Visitor Economy (formerly TasTAFE) and Tasmanian Hospitality & Tourism Academy have vital roles in equipping the up and coming future stars with the basics, but it was a gap in arming them with the tools for the next step which saw a vision come to reality. And for Massie, it is firsthand experience as a fresh- faced employee in the sector more than two decades ago which drives his passion about giving back. “For people coming into this industry, it’s really important to get to know those basics,” he says. “But it’s also about offering a pathway to specialise, to master an area of the craft. This isn’t just about us, it’s about each of the educational institutions coming together to offer something that everybody can be a part of. “If you haven’t got time to do a Cert three at TAFE and go through months and months of training and you want to focus on just wine, or just spirits, then we’re there for you. It is really important that those base levels of trainings are offered, and I think the Tasmanian Government, THA and organisations like
that advocate for that really well, in that we’re good at recruiting people to the industry and providing that base level of education. “If you haven’t got time to do a Cert three at TAFE and go through months of training and want to focus on just wine, or just spirits, then we’re there for you . ” - R ohan Massie “But then where do we go? Unless you have an amazing head sommelier like ‘Fish’ from Peppina or someone like that, that you can learn off every day, where do you go from there? Whether it’s a lack of promotion or whether it’s just a lack of those things existing, I don’t feel that’s been there before. When I came up with my passion, which is cocktails, there wasn’t really a mentor in Tassie. We didn’t really have a cocktail bar as such. There were a lot of bars that did cocktails, but maybe the IXL Long Bar was one of the few that was a specific cocktail bar. “Now we’re seeing the progression of cocktails and stuff in the punter’s mind. Cocktail bartenders are coming through and I think it’s really important that those people have those mentors, or have the opportunity to be educated in those sorts of things if they want to find out extra information, rather than just going to the internet or reading magazines. I spent a lot of time trialling and erroring in things. But if we can give people a framework to learn those lessons in, I think we end up as stronger bartenders individually, but Hobart as a whole ends up offering a far better product.” While the nature of hospitality has changed, with a growing focus on quality and curation, Massie believes investing in staff education can bring both back together. And in a landscape where job ads often ask for a certain level of experience, Rohan sees another value in what Hospitality Distilled provides: accessibility. “Sometimes it’s that chicken and the egg thing – how do I get experience if no one gives me a chance? So, the more tools you have in your repertoire, the better chance you obviously have. I think from the time I got into hospitality in Hobart, things have really levelled up in terms of the offering. What we’re offering as an industry is a whole lot better. The food, the drinks, the cocktails, we’re punching way above our weight. But if we can raise the bar in service as well, that’s when we truly shine.
“After all, we want to leave something better than when we found it, right?”
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Tasmanian Hospitality Review June/July Edition
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