IT COULD HAPPEN TO ANYONE
Coffee king Kenton Campbell opens up for the first time about his son’s near-fatal drug overdose - and he has a warning for every Gold Coast parent...
ZARRAFFA’S owner Kenton Campbell has a warning for parents after seeing his son rushed to hospital due to an overdose of designer drug phenibut. “it’s just plain stupidity and naivety to think this could never happen to your kid,” he says. “Be in your kids’ business because you deserve to be - and they deserve you to look out for them.”
I HAVE to ask this question. As a journalist, I know I must.
But as a parent, I need Kenton Campbell, the 48year-old owner of Zarraffa’s, to know I’m on his side. We’ve been chatting for more than an hour in the Helensvale headquarters of this Gold Coast coffee giant. We’ve talked about how the brand’s giraffe mascot is set to stride across Australian and New Zealand territory with another 12 franchises to open this year alone. We’ve discussed the imminent corporate move a few kilometres north up the M1 to a 1000sqm state-ofthe-art premises, literally a concrete promise of bigger and better things to come from the brand.
We’ve even touched on the fact that next week, Kenton will celebrate five years of being cancer-free. It’s a landmark date, one that for any cancer survivor signifies the promise of plenty more years to come on this earth.
But still, beneath the giraffe, there’s an elephant in the room.
Four months ago, Kenton nearly lost his son, aged 15, who was one of seven Year 10 students from Saint Stephen’s College in Upper Coomera hospitalised after overdosing on the Russian designer drug phenibut, a banned relaxant.
Then he was one of four in critical condition who were placed in an induced coma in the Intensive Care Unit of Gold Coast University Hospital.
For 24 hours, he hovered between life and death.
Thankfully, he made it home. Physically unscathed.
These are the facts that, as a journalist, I know. However, as a mother, I still find it difficult to ask a father to speak on a topic so tough. Surely, the mental and emotional wounds run deep.
But, bravely, as he’s proven himself over and again in both business and life, Kenton is
prepared – for the first time – to talk about what happened.
“The fact is that they all came home … nothing else matters,” he says.
“There are a whole lot of ways you can die out there and they were all in that critical situation.
“Any one of us parents involved, and we’ve known some of them since the kids were in prep, the only thing we wanted was for these kids to come home.
“I just could not look at them (the other parents) or have them look at me and think one of our kids is now gone because of something just so dumb.
“For each one of those kids, it was a wake-up call for the rest of their lives.
“Don’t think just because you’re a kid you’re going to get out of jail free, you’re going to pay an adult consequence if you do adult things.”
Kenton says while it was surely a life lesson for the Year 10 boys, it was the same for the parents.
He says it’s proof that even good kids can do dumb things – and parents need to stay vigilant.
“To any parent out there: it’s just plain stupidity and naivety to think this could never happen to your kid,” he says.
“We had parents come to us afterwards and say ‘you know, if it had been my kid there that morning they might have done the same thing’.
“Any parent today that isn’t thinking that way needs to wake up to reality.
“Don’t be naive … you have a right to get on their phone and their computer – that’s how you stop not just a drug overdose but unplanned pregnancies and other things that can change your life forever.
“Be in your kids’ business because you deserve to be – and they deserve you to look out for them. Until they’re 18 and on their own way, guess what? Stiff s*** that’s my phone and my computer and I’ll get on it when I goddamn well want to because I love you and if you don’t like it, too bad.
“When you can buy a beer for me and pay for it off your own tab, then you have the right to run your own life.
“Parents, just keep talking to your kids. They might tell you to get f **** d … but at least they’re talking to you.”
Listening to Kenton, I can hear the emotion in his voice. He came far too close to losing his baby. He’s passionate for other parents to save themselves the heartbreak.
As the mother of a 10-yearold boy, my heart breaks for his family, the school and the kids.
Given the plethora of stupid decisions every teenager makes, most certainly including myself, it’s a wonder anyone gets out of adolescence alive.
While some parents may be on the defensive when their child has made a mistake, Kenton has nothing but praise for the teachers and staff who saved his son’s life.
“What saved them all is that they went to school. The people there saved them. The school and staff did a terrific job. I have nothing but admiration for them,” he says.
