A Sydney-based cafe owner, who recently appeared on Kitchen Nightmares, has slammed the show for turning her establishment into a ‘joke’.
Virginia Cheong, owner of Cafe de Vie in Sydney, signed up for Kitchen Nightmares thinking she could use the extra help from an expert. More than five months after the shoot, Cheong had her doubts.
Her episode aired on Tuesday, revealing that the show had transformed her cafe into a Lebanese restaurant named Cafe Tabouli, leading to logistical nightmares for the owners.
While Cheong did not want to put the entire blame on the show, she emphasised that the team had ignored numerous core aspects of her establishment: “The branding is there. I don’t want to discount anything Kitchen Nightmares did, they do have a point and they are not entirely wrong. It’s just there are a few things I think have been overlooked.
“The biggest thing is that we are predominantly a cafe and they literally changed us into a Lebanese restaurant. We were a modern cafe serving all kinds of food and then suddenly a Middle Eastern restaurant.” she added, speaking to News.com.au.
Cheong also revealed that in the few weeks and months after they reopened, the business recorded a substantial drop in revenue. “The turnover was there and that’s why it didn’t make sense. We were hoping to get some kind of clarity on how we do things and streamlining (the process),” she said, adding that they’d lost $6000 in the first week and $4000 in the second.
Kitchen Nightmares had also done away with some of their strongest revenue bringers, especially their coffee corner which allowed people to order coffee on the go, from the street.
Love Film & TV?
Get the latest Film & TV news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
After moving the coffee machine inside, Cheong said, “We were doing on average between 30 to 38kg a week of coffee. In the first week it dropped to 5kg. The second week, maybe a little more around 7kg.”
While the food and portion sizes have been praised by customers, Cheong added: “However, having said that we cut all the prices, so our margins, if they were bad before, they are even worse now.”
Show host Colin Fassnidge, however, claimed it wasn’t the show’s fault during an appearance on Nova FM radio.
“(Her) husband is a tiler and his wage was keeping the cafe going. So this thing of they’re losing all this money because we moved the coffee machine, mate – move the coffee machine back,” he said.
Cheong then retaliated by claiming that Fassnidge’s ‘simple fix’ would cost her tens of thousands of dollars. She claimed her rebranded establishment would continue as is to make it work.
“Come out and see how we’re going, we have stuck to what you told us, and I want to make it work,” she said.
For more on this topic, follow The Reality TV Observer.
