Chef Dan Hunter Offers Half-Priced Dinners at Brae – If You’re Willing To Learn

Brae is an icon on The Hot List, the definitive guide to Melbourne’s most essential food and drink experiences, updated weekly.

For the last year, Brae – one of Australia’s best restaurants – has been offering 50 per cent off dinner and drinks to young chefs, front of house apprentices and trainees. It’s chef Dan Hunter’s way of showing the next generation of hospitality professionals what’s possible when you commit to the industry long term. We caught up with Hunter to learn about the program and why an unforgettable meal can change your life.

When did you first come up with the idea?

We’ve offered the program on Wednesday and Thursday evenings since October 2024. It is becoming more expensive to run restaurants and to dine in the very best places. We know there’s pressure on people in our industry, and we want to ensure an opportunity for younger people or those who have come late to training, on reduced salary, to see and experience our very best places. You can’t be where you can’t see. [It’s about] giving apprentices and trainees the chance to see places of extreme detail: service, food, beverage, venue, the full experience. For us, it’s ensuring another generation comes through our business, our kitchen, our front of house, our industry. It’s the opportunity to give back, show the potential in our industry, the skill set at the very top, and give young people the ambition to aim high.

Hospitality is a notoriously transient industry, does showing people what the top of the ladder looks like incentivise them to keep climbing?

We’ve been considerate of that in our business, giving younger people a chance to see hospitality as a long-term, valued part of society. There was a lack of professionalism not that long ago. Giving people the chance to see a very professional organisation, adults doing this long term as a career – passionate, knowledgeable, skilled – surely has benefit. It shows this is something you can do into your forties, fifties, sixties. It’s not a part-time job. There is a whole world above where they are now, layers of knowledge and craft to build. Before people turn away, we hope they see older people doing well, happy, knowledgeable, and think ‘I can work towards that’.

What’s the uptake been like?

It’s only a couple of people a week. You make a booking or ask your employer to, let us know you’re an apprentice and where you work. Usually young people come with a parent or employer, with senior team members bringing a trainee along. We’ve had kids drive down from Melbourne, Ballarat, Geelong, or even other regional restaurants, come to our early sitting at five o’clock, be back in the car by 7:30 and return to work the next day. It’s for anyone who’s enrolled in an apprenticeship program. So if you’re in a certificate III or IV, no matter where you work, or you’re in a front of house traineeship, the offer is open.

It wouldn’t be surprising if, at some point down the line, you get people looking to work at Brae who have benefited from this.

We’ve had people apply for casual work, writing lovely things. They’ve been taken by the culture of the business and see it as a good place to work. We’ve also had responses from employers after their apprentice has been here, emails saying ‘thanks’, ‘they can’t stop talking about it’, ‘it’s changed their attitude at work’. And to be honest, it’s good because some don’t often have the opportunity to be in a dining situation like this. You know, particularly those who’ve come – they’re 18, 19, 20 years old. It’s a big deal. They just soak everything up, and they just love it.

And I’m sure the staff take their time to give them more of a chat.

That’s right. And everyone who’s here has been in that situation and maybe didn’t have an opportunity at that time. For all of us who are forever members of the hospitality community, we both work and spend our recreation time in venues. So to see kids light up and see what’s ahead of them, and the possibilities, is really nice.

Did you ever have a meal at a similar age, at a similar sort of restaurant, which changed everything?

I got into cooking a little bit later. But when I was about 23, I reckon I had my first really memorable experience in a restaurant in Melbourne for my birthday. The restaurant was called Pomme and the chef was Jeremy Strode, who’s now deceased, but he later went on to become a very important mentor of mine at a different restaurant, Langton’s. And I do remember thinking this was really powerfully moving for me at the time. It really set me on a course that I’ve been on ever since. So, yeah, I did. I definitely saved up everything we had at the time for it.

Will this be an ongoing scheme?

It’s in place now as an ongoing thing. There’s no reason not to do it. We take our position within the industry very seriously. A lot of people have come through this business in the 12 years we’ve been open and we’ve, I think, had positive impact on quite a few people who are in our industry. Now we are moving into a space of wanting a legacy of education and lifting up the industry. We can do that through instilling integrity and standards within younger members of our industry, and hopefully they can carry it forward, and that’s a really positive thing to do. I love restaurants. So I want more people to experience that and understand that it’s a craft and there’s a definite skill set. And to be very good and to have longevity, you’ve got to know what’s going on. And the best way to do that is to get into a restaurant and eat there. We’ve actually got three trainees coming in tonight.

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