The Chaser Report - Barbeques No More

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

In honour of the passing of a company widely regarded as Australia's own version of Apple computers, Charles gives the full Rest is History treatment to Barbeques Galore. Meanwhile Dom outlines exactly why this is a travesty, and the government needs to be condemned to high heaven for not offering a BBQ bailout. Plus, is Craig to blame?---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, terrible news for anyone who likes barbecues so much that they don't just want a barbecue, Charles, they want barbecues galore. Yes. It's in voluntary administration. Yes, a very sad day for Australia.

I think you can look back on Australia's history and, And you can certainly go, you know, January 26, 1788 was a very sad day, especially for the Indigenous people in Australia. Fast forward to what's another terrible day in Australia City. The day that Farlap was murdered by the Americans, remember that? Was he? Was it? Oh, outrageous.

The day we lost Don Bradman as well. Very sad. All terrible things to happen. The day Paul Hogan died. Another terrible day for Australia. Um, is it, he'll let you up if I tell you he's still alive. Really? Yeah.

Is he? I invited him a few years ago. He was in his form. Okay. He wrote books that are very similar to my Australian dictionaries, but much more successful. Well, next you'll be telling me John Farnham's still alive. He's still alive.

What? What? Next you'll be telling me Daryl Summers is still alive. I have no information about him. Okay. I'm not even going to bother Googling. I'm sorry, Darren. Yeah, so, and now, fast forward to 2026,

possibly the worst day, not just the history of Australia, but the history of the world, barbecues galore goes into voluntary administration. How, Charles, how? Can you explain, you know more about business than me? How is it that a business whose proposition is as simple as barbecues, galore, like it says it on the tin.

I mean, they don't do anything but barbecues and barbecue adjacent stuff, surely that just offers endless profit, doesn't it? Yeah, and look, I think barbecues galore really is a ragged. to Rich's story because, and a lot of people don't know this, it is, it's sort of like the Apple Computer of Australia, right? Because it has a very similar history. It was started in a garage back in 1972, I think it was, in Orban, in, or Lidcombe in Sydney's West by a guy who just sold barbecues out the back of his garage, much like the way Apple Computer was started in Steve Jobs' garage. Yes. And someone asked him, how many barbecues.

do you have? And he said, we've got barbecues galore. And they went, oh my God, that's an amazing name. Yes. And so it's sort of like, you know, America has dot com boom. We had barbecues boom. But instead of like lots of companies, we had one company. Yeah. Did its, you know, home brand barbecue? What's called beef feeder or something? Oh, yeah. No, who hasn't bought a beef feeder and then watched it slowly rust, or actually quite quickly rust on their paid more for a more expensive one.

I'm just so nostalgic, Charles, because, I mean, I think it was six years ago. We bought an outdoor table from them. Yes. It was a beautiful moment. We had a little courtyard. We were really coming up in the world. We thought, what can we do?

We didn't have a lot of money to spend. So we got the cheapest one from Barbecue's galore. And it lasted as long as, I think, six to 12 months before. Yes. Heat expansion meant that it basically started warping and falling apart. I mean, who would have thought, in their defense? that an outdoor table would not be able to cope with being outdoors. In the sun.

In the sun. I mean, who would have predicted there to be sun in Australia? I know. During summer. Absolutely crazy stuff. I mean, we should have kept it indoors, shouldn't we? Yeah. But so what then have, this is a tale as old as, well, about 2002,

which is that then barbecues galore got bought at some point. It was either the late 80s, the late 90s of the early 2000. by private equity. Oh, there's nothing more Aussie than private equity, which I believe is what, lots of investors coming together, a company raising lots of money for investors, to buy businesses and then load the debt of buying them onto the business. Nothing as, it's as Aussie. It's a barbecue, Charles.

Yeah. Private equity. And I think that the company, the first private equity company that bought them was a company called, I think, Ironbridge, maybe. Maybe. Beef feeder and iron bridge. Sounds barbecue to me. And the whole thing about them is they, this.

then presumably loaded it all up with, you know, stripped of the assets and loaded it up with debt. That's what you do. As you do. But Australian is tripping the fat off, tripping the fat off of, I don't know, a big slice of beef. But the funny thing about Ironbridge, I'm pretty sure, is that it then went broke. Now, I don't know how you go broke running a private equity firm. But actually, I should just check whether that's true. But I'm pretty sure. So Ironbridge Capital is an Australian equity firm.

