HUNTER Valley chef and The Deck Cafe owner Matt Dillow wasted no time looking for a way to pivot his business through the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
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"I'll never forget when I first started cooking my Mum said 'Well, everyone's got to eat, you'll never be out of a job'," Dillow said.
"I thought back to that and said, 'You know what? She's right'."
Dillow "hit the ground running" in March 2020 and began selling family-sized lasagnas as take-home meals. He sold 200 in the first week but Dillow, who has also ran Twine Restaurant and The Verandah during his 14 years in the Hunter Valley, felt he could offer more.
He considered online cooking classes and three-course home-delivered meals before developing the concept of a five-course "degustation to your door" that would offer a fine dining experience at home, including the option of paired Hunter Valley wines.
Dillow created a new menu each week with all of the food prepped and delivered in time for Saturday when he would host a live video feed on Facebook (filmed by his then 13-year-old daughter) with step-by-step cooking instructions to plate up restaurant-quality meals.
"The first week we thought we might get 100. We got 180," Dillow said.
"The second week we thought we might do 200 and we did 250. The third week the phone just did not stop.
"It was without a doubt the busiest period of my working life. I was working 100 hours a week and we were delivering all over Newcastle, the Hunter Valley, Central Coast, Port Stephens and Sydney."
Dillow revived the service during the latest lockdown and, again, it was met with a huge response.
Since the pandemic began, Dillow and his team served 13,500 people across a total of 26 weeks with degustation to your door.
The service ended when lockdown restrictions eased earlier this month but Dillow is planning a one-off special for Christmas.
For now it's back to business at The Deck Cafe which reopened a fortnight ago with a new tapas menu.
Dillow said he was inspired to shift from serving upmarket cafe-style food to tapas last year after the feedback he received from degustation to your door customers.
"The pandemic really gave us a good shake-up, it made me realise what I love doing, a bit more fancy food, and also what the clientele wanted," Dillow said.
"After last year people were asking what sort of food we served at the cafe. They said 'We love this food, we want this' so I thought 'Let's reopen and rebrand as tapas'.
"We are now back at what we started doing at The Verandah."
Dillow has also unveiled a new alfresco dining area and juice bar with a menu of fresh-made juices and wholesome food on the site situated on the grounds of Gartelmann Wines which he purchased in December 2020.
"It feels so good to be back," Dillow said. "There is nothing better than the sound of laughter in a restaurant, whether it's a table of two celebrating an anniversary or a big group of friends, I just love it."
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