Ethan Phillips — coffee roaster, café owner, and one of the most quietly honest people I've spoken to on this show. Based in Hawke's Bay, Ethan has spent the last nine years building a wholesale roasting business and a café from the ground up, with very little money, a business partner who disappeared overnight, and more curveballs than most people see in a lifetime.

We talk about what it actually looks like to start a business on next to nothing — borrowing $25k to get a roastery going and $17k to open a café — and why not borrowing enough can be just as dangerous as borrowing too much. He takes me through the chaos of their first lease, a five-month battle with council, and the moment he went from saying "we don't want this space" to tripling down on the commitment in a single week.

But it's the stuff that happened after the doors opened that makes this episode. Three weeks after his first daughter was born, his business partner left under circumstances he's never spoken about publicly — until now. What followed was years of running a business solo while navigating his wife's postnatal depression, the Napier floods, Cyclone Gabrielle, the vaccine mandate, and a mental health reckoning he kept deferring until he simply couldn't anymore.

Ethan talks about the conscious decision he made to shut off his mental fitness and just survive — and what it cost him. He also talks about what's helped: two years of counselling, building the right people around him, and finding the things that genuinely switch him off (including a very niche hobby involving miniatures and strategy that I didn't see coming).

He's now stepping away from the café after eight years, passing the baton on, and heading south to build out a new roastery chapter on a six-hectare lifestyle block. He's excited. You'll understand why.

Alice Newport has been in hospitality since before it was legal for her to be in a bar.

Note: This conversation was recorded last year so some details may be out of date.

From Perth nightclubs to Christmas Island to brand ambassador for one of the biggest whiskey brands in the world — Alice's path into hospo is anything but straight, and honestly, that's what makes it so good.

In this episode we talk about what it actually takes to land a brand ambassador role, why community is more than a buzzword, and what Alice would tell her 18-year-old self arriving in Perth with no plan and a lot of nerve.

We also get into the stuff nobody really talks about — burnout, never switching off, and why loving your job this much can be both your greatest strength and your biggest challenge.

If you haven't had the pleasure of meeting Alice yet. You're going to love her.

I interview Alex about his hospitality ownership journey, which he describes as challenging, freeing, and a relentless pursuit of control — words that still ring true a decade in.
He shares his path from running plates at Cobb & Co in Hamilton to six years with the Phoenix Group, then a broken elbow, a stint at the Chateau, and a sleeping dream that led to opening Wonder Horse eight weeks later.

Alex explains how he funded his first venue on holiday payout and a loan secured against his mum's house, bought out his original business partners when the dynamic stopped working, and then joined forces with Matt and John to build Over Proof Hospitality — now nine or ten venues depending on how you count. He describes the unusual logic behind their growth: opening more venues not to chase revenue, but to create career pathways for a team that had nowhere left to go.

He also gets into the emotional reality of scaling fast; the partnership structure, dividing roles loosely across beverage, kitchen and FOH, the HR growing pains, and the cold-sweat nights wondering if it's all about to fall apart.

His key advice: know why you want to open a venue, get the doors open even if you're not ready, and treat it like it's someone else's money, because the moment you start mourning bottle rings on your bar top, you've already lost the plot.