Mina Crollos, General Manager, Continental Patisserie

Continental Patisserie Australia has been providing our premium desserts to Hotels, Event Venues, RSL Clubs, Function Centres and Catering groups like Compass Groups since 1984. We have always taken great pride in producing the best possible quality products at the best possible price to ensure all our clients maintain a high standard and a consistent product.

From our humble beginnings of a small factory unit in Oxford falls with 5 full time staff to our current 3000sq metre facility with 72 Full time and casual staff, we have always maintained our integrity and put a huge emphasis on keeping our “family business” mentality and attitude toward all our staff. Over the years we have had low staff turnover and many of our staff are celebrating their 25, 20 & 15 year anniversaries with the business and with some of our staff including myself (17 years) our whole working career has been with continental Patisserie Australia.

We have always seen a steady growth with our business over the years which has allowed us to grow and expand our reach over the whole of Australia even though we have seen our tough times over the years we have always pulled through and come out stronger on the other side. Having said that, the current COVID-19 crisis is nothing like we have ever faced before with a 95% drop to our turnover in the space of a week. This crisis forced us to stand down all of our staff which took effect as of Monday 30th March 2020. With the lifeline that was given to us by Compass Group to supply the Defence Force we have been able to keep 16 staff (25%) on for now with the possibility to take on more in the coming weeks.
The fear we were facing with this crisis was that with next to no turnover our overheads would continue to build up putting the business deeper into financial stress and leading to the risk that we may not be able to sustain the business over the next unknown period of time till things return to normal which would result in our business closing for good.

Now with your help, we are able to keep our business afloat and guarantee that we can keep some staff employed now and ensure the business is still around to re hire more staff as things return to normal.

Myself, our Managing Director and all the staff at Continental Patisserie cannot express enough our gratitude to Compass Group for this opportunity that has saved our business.

We have been strategic with which staff we have been able to roster back on most importantly we have brought back key staff to ensure business runs as usual and secondly staff that have no entitlements outstanding which means they would have been in a position where they would be making no income at all. We have 2 staff members who have recently returned to full time duties after an extended period of leave due to major health issues who in that time have used all possible entitlements and would now be in a very uncomfortable financial situation, these are the people that we have been able to roster back on and who’s lives will have a very positive impact.

Again, from Myself and the Team at Continental Patisserie we would like to say a huge THANK YOU to the entire team at Compass Group for your continued support over the years and in this very difficult time.