‘BELIEVE IN YOUR IDEA’
Hospitality dream team Billy Cross and Simon Gloftis have served up some secrets from their past in a revealing interview
I don’t know if I’d have done it knowing what I went through
GOLD Coast duo Simon Gloftis and Billy Cross are no strangers to success but even they have had many moments of doubt along the way.
The business partners who opened rooftop restaurant and bar Nineteen at The Star in March this year have publicly shared their tougher moments when they were starting out.
In a candid and entertaining podcast with Two Girls and Nothing to Wear hosts Yvette Hardy and Emily Whitlock, Gloftis admitted he might not have launched his Greek restaurant Hellenika if he’d known how stressful it would be at the start.
“Opening up Hellenika took 10 years off my life. It was so hard. I don’t know if I would have done it knowing what I put myself through.”
The Coast fave, which has added a rooftop bar, pushed boundaries on the Gold Coast eight years ago offering share plates, no BYO and set menus for groups of eight-plus.
Gloftis, whose first operation was Three Beans cafe in Broadbeach, added: “We were in Nobby Beach and there used to be a needle exchange so it was a bit crazy actually, opening up a Greek restaurant.”
Cross, with an impressive stable of entertainment and festival events, is known for founding globe-trotting male strip show Thunder from Down Under.
The tasteful, all-Australian act now has multiple travelling troupes all over the world on top of a Las Vegas-based show which has run for 18 years out of MGM’s Excalibur.
A reality show is in the wings but Cross admitted: “If you asked me in 1988 about it, I’d have thought it’d last five years max. Now it’s an entertainment juggernaut.”
Cross has advice for budding entrepreneurs aiming for his kind of successes: “Always believe in what your idea is, be positive and don’t listen to haters. If you doubt yourself, that’s the part that can ruin you.”