Latest / Best of Business / Nicola Waldren: Restaurant Association NZ General Manger on Auckland restaurants closing earlier than anywhere else in the world

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Nicola Waldren: Restaurant Association NZ General Manger on Auckland restaurants closing earlier than anywhere else in the world · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
• 0:12
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  Speaker 2: A new survey, as I was telling you, is found
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  Speaker 2: that Auckland restaurants close earlier than anywhere else in the world.
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  Speaker 2: International food magazine Chef's Pencil looked at four four hundred
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  Speaker 2: restaurants in eighty nine cities around the world and worked
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  Speaker 2: out the medium medium time for the last seating in
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  Speaker 2: each of these cities. In Auckland it's half past eight.
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  Speaker 2: It's the earliest time of any city in the survey.
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  Speaker 2: Nicola Waldron is the general manager of the Restaurant Association. Hey,
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  Speaker 2: Nikola Cura, why are we like this?
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  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think there's lots of different reasons
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  Speaker 3: why people may decide to eat early. You know, it's
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  Speaker 3: it's a good time if you've got a young family,
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  Speaker 3: maybe catching a bite after work with some friends. I think,
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  Speaker 3: you know, also Auckland, the spread out nature of Auckland
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  Speaker 3: sort of probably plays a bit of a part as well,
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  Speaker 3: so you might have to drive home afterwards. So there's
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  Speaker 3: lots of different reasons I think that play into this.
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  Speaker 2: But I sort of had i'd wondered if it was
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  Speaker 2: the children thing as well, But not everybody is a parent, right,
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  Speaker 2: and even if you become a parent, we're leaving it
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  Speaker 2: later in life. So surely there's a quorum of people
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  Speaker 2: out there who want to have a few drinks and
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  Speaker 2: then go out for dinner a bit later. Is it
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  Speaker 2: maybe a hangover? Have we just got into a pattern
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  Speaker 2: because we're an old farming country.
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  Speaker 3: Look, I think dining early has probably always had its
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  Speaker 3: place in New Zealand, but we do need early diners
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  Speaker 3: to help restaurants to spread out the flow of customers
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  Speaker 3: over the night. You know, otherwise we're all traditionally going
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  Speaker 3: out at seven or seven thirty. So you know, those
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  Speaker 3: early diners will maybe kind of come in early, have
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  Speaker 3: a quick meal, and then that allows them to take
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  Speaker 3: advantage perhaps of a quieter dining environment. They don't have
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  Speaker 3: to wait for a table, but then that table is
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  Speaker 3: freed up again for customers to come in that those
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  Speaker 3: traditionally peak times, So I think they've got a good
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  Speaker 3: place as well.
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  Speaker 2: Do tourists find us dull?
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  Speaker 3: I don't think that we're dull. I think we've got
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  Speaker 3: a really.
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  Speaker 2: Come on, okay to stop it out now? You're going
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  Speaker 2: overboard now trying to put a good spin on this.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, if you're in Cairo and you're eating at
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  Speaker 2: midnight and then you come to New Zealand and we
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  Speaker 2: stop taking orders at how past eight, that's pretty boring,
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  Speaker 2: do you know.
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  Speaker 3: I think that the visiting tourists actually do have play
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  Speaker 3: a good bit of influence on our dining patterns as well,
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  Speaker 3: because they do traditionally eat later than us. So you know,
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  Speaker 3: in those peak tourist times and we've got those international
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  Speaker 3: tourists coming in, then we might see them typically eating
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  Speaker 3: later than our domestic customers. But again that is a
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  Speaker 3: good thing for our restaurants to help with the flow
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  Speaker 3: across the evening.
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  Speaker 2: Nikola, thank you. I appreciate your time. As Nicole a
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  Speaker 2: Waldron Restaurant Association general manager. Hither, it's because we're trying
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  Speaker 2: to get home before the frigging roads closer. This is true.
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  Speaker 2: My mom lives in Pokakoe, which is down the motorway
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  Speaker 2: from Auckland, and she's always saying she comes up to
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  Speaker 2: visit me in Auckland, comes up to do whatever. I
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  Speaker 2: don't know, and then she gets stuck by the bloody
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  Speaker 2: motorway that's closed. That motorway has been closed since I
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  Speaker 2: was at university. What the hell are they still doing
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  Speaker 2: to it? I mean, geez, surely by now the thing
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  Speaker 2: should be bloody gold and like we should be going.
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  Speaker 2: It's like an like the amount of work they put
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  Speaker 2: on this bloody things should be like an Autobahn. But
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  Speaker 2: it's not, is it anyway? So that's part of it.
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