Michael O'Brien

Michael O’Brien’s association with the Royal Melbourne Show started very early in his life. He attended the show with his parents from the age of about five or six, and recalls the ‘buzz of the crowds and just the sense of excitement when I walked through the gates’. A few years later, in 1964, his family’s business began operating some of the catering outlets at the Show, which marked the beginning of Michael’s involvement with the Show’s food services. Over the following years, the family expanded their operations to include several more outlets and they were eventually named the Master Caterer for the Showgrounds. Michael credits this time with being formative for his later catering ventures, reflecting that ‘I cut my teeth and learnt through my parents’.

Although the family business was sold in 1985, Michael returned to the Showgrounds in 1991, when he started his own catering business, O’Brien Group. The offices for O’Brien Group were set up at the Showgrounds and, in 1995, they began operating catering outlets for the Show. They won the catering rights with a new and innovative approach, which involved a shift from traditional fairground food to more fine-dining food options.

'We focused on saying, if you come to the Showgrounds there’s not only the hot dogs and fairy floss, but now you have the opportunity to have fine dining.'

With the support of then CEO Peter Payne, O’Brien Group took the approach of ‘paddock to plate’ catering, bringing to the fore the ‘agricultural emphasis and foundations’ of the Show. Michael also enlisted the help of several of Melbourne’s top restaurateurs. Reflecting on this innovative approach, Michael recalls:

'the Showgrounds became overnight … a bit of a food festival. So it was a great innovation, it elevated the Showgrounds from the image that it had, to something which was fantastic.'

At its busiest time, O’Brien Group would often run a ‘24/7 operation’. In order to make food services run smoothly during Show days, Michael coordinated with several different teams behind the scenes, including a night-time restocking crew, members of the Royal Agricultural Society, and food supply companies which had invested in the Show.

Although O’Brien Group no longer caters for the Show, Michael remembers his time there fondly, reflecting that ‘it’s got a very special place in my heart’.

'If I look at 1979 it was the Show offerings of Dagwood Dogs and fairy floss and chips and the Bertie Beetles and things like that with the showbags. I think we then went through an era of elevating it. Look we talk vegetarian, healthy options, they are there, but if you look at the dynamic of the sales mix, it's still 85 per cent the items which were there 30 years ago. I think the other thing we do better now at the Showgrounds is there's spaces for seating which were not the case. There's consideration given to: if I buy something where can I eat it? It was normally just stand up. Just as a very simple one I think coffee has become – like it has in the rest of the community – a huge part of it. Back then, there was no coffee other than instant tea or coffee in the outlets and it was really as an afterthought; now for the Melbourne Show, I'd say there's 30 or 40 coffee baristas around throughout the whole Show. Just following the trends of the community. But I think in the end, it still goes back to some of the basic Show food that people go and drop their guard down for a while and let their kids have different things.'