David Carruthers’ Post

Sunday Stories: How we bought 45 venues in less than 45 weeks: - in stealth, for the first 20 weeks - having to recruit 45 GMs & senior team - and put business systems in place On Sundays, I'm sharing true stories about my 40+ years, some funny, some serious. ASX100 Lion (Lion Nathan at the time) wanted to ↗️ beer market share in Victoria. This was late 99 / early 2000. CUB (Fosters) had 90% of Victoria. They wanted to put their beers in Melbourne & regional venues. I was headhunted from London to Melbourne to set it up from scratch. I was the first employee and within 8 months we had 1200. I had to recruit a team of area managers and a senior exec team. Most of the businesses were using cardboard boxes as 'tills' so I got A$2.5m to put PoS and cameras above. (Pre GST) Our revenue went from zero to about A$250m in today's money. Then spent A$10m on 38 refurbs, a few big fit-outs and many small ones to bring the venues up to scratch. Lots of stories to tell about this 2-year period of my career. More to come on future Sunday's It was the highest rate of change environment I have ever been in. What's the most intense high-rate of change role you've done? David ___________________ I'm David. If you like this post: - like it - comment on it - repost to your network Join +6,250 leaders like you already subscribed to my Future of Hospitality newsletter. Link in comments. Register for my monthly web event where I talk about the challenges coming and share strategic insights so we can all thrive. Link in Comments. If you want to improve your leadership capabilities and/or evolve your strategy why don't you DM me so we can have a chat. #hospitality #leadership #strategy #futureofhospitality