When a hospitality empire crumbles, the tale usually goes something like this: debts are racked-up, the company falls over, the owner dumps it and screws over creditors, staff and suppliers.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But the shock downfall of Australia's catering doyen Peter Rowland is different.
"I've got no dough. But I've got no debt. And it beats the shit out of being on the steps of Flinders Street station," Mr Rowland said.
Peter Rowland Catering, which has hosted some of the nation's most lavish parties for millionaires and billionaires, was quietly placed into administration last month.
Instead of cutting and running, its 79-year-old patriarch did a rare thing. He faced the music.
Bogged in debt, Mr Rowland sold for $8.6 million the beloved Toorak mansion he and his wife had built from the ground up - "the business paid for the house, so I thought it was right that the house should support the business," he said - and used the money to bail out the beleaguered business.
After going into administration, the company will morph into the Peter Rowland Group after attracting financial backing from Melbourne developer Mohan Du.
Emma Yee will step up to become the company's first female chief executive and Mr Rowland will become chairman, but he plans to continue his daily ritual of coffee with the staff at dawn.
"It might be churlish to say, but I've still got the business, I've still got people around me. Geez I'm lucky, I'm really lucky," he said.
After Mr Rowland's daughter and successor, Kate Rowland, died from cancer in 2014, the company expanded into Canberra.
Mr Rowland conceded the company made financially unsustainable deals with major clients such as the National Museum of Australia and the Australian National University.
The business soon started to groan with losses.
"It has been personally a very hard road to lose a child and then watch as everything you have built start to fall apart," he said.
The business was founded on the Portsea back beach in the 1960s where Mr Rowland delivered rolls and Coca-Cola bought from Sorrento to beach-goers who wanted to avoid the climb up to the nearest shop.
"The sales were pretty good because I was the only one selling them ... there were no kiosks, no anything back then."
He was inspired by the work ethic and attitude to service his mother had instilled in her in work at the Hotel Australia in Collins Street - a dining mecca back then - and he learnt from Swiss chef Hermann Schneider???.
Schneider, who Mr Rowland considers the grandfather of cooking in Australia, came to Melbourne to cater for the 1956 Olympic Games and stayed, opening fine dining restaurant Two Faces.
"I got the reputation for good food because of Hermann Schneider," Mr Rowland said.
But his first big break came from a party he threw for philanthropist Loti Smorgon.
"It was on a tennis court, of course, in those days everyone had a tennis court," Mr Rowland said.
"That's what got the name around."
His soirees grew from the tennis courts of Toorak to parties for the likes of the Packers, the Bonds and the Murdochs.
He almost ran out of booze at James Packer's 21st, prompting a frantic dash down the main street of Palm Beach - population 2000 - to a licensed grocer who was doing his Christmas stocktake inside.
Mr Rowland threatened to drive his car through the front door after his desperate knocks at the window were ignored.
Peter Rowland.... Photo: John Woudstra
But when he told the grocer who he was catering for, the man loaded Mr Rowland's car up with $20,000 worth of Bollinger and averted an embarrassing social snafu for Sydney's most powerful family.
There are few of Melbourne's elite who have not tasted his famous chicken sandwiches, but he has also employed generations of young people - many from Melbourne's private schools.
One former employee remembers Rowland, pushing 60, standing on a table wearing a skirt made of cling wrap and giving a speech at a staff Christmas party.
"He'd go out and be fancy schmancy at the events, but he'd party with the staff as hard as any hospo worker," the former employee said.
The company now employs more than 100 full-time staff and 2000 part-timers throughout the year and Mr Rowland said only about half a dozen jobs had been lost as a result of the acquisition.
After all the turmoil, most of all, Mr Rowland wants to be able look people in the eye.
"I am part of Melbourne. Melbourne is my town," he said.
"I don't want to walk away from it."
