Shaun Christie-David On Intelligently Growing Social Enterprises To Amplify Long Term Impacts
Shaun Christie-David is the founder of the Plate it Forward Hospitality Group - a restaurant group providing opportunities to people who are underrepresented in the workforce. To date he has employed over 200 people from marginalised communities across his hospitality group & kitchens including Colombo Social, Kabul Social and Kyiv Social, as well as donating over 560,000 meals to people battling food insecurity as part of his global food diplomacy movement.
Shaun was a driving force in the launch of the Aboriginal Health Television Network in partnership with the Australian Federal Government in 2019 – a channel dedicated to improving the health literacy of First Nations people. Shaun has been awarded accolades including the inaugural Good Food Innovator of the Year, Not for Profit Emerging Leader, Time Out's Hospitality Future Shaper, an AMP Foundation Tomorrow Maker – and in 2021, Plate it Forward was the recipient of the Community Human Rights Champion by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Shaun discusses how social enterprises can deliver the best products and services to not only generate sustainable growth but to activate and amplify impact measures embedded within their core business models.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Tom Allen] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background and what led to your passion for social enterprise and hospitality?
[Shaun Christie-David] - I suppose I was always about hospitality since zero. My mum is an amazing home cook, and we were always entertaining guests and visitors. My family saw the power food has to bring people together to share laughs, connection and commonality.
When I took a break from the corporate world, I wasn't sure if it was for me anymore. We had just finished running the Aboriginal Health Television Network, and I was thinking about what to do next. I’ve always went back to this way we were raised, and how my mum just saw the world and wanted to give back.
Being born in Australia, the greatest country in the world, and having Sri Lankan descent (mum and dad are both from Sri Lanka), I’ve always wanted to give back. But I wanted to give back in a deep, meaningful and long-term way; to create change through the way we knew, through food.
I always say you can't be eating a kebab at four o'clock in the morning and then also saying, "I hate Lebanese people." If you really get to know people, you get to share stories.
I think food is a beautiful way to do it. It's easy to get, it's easy to understand, and it allows for us to showcase who we are, in a way where we feel powerful and together.
As CEO of Plate it Forward, can you share more about the work you're doing, the restaurants you've started, and how they’re creating impact?
The food is the standout, it's what we believe in. We are a hospitality group first and foremost delivering unique dining experiences focusing largely on our food and beverages.
That means innovation through food while also paying respect and homage to that home country and trying to get that balance of grandma's cooking with a modern twist. Each restaurant employs people that would otherwise be excluded from the job sector.
This includes women over the age of 50, people exiting the incarceration system, those living with a disability, refugees and asylum seekers. What we try to do is build workforces and elevate people, allowing them to express themselves through something they know, the food from their culture.
We’re building something Sydney and the world hasn't seen, an impact-based hospitality business with a really good product. If you didn't know we are a social enterprise with a social purpose it wouldn't detract from the experience at all.
What mistakes have you observed founders are making when creating quality products or services?
A social entrepreneur by default is passionate about their project. Their project can be whatever it is and there's no limit on what you want to do, but the trap we often fall into is thinking, "my impact is so great and the work I'm doing is so amazing that I will only think about doing that first and then have a product to support that."
We've taken the view impact can only be supported by the best products, and the greater the product, service, or experience, the more successful your business will be and the higher your impact can be. Build an impact that is scalable with the number of profits you generate or the amount of employment you create.
Stickiness and customer retention will only happen with a coffee shop if your coffee is the best. No one will turn up if they think, “this is the 15th best coffee I can get, but it's doing something great for the environment, so I'm going to support that." This doesn't last.
Where I also see us as drivers of change and creating equal opportunities is by being on par with everybody else. Otherwise, what people do is they view us as less than; they start thinking, “you are not as good as your competitor. However, you're helping these people, so therefore we feel sorry for you and we'll do a transaction based on that.”
This dynamic perpetuates stereotypes that aren't true. The people we employ are incredibly capable doctors, pilots, engineers, and lawyers. They're best in class, and therefore our product should match the best-in-class mentality also.
What have been some of your biggest learnings from creating opportunities for marginalised women in the hospitality space?
It's complex, but one learning I’ve taken on board is you can't do everything. The trap you often fall into is you want to change the world quickly and you want to do everything to make sure everyone is covered. I fell victim to this thought process, and we used to give many more people jobs, but not the hours they need.
That wasn't changing outcomes and making their lives better, it was probably making it harder because they weren't able to support themselves fully. What we said is we'd rather employ less people but give them 37 and a half hours of work weekly. Instead of giving three people 13 hours of work for example, we started giving one person 39 hours.
You can see this is now building futures and deep worth for these people. Some people are buying houses and cars so they're able to cement themselves into society.