Well, they probably went broke, Charles. because another bigger private equity firm bought them and then loaded the expense of doing that onto their private equity firm. Yes. Look, I should probably look these up because I'm going to mark up. So while you look it up, I'll just update everyone on what's happened, which is that barbecues galore, it's in voluntary administration, on the back of liquidity issues.

Hello, just get some beers. Liquidity issues. Get another case. And then months after being acquired by a US private equity firm. So a bigger private equity firm came and bought it up. And what they've done, Charles, is the thing that's really animating ordinary Aussies. They've slashed two-thirds of the value of all the vouchers out there. So when you buy someone a gift card, a voucher or whatever,

they can just reduce the value of that if they want to, apparently. It's not the same as cash. So that's a bit shit. And also, wouldn't the profit margin at barbecue school or be about 33%? Like, isn't that basically been... Not anymore. Well, exactly. Well, are you telling me that those 20%, what, those $30 beef rubs or whatever that they sell?

Are you saying there's a lot of profit in those things, which are basically salt? That's what they should do. They should just sell more salt. Yes. To Australia's men. I mean, not that it's just men, like obviously. No, but the stereotype that we're trying to not at all softly mock you as men. To shop for blokes.

But the interesting thing is their actual revenue, so they had a bit of a boom during COVID. Yeah, of course. Their actual revenue, this is the whole point about pretty much every company in the world is private equity ends up buying out these perfectly good brands. Anything that does well gets bought. Yeah. Yeah. And then they load them up with completely unsustainable debt. It means, especially in the fashion industry, I was reading about this in the fashion industry.

One of the huge problems that happens in the fashion industry. So say you invent a new brand, like Forever 21 was I think one of the examples, right? And you load it up with debt. And then just accidentally one day, like one season, Forever 21 goes a little bit out of fashion. Not hugely out of fashion, but just, you know, they go for green. So you're saying the word forever is quite premature. Yeah, exactly. No.

And then what happens is if you're not owned by private equity, you're not loaded up with debt. Yeah. So you have to keep repaying. And you can actually just, yeah, you just literally reinvest in coming up with a better line up next year. year and you make back your money, right? Whereas these highly leveraged, when your balance sheet is highly leveraged, when basically every dollar that you're earning just basically goes back to paying the interest bill, then there's no room for error. So that's fine for one or two years. But if you're sort of 10 years on the track, you're going to have a year where there's a bit

of a downturn. But if you look at Barbecue's galores sales revenues, 23, $174 million. $2024, $172 million. Not a huge difference. No, $277. This was not a failing business. This was the failure of our government to rein in those bastards at private equity. Well, that's one view, Charles. Let me give you another view from the Australian Retail Council, which says that what's

government's done wrong here, it's actually not the fault of the private equity company. It's the fault of the government. Well, we can agree on that. It didn't support economic growth and investment, I'm quoting here, to secure 1.4 million retail jobs nationwide because the way it works, Charles, is that if a business goes well, it keeps the profits. If it goes badly, taxpayers have to come in. Bail out. Well, that's what we need for Barbecue's galore.

We need a barbecues galore bailout. They do. We need to get the tongs in there and pull barbecue's galore off the grill pan. I don't think anyone would disagree that barbecue scler is too. big to fail. Too big to fail. Two Aussie to fail. Two Aussie to fail.

Given that I know at the moment you're writing a new, a new wankanoist. It's a new test. Yeah. You're doing a new wankanomics show. Can I just take it a lad break? I'm just going to read you the statement from Gordon Brothers, the private equity firm that's taken over. Oh, okay.

The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. Okay, so this is from David White, Chief Executive. I won't do an American accent, although it kind of needs one. Oh, come on, do an American accent. Do an American accent, Dom. Management was excited to turn around the business and move to the next evolution of the brand. Considerable progress has been made in recent months, leading to significant improvements across the business and operations. However, ongoing liquidity challenges have led to the necessary restructuring of the business. God, that's some...

