TRAINING FOR THE BUTLER TO DO IT
AGEING baby boomers might not live in mansions, but they could still have a butler to see them through their twilight years if a Coolangatta fish and chip shop owner has his way.
Former chef Adrian Wright spent two years early in his career butlering at The Garrick Club in London, an up-market gentlemen’s club.
It was the real deal. There he waited on knights, lords and even Lawrence of Arabia and James Bond (that is, the actors who played them, Peter O’Toole and Roger Moore).
The Garrick Club required its members’ cups of tea to be refilled when they were down to a quarter full, and chairs had to be pulled out when people left the table.
These were Mr Wright’s jobs as a butler, and he believes the tasks could help unemployed young people on the Gold Coast into the workforce and on their own paths to prospertiy.
Those skills – as menial as they might seem – elevated him into the kitchen as he rose to become executive head chef at the Royal Albert Hall and then in recent years, to running restaurants in Sydney and the Tweed.
He started Asure, a business aiming to train and place personal residential services specialists with elderly people, allowing them to stay in their own homes for longer.
But this plan was not his motivation for starting the business.
“The biggest drive is employment because of the service industry I am in. Nobody has any security, they flop from one job to another job, they don’t learn how to do anything really well any more,” he said.
Mr Wright’s training would be different, including 10 weeks of intensive courses to amass 300 hours of simulated work experience before being placed.