It was tough to scale back, but we're now able to do more for more people after making that hard decision a couple of years ago. We are seeing everybody grow and become happier, safe, and secure in their employment with a consist and regular work schedule.
This has allowed them to shine and we're seeing huge amounts of growth professionally and most importantly personally. My biggest learning is trying not to save everybody but do the right thing by the people who are with you.
What common pitfalls have you observed amongst purpose driven business owners and leaders?
I have a high-risk appetite, and I'm committed and passionate like everybody else is. I see us as an industry in a sector that is currently thinking small. A lot of people never consider starting a massive project. When I talk about the growth we've had and the future venues we want to build, everyone says, “but that's such a big thing to do.”
The sector thinks about small things, things that can't be as big as another hospitality group sitting out there in the world. But if we want to create the greatest outcomes for the people we care about, we have to think big.
We must not be aggressive, but we also must do what a normal business would. I consider us a normal business. We take that mindset by asking, “what's our 10-year objective and how do we get there? How do we grow the business? How do we ensure scalability? How do we build the most efficient and effective back office for us?”
That's where true cost saving can happen by building the best and most efficient systems and investing in technology, resources, and talent to be able to do this forever and to make this a sustainable forever business that can grow impact exponentially.
What we want to be able to do is look at how other businesses of our size operate. What's our collective buying power? How do we become big enough to move the needle on our fixed costs to increase profitability. By increasing profitability we're increasing impact outputs, so we need to look at the business.
Embed your impact constitutionally and ethically into your business model so that it will grow at the same rate. My focus is purely on making the business as profitable, successful and as scalable as possible knowing the impact is happening without me even doing anything.
It happens by default, and we built that in so I could spend less time focusing on that and more time on growing everything so impact can happen at the same time.
Where do you see there are key opportunities to grow the business for good movement in Australia?
The people in this movement right now are the first adopters of what will be the way of the future. Businesses should always be impact focused, and I think this was the case with businesses of the past.
Communities were always led like this. Where we see ourselves now is going back to when times were great, a time when communities worked well together by looking after and supporting each other.
A business becomes a business for good by being a good business. We see the opportunities in this sector are to be a good business and then to be seen as leaders of change.
Our constitutions are written like this, and our customers know by default they're going into a business to do something that's bigger than just a transaction. That becomes the norm. We must be able to showcase our product or service is the best, that would be the way of the future.
We are getting there as a sector and movement, and globally all indicators indicate customers, consumers and guests want that experience. They want more than just a transaction; they also want that transaction to be on par.
I look at some statistics and they say 89% of people will pay more for a product that does good. Fantastic, they probably will. However, they're not getting a product as good as other ones, and that's where the numbers start to skew.
That's what we have got to be focusing on, building good businesses that in part do good. It's scary how many customers I will see are regulars. Our price point isn't cheap for a restaurant, but they're there all the time. Now that only happens because we make good food, and they feel that.
Now it's so much easier to maintain an existing customer than to try and get new ones. Building customer loyalty and satisfaction leads to word of mouth; that's how we can grow our businesses.
When we launch a new restaurant, we've got a huge following who will come and support that restaurant because they know what we do, stand for and the quality of the food we make.
That's our strategy, to build stickiness to our customers by continually changing our menus, growing, and making fresh and new experiences. Customers feel like it’s always different, but what isn't different is the quality of experience they will get.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across creating a positive change
I've been impressed by the National Indigenous Culinary Institute with the work they've been doing and the calibre of chefs that are coming out of their training programs. Luke Burke, who just won young chef of the year for the Good Food Guide, is alumni.
They've been producing high quality chefs who are going out there and changing the way people see young Indigenous chefs. It’s an amazing program that's just been quietly doing its thing for a long time with no need for accolades.
The passion behind the CEO Nathan [Lovett] and the work he's doing in culture, First Nations food and people is something I've been really impressed by.
The more we get to hang out with them and their chefs the more we see they're really driving something quite special. I love everything about that organisation and how they’re working quietly but producing results. That's an amazing journey they're on and their trajectory over the next couple of years will be massive.
To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?
For the past year I've been reading Atomic Habits. It’s got good disciplines and easy to implement practices.
What I've started to do is start putting myself first for a little bit, so that means exercising, having a coffee before I check my phone, and spending a bit of time with my partner.
I'm playing Wordle for five minutes and just having a bit of time to myself before I start the day. Before was always so stressful, I’d wake up and need to return phone calls straight away. I was on the back foot from day one, and if you're not calm or at ease you are not making good decisions.
You're not as rational as you want to be if you start the day stressed. What I've noticed is by giving myself half an hour to ease into the day with a bit of fun, laughter, or downtime, I’m a lot calmer, centred, and able to make smarter decisions without being rushed or stressed.
That's a habit I've picked up which has been a huge difference in the way I approach my days, and it also lets me meet people with a lot of kindness and time.