What does that even mean? It means they were doing really, really well until they fucked it. ongoing liquidity challenges. Now, Charles, I'm very confident that Gordon Brothers has plenty of money elsewhere. Yes. They've just decided, well, maybe. And I don't want to cast aspersions, but it wouldn't it be handy if you could, I don't know, write off two-thirds of the value of all the vouchers that are out there that

everyone gave each other for Christmas. Yeah, I see. Never buy gift vouchers, Charles. Never buy them. Oh, well, unless they're sort of for places that will definitely never go broke in Australia, like, I don't know, barbecues galore or bunning. But you know, I'm part of the problem. Imagine if Bunnings went into.

Oh, imagine if. Oh, my God. And there'd be no way to fix it because all the stuff to fix it would be in the bunnings. There'd be a run on the bunnings. That's right. Everyone would be trying to withdraw their, you know, hammers and wrenches. Imagine all the charities that would fall without the ability to raise funds from barbecues. And everyone, all the sausage sizzles would be cast out on the street.

The dodgy meat industry. The meat so dodgy that it doesn't even have a kind of animal, it's just called meat. That would be in tatters. But Charles, I have to confess, because you know this, and you gave me a hard time about it. I have to share what I've done, which is that I recently acquired an electric barbecue. Yes, but you didn't go to Barbecue's galore, did you? No, I know this because you had a barbecue recently. I did have a barbecue.

And you rolled out something very fancy, didn't you? An electric barbecues, I bought the, I bought the hype that we don't want to use gas anymore. You bought the shit barbecue? So I've got one with an electric coil in it. Yeah. And how did it go, Dom? Or are they still cooking now? You know what?

The next couple of times I used it was actually really good, I must confess, because it's easier to plug in. But yeah, look, it wasn't a great birthday party, was it? It was you were giving me a hard time about the barbecue. Others who will remain nameless who were there gave me a hard time about the fact that I spent a lot of the time when my friends had come over specifically to see me on my birthday barbecuing rather than talking to my friends.

There were some friends who came to a fairly small event who I didn't really speak to at all. So that wasn't my finest down. However, you know, if we all have to buy electric barbecues, is there any point? Like, is there any point getting excited about it? Is an electric barbecue even still a barbecue, Charles? Well, no, because we should probably explain to listeners

what an electric barbecue is. So basically, remember those little bar heaters that you used to be able to buy that if you wanted to set your house on fire and then claim it on insurance. You remember those? Yeah. They'd have those little sort of elements that you'd turn orange. Yeah.

So imagine if you just got one of those and turned it on its side and then, but it was sort of slightly slower and slightly cooler than that. It goes very orange. It does. It goes really orange. Yeah. And then that's the barbecue. And then I think the thing is, so what are you supposed to do?

It's sort of like, I suppose it's part of the slow cook trend. isn't it? No, look, I will say this. They're very, very good. They get very, very hot quickly, and they're actually quite good at heating up. And they go to 350 degrees and you can check the temperature. It's actually really good in that sense. There's just one thing you can't do.

Oh, yeah. There's one slight problem with the technology versus gas. A tiny, tiny little problem. Yeah. And that is you can't open the lid. What? If you open the lid, it cools down in about 10 seconds to about 100. It becomes a fridge that you can keep your beer in.

It doesn't work at all. But other than that, it's great technology. and I recommend it to everybody. So I feel like people like me were killed barbecues galore. Was it Craig who convinced you to do it? Because Craig was very scornful when I bought a barbecue and it was gas. And he said basically I was the reason that climate change was, you know what?

It's not even Craig. It's not even Craig. It's my internal Craig. This is the really sad thing. You've internalized. It's the possibility that if Craig were discussing electric barbecues, I could say, oh, I've got one of those. down the track and briefly win his approval before he goes back to making fun of me again.

Maybe that's what happened with barbecues galore. Maybe Craig came in to a barbecues galore and started hoeing into them for all the gas barbecues they sell. Maybe consumer confidence founded in that moment, all right. So, look, not born out by everything other than the fact that their revenue is entirely flