Overview
Ten years ago, a share-plates restaurant opened right on the sand of Burleigh Heads beach. Rick Shores now reads as inevitable — the venue every visitor to the Gold Coast gets told to book before they've even packed — but back in 2016, betting an entire restaurant on a stretch of beachfront with a Pan-Asian menu was a real gamble. In fact, it flooded in the first year. But a decade on, the group that took that bet is marking the anniversary with something more permanent than a party: a new name.
Fanda Group is now Friends of Friends. Where Fanda Group started as one restaurant and one ownership group, Friends of Friends better describes what it has become over the years, across seven venues: a loyal collection of chefs, beverage directors and operators who move between projects, take equity in the ones they help build, and bring in their own friends and collaborators when a venue needs specific skills.
"Fanda was never deliberately chosen. It was a placeholder that stuck and a name we long outgrew," says co-owner David Flynn, who had been wanting to adjust the branding for a few years but knew that the new openings rightly needed precedence. "When we looked across at our seven venues, the thing that united them all was that feeling when warm service, good food and beautiful settings come together to create something really special. Over the years, our restaurants have evolved. Each has its own personality and unique way of bringing people together, but they all come from the same place: a love of hospitality and a belief that moments, like food, are better when shared."
The timing says as much about Gold Coast and Brisbane hospitality as it does about the group. In 2016, both cities were still treated as an afterthought to Sydney and Melbourne's dining conversations, worth a token mention but rarely the headline. That has changed, and Friends of Friends' own portfolio is a reasonable case study in how: Rick Shores at Burleigh Heads, Norté and Sueño in Mermaid Beach, and Marlowe, Central, Southside and Goodside in Brisbane's inner city. Most have picked up serious accolades, including Chef Hats with the Good Food Guide and Hospitality Design Awards.
"You lose bits of what we have built when you travel," says Nick Woodward, co-owner, based on the Gold Coast. "Every venue came out of a relationship: our chefs, our crew, the regulars who join us. You can't run on that from an airport lounge, and the first thing that suffers when an operator stretches too far is the venues back home. Our people can move between venues and build a career without leaving us. A cook can start at Southside and end up having a sea change at Norté. That only works if you're close enough to drive between them. South East Queensland is also the fastest-growing part of the country and at the end of the day it is home."
On a recent visit, what stood out was how long the same faces have indeed stuck around — many team members have been with the group for five years or more, and a number of them now hold a stake in the specific restaurant they help run. This structure is rare in hospitality, an industry more often defined by high turnover than by staff who end up as part-owners of the place they show up to each day.
"We genuinely believe that a lot of our team are proud of the venues we create and work in together," says Flynn. "They enjoy the people they work alongside. Any job is more enjoyable when you have rapport with your colleagues and are proud of what you do."
What could be mistaken for an HR-led cliché is in fact an accurate description of the way the group has grown: a friend brought in a friend, restaurant by restaurant.
A strong expression of that philosophy is Marlowe, which turns one in October with a long Sunday lunch built for the occasion. Head Chef and co-owner Ollie Hansford has put together a first-birthday set menu at $130 a head, running from curried crab brioche and a duck pie sausage roll through to yabby spaghetti with bisque sauce and caviar, a slow-roast Chauvel Wagyu rump cap, and a birthday cake to finish. Six Champagnes will be available throughout the afternoon, with a DJ carrying the party onto the patio once lunch winds down. Book your table now for Marlowe's first birthday lunch before it's too late.
It is a small anniversary next to the group's own, but it makes the same point in miniature: Marlowe is barely a year old and has already been recognised by three separate awards bodies, built by a team who, ten years after Rick Shores, still make the places they themselves want to spend a Sunday afternoon in. "The new name gives us a chance to celebrate where we've come from and what we've built so far, but it also sets the scene for what comes next," says Flynn. "The circle can always get a little bigger."
A decade of hospitality later, the new name has simply caught up with how they've always done business.
Images: Supplied.
Like what you see? Subscribe to the Concrete Playground newsletter to get stories just like these straight to your inbox.