, and he brought my dad with him.

My earliest memories are of my dad driving to Bunbury late at night to work the kitchens, and then of him opening our own place in Rockingham. Ocean City. They ran it for many, many years.

I grew up inside that restaurant. Playing hide and seek behind the chairs with my siblings. Watching my dad cook. My mum cooking with my brother strapped to her back.

Some of the happiest memories of my childhood were in a restaurant. I think that's worth saying, because most of what gets written about hospitality these days is about how hard it is. It is hard. It was also the place I learned what good service feels like, what a kitchen sounds like when it's running properly, and what it means to be useful in a room full of adults. That part doesn't leave you.

The wandering

I moved to Perth for university after growing up between Pinjarra and Mandurah. I worked as an interior designer for a while, then as a claims officer at HBF, and in nightclubs at night. I tried to put myself through a degree. It didn't take. So I went into the workforce properly, which for me meant going back into hospitality.

One of my first proper adult jobs was at the Brisbane Hotel. Bars, then more bars, then my own places. Around the time I'd opened a few things, I started to wonder if I'd missed something. The path everybody else seemed to be on, the corporate ladder, the mining money, all of it. I wondered if I should have gone that way. So I tried it. I did a FIFO stint. I worked the corporate version of my life for a while.

It wasn't really for me. The isolation didn't sit well, and the money turned out to be roughly the same as what I was making in hospitality. I'd been telling myself I was missing out on something. It turned out I wasn't.

I came back.

The operator years

Panda & Co opened because I was tired of asking permission. I'd spent enough years in venues being told why things couldn't be done, by people who weren't the ones doing them. So my partner and I opened a cafe. We had no idea what we were doing. We figured it out as we went. A decade later it's still open. We made it through COVID, which felt more like surviving a long storm than running a business.

Around the same time, I went into partnership on a bar in the city. Golden Boy and Jade Girl. That one taught me more than Panda did, in a different way. It taught me about partnerships, and about my own confidence, and about what happens when you let someone else hold the wheel because you don't yet trust your own hands. The lesson cost me, but it confirmed something I needed to know. I could have done it myself.

Eventually I ended up back at the Brisbane Hotel, this time as the venue manager. There's a small symmetry to that I don't take for granted. The place that gave me my first proper start became the place I could pay back, by training and mentoring the people coming up behind me. I think that's the most honest version of what I want to do with the rest of my career. The spotlight isn't mine. Watching other people grow into their own confidence is enough.

Two things, mostly.

I'm at my best helping someone else do their best work. The joy is in watching it land for somebody else.

And I'm drawn, almost compulsively, to the parts of a business that slow it down. The thing that takes three hours and should take ten minutes. I like finding those. I like clearing them.

That instinct is what pulled me into AI. Not the technology for its own sake. The tools were finally good enough to clear the friction I'd been working around for twenty years.