foraging those ingredients and the connection with local communities. This led to the creation of Native Connection – a platform to start the conversation around how the hospitality industry and the greater public should be sourcing native ingredients respectfully, sustainably and productively, directly from First Nations producers. The concoction also landed him in the final five. “I talked to some mates in the industry who were foraging, they take a team out and they pick berries off a bush, but often because of time demands they take all the berries off the bush,” Massie explains. “So, I started thinking about how sustainable that was. I mean, if that’s a menu item, it’s not once you’re going to be doing that, you’re going to be doing that a bit, particularly if you’re turning over a number of drinks, so the sustainability side sort of comes into it. And two, we charge our customers for all our ingredients, yet we are getting the ingredients for free if we’re going and foraging stuff. So I thought is there a better way of using that money rather than it just going into somebody’s pocket? “We’re happy to pay for the chicken, we’re happy to pay for the pineapples. Why aren’t we happy to pay for these native ingredients? Going to First Nations people to purchase off them means that money is staying in the community, it means it’s helping people, but it also means that we’re respecting the people that
were here a long time before us, took care of this land for thousands of years. These sorts of ingredients have cultural significance to them, and we could be going onto sacred land, we could be doing a whole lot of things and it’s not through malice, but more just ignorance, that we don’t know what we’re doing. So if we buy these ingredients off First Nations people, we kill two birds with one stone because sustainability is bred into the culture of the First Nations people. They don’t take everything they can from the land, they leave some for the animals, they leave some for the plants but they also know where other plants are so they can do it over a broad range of places so that it’s more sustainable, and the money’s going back to the right places.” Like most Tasmanian fields, the reputation of the state’s hospitality industry has grown remarkably since Massie first started. Venues and business are constantly earning national accolades and gaining worldwide recognition. The evolvement has not been lost on Massie, but there is one constant he believes has remained – and sets the Apple Isle apart from everyone else. “It’s changed massively from what almost sort of felt like a collection of pubs to a really eclectic range of venues. We have good old suburban pubs, we have craft pubs like Moonah Cellars or the Winston. We have everything from small bars like us or La Sardina
MASSIE’S NATIVE INSPIRATION COCKTAIL
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