The chain, which currently employs almost 90 people, was founded in 2014 as a sit-down restaurant focusing on high-quality ingredients at an affordable price. It currently has sites in Auckland’s Torbay, Ponsonby and Commercial Bay, along with Hamilton and Mt Maunganui.
Gilmour said today’s news had no impact on the operation of Mama, the modern Italian restaurant she opened last year in the former Burger Burger Newmarket, or a Greek restaurant that was being developed on the chain’s Takapuna site.
Burger Burger owed deferred GST to Inland Revenue, but Gilmour said a payment plan was in place. Other debt included holiday pay and overdue suppliers’ bills.
She had attempted to franchise the chain last year and said at one point there were five deals on the table, but these had ultimately fallen through.
“It was last year really that the crunch started – the cost of living crisis, and we kind of recovered at the beginning of this year, and then the war started.”
Gilmour estimated beef prices had increased by around 70% in the past 18 months
“Our wages have gone up, beef has just escalated, and we basically sell beef burgers … We just suddenly overnight went from making money to like losing 20 grand a week, and you can’t just close the doors and stop … I should have diversified. Taken the assets we had and diversified faster.”
Gilmour was heading into a meeting this morning to discuss next steps for the company.
“People often ask me why anyone would choose hospitality. The honest answer is that, on paper, you probably wouldn’t. The hours are brutal, the margins are razor thin, the risks are enormous. The emotional investment is relentless.
“You spend your life worrying about food costs, wages, rents, suppliers, compliance, weather, economic cycles and whether enough people will walk through the door tomorrow.”
Thousands of people continued to work in the industry, Gilmour said, “because hospitality was never really about food. Food is simply the excuse. What we’re really creating is human connection”.
Very recent high-profile Auckland restaurant closures reported by the Herald include the waterfront Harbourside, whose owners blamed “lower sales and ever-increasing costs”, The Grounds in Henderson (formerly owned by My Kitchen Rules judge Ben Bayly) and iconic Karangahape Road cafe and bar Verona, which was placed in liquidation last month after 34 years in business.
Earlier this week, it was reported that creditors of one of the city’s most well-known restaurants, SPQR, closed in 2024, had lost more than $2.3 million in the wind-up of the company.
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle team.