“Now it’s up to those boys to take that life lesson and learn from it. I’m certain my son has.
“My hope is that he’s going to be that kid that when everyone else is getting in a car with a drunk driver, he’ll be the one going ‘Nah, not me, sorry dude’.
“Who knows? The upshot from all this may be that he’s
Be in your kids’ business because you deserve to be
the kid who stops others from getting in that car too. Maybe at the end of it all he’ll save a life.
“He’s learned early and he’s learned fast and he’s learned hard.”
Hard is something else that Kenton well knows.
He’s estranged from his own parents.
He left his home in the United States more than two decades ago, and he doesn’t miss it.
His own alma mater was a place where he was relentlessly bullied. To the point that he was held down and had his neck broken.
Little wonder he didn’t graduate.
“I never, ever would have become what I am now if I had stayed in the States. Can you imagine? A guy without a college education?
“Australia is the true land of opportunity – even if it’s not as simple as it once was.
“Business is hard here now due to all the rules and regulations. But still, it’s a country that actually does give every man and woman a chance to succeed, it doesn’t matter where you went to school or if you even finished.”
Years ago, Kenton visited his old house in Springfield, Oregon with his daughter from his first marriage – a relationship which began young and burned out fast.
Walking through the hall of a home that was never safe or warm – or even really a home – for him, he broke down in tears.
“The new owners and my own daughter thought that I was having flashbacks to all the horrible things that had happened there.
“But actually, I was just overcome by how far I’ve come. I’m everything I wanted to be but never even dared to dream about.
“I’ve made so many mistakes along the way but it’s all brought me to this place.”
In fact, Kenton first came to Australia on a mission that was ultimately mistaken.
Retail Food Group first brought him here in 1995 to work in its coffee business, after two former executives from the now-besieged listed company chanced upon a coffee cart he had set up in Seattle and liked what they saw and tasted.
Then he got here and they changed their mind.
To make matters worse, the day he arrived on the Gold Coast, his car was hit by another which failed to give way on Brisbane Rd.
Three days after that, he met his future wife, a therapist who helped him recover from his injuries.
He decided to stay in the country – and our city – and soon found himself making coffee in Australia Fair, just metres from where he eventually opened the very first Zarraffa’s, funded by a $9000 personal loan taken out by his future wife Rachel.
Two decades on, Zarraffa’s turnover now exceeds $120 million with 85 franchisee and corporate stores across Australia, from Cairns to Kalgoorlie.
The tables have well and truly turned in the relationship between Kenton and RFG.
“Oh man, I saw the writing on the wall there a long time ago,” he says.
“They tried to buy me out and I said no way. I don’t like the way they do business.
“The unfortunate thing is that they’ve tarnished franchising.
“It’s a model that works, when it’s done right.
“That’s not to say that buying a franchise is a licence to print money. It can be, but only if you’re willing to work extremely hard.
“Business isn’t easy, just because you’re a franchise … franchising isn’t some magic, perfect situation.
“My job is to give franchisees the most opportunity, but they’ve still got to get up and open the doors.’’
Part of that opportunity includes buying out some struggling franchisees and lifting royalties for the Surfers Paradise Zarraffa’s during light-rail construction that decimated trade.
It also means bearing the responsibility of forward thinking and masterplanning.
To that end, Kenton’s ideal is for all Zarraffa’s to become drive-through cafes rather than shopping centre based stores.
It’s a point of difference that gives franchisees an edge in the uber-competitive coffee industry.
“Actually, I think we’re starting to see a culling in the number of cafes we have here on the Gold Coast – and Australia,” he says.
“We’re always going to love our coffee and the industry will remain strong, but I think a lot of people are starting to realise that it’s tough work.
“You can’t just grow a hipster beard, scatter some wooden crates and serve up $5 cups of coffee. Not long-term, anyway.
“I’ve been saying this a long time, it started happening in the US about a decade ago, and now we’re seeing the same thing here.
“It makes it tough for some operators, but for us it’s proof that our systems work. We’re growing bigger than ever this year.”
While Kenton is, almost literally, full of beans – he says he would have sold the business a hundred times over were it not for his passionate staff and franchise partners.
