Indigo Restaurant's director Shaun Bates has been nominated for the Hospitality Association of New Zealand's Rising Star Young Entrepreneur Award. He chats to Mark Story.
What qualities put you on the radar for the Rising Star Young Entrepreneur Award?
I think any award involving entrepreneur traits always involves hard work, dedication, sacrifice and passion. A lot of innovation and goal setting makes or breaks a business and I know from having Indigo that these traits can take a business to the next level.
What's behind your rapid rise from dishwasher to director?
If you love doing something then you will put a lot more effort in. Not that I particularly liked washing dishes, however, I did enjoy the buzz and atmosphere of a busy restaurant and that's what got me hooked. I had a lot of help from others too. Paul Anderson, who is the other director, has given me a lot of great opportunities to take Indigo that bit further and together we've gone from strength to strength.
As a Indian-centric restaurant it also has the best selection of whisky in the Bay. Is that an odd fit?
It's a question we get asked weekly. And just to clarify, it's actually the biggest collection in New Zealand. When people ask why, we have a few different answers depending on the person. One is that Paul didn't have enough room at home. Another more statistical one is that Indians consume the most whisky in the world and that India imports more than any other country. But the most popular and the one I prefer is that it makes us different, walking into any restaurant and being in awe by the décor, the menu or in our case our whisky collection makes people enjoy themselves that little bit more and serving our particular cuisine just adds that point of difference that people love.
What's Indigo's most commonly ordered dish?
As much as I try to convince myself it's not the truth, our most popular dish is still the famous butter chicken, usually with a garlic naan bread. Around 90 per cent of all our takeaways will include at least one butter chicken. We do offer a large range of other exciting dishes such as tandoori crayfish, slow cooked beef short ribs and a house smoked salmon but butter chicken still comes out on top.
