00:00Restaurant owner Damien Brabender has been serving Canberra's food scene for eight years.
00:07We've lost those two tables now, we're going to have to at least cancel one section later.
00:11But he says the industry has become unviable.
00:14They already are harder than the COVID times.
00:17The next 12 months is going to be disastrous.
00:20The hospitality sector is being served blow after blow, rising costs, staff shortages
00:26and a drop in customer spending.
00:28At the moment it's 99% of it's just horrifically sad news.
00:32People closing, people downsizing, people considering pulling the pin, bankruptcies
00:37have become kind of the buzzword in hospitality at the moment for a lot of people.
00:42According to the latest Credit to Watch report, hospitality businesses are predicted to have
00:47the highest closure rates of all sectors, with one in 11 expected to fail in the next
00:5212 months alone.
00:54Miss Vans is the latest local restaurant to collapse, falling victim to challenging
00:59financial and labour conditions being felt across the industry.
01:03And it's unlikely to get easier any time soon.
01:06Inflation is remaining high, we do expect that in ACT that there will be more closures
01:12coming forward before we see the industry recover.
01:17After closing his restaurant XO, Anand Pumar has chosen to take on these challenges the
01:23best way he knows how.
01:24The whole idea of pivoting from a restaurant to a simpler offering I think is the resources
01:32and just working with the resources that I have but still do what I can do which is cooking
01:39and feeding people's tummy.
01:42The cost of living crisis, continuing to bite.
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