Ironically, however, it was their professional capability which almost lead him to walk away from Zarraffa’s when he was diagnosed with throat cancer five years ago.
“I woke up from surgery and I just thought, am I still an asset?” he says.
“I didn’t want to go from this highly charged guy to someone who was a weight around their necks.
“But I started rethinking the whole business and realised we still had some goals to kick. And I was still kicking so I could still be an asset.
“Having said that, if I didn’t have my team around me, no way would I be doing this.
“I’m there to guide them but you know, they are all just as passionate – if not more – than me.”
Yet it was Kenton’s passion which lead to his cancer diagnosis.
While overseas, his fatherin-law – a man who was one of the greatest father figures in his life – died.
Unleashing his grief in an almost primal scream, he started coughing. Coughing blood.
In that moment, everything changed.
“I shone a light down my throat and oh my God, I nearly passed out. I knew it was bad. Bad bad bad.
“I couldn’t tell my wife. There she is grieving for her father – as was I – and suddenly we have a whole new tragedy to deal with.
“When I saw the specialist, he knew I knew. There was just no way this thing was okay.
“I honestly thought I was going to die. I took my boys to Borneo to see the orangutans before surgery and it was just surreal.
“I thought, this could be the last time.
“But I made it. In a way, my father-in-law saved me. I think we’re still processing everything that’s happened in the last five years. It’s been a wild and terrifying ride.
“Certainly we don’t take anything for granted. Without health, you have nothing.”
In fact, that’s how this interview on a sunny winter’s day came to be.
Three weeks ago, Kenton and I randomly met – seated next to each other while recovering from day surgery.
The combination of a shared gastroenterologist and a post-anaesthetic high meant we were soon chatting away like bosom buddies. Or is that bowel buddies?
Regardless, as American/ Australians, as parents, as 40somethings, we spoke a common language.
Who knows? Maybe that’s why he answered my question. He knows I’m on his side.
I honestly thought I was going to die … but I made it
TODAY’S Bulletin features an interview we would urge every parent, grandparent, teenager, young adult – indeed anybody who comes within the evil orbit of illicit drugs – to read.
It’s an interview with a father who has endured an ordeal every parent dreads – a day in which his boy was fighting for his life.
Kenton Campbell is best known as the founder and owner of the Zarraffa’s coffee empire.
He is celebrated and admired as one of our city’s most dynamic businessmen.
But earlier this year that was the last thing on Kenton’s mind, as his son lay in a coma at Gold Coast University Hospital.
Kenton’s words about that day are as powerful as they are harrowing – and will serve as a telling warning for anybody who cares for children.
Ann Wason Moore’s remarkable interview with Kenton sensitively reveals the pain he went through that day, and the profound insights he gained as a result.
In the end his story is one of hope, that his own boy will heed the brutal lessons of this near-tragedy and that maybe, just maybe he will recognise the danger signals next time. Perhaps he will even be able to save another young person in the process.
As Ann points out, many of us can count ourselves lucky that we somehow survived the moronic things we did as adolescents.
It’s a point worth remembering as so many of us are also quick to judge the stupidity of today’s youth.
That is not to say we should step aside and let our kids sleepwalk into fatal situations.
To the contrary, he is urging every parent to step up and step into their children’s lives.
Log onto their computers, check their phones, scan their social media interactions.
They may object, sometimes rather strenuously, but it is our duty to brush aside their protests.
We must be alive to the dangers lurking around our kids.
And it is better to suffer their slings and arrows about our intrusions than regret that we did not check on them when it is too late.
This is tricky terrain.
Nobody wants to become a helicopter parent – always hovering over our precious ones, thereby never allowing them to freely express themselves and, yes, make mistakes.
But at the same time, as Kenton says, we also need to be aware of when they may be about to make a mistake they will forever regret.
We hear much about the dark side of the web and of social media, and the harm it can inflict on young minds.
The other side of that ledger is that their interactions leave a digital imprint – one that we can monitor to ensure they stay out of harm’s way.
In any case, it was courageous of Kenton to speak publicly of his son’s misadventure.
Who knows, perhaps his words may plant the seed that may one day, however indirectly, save somebody else’s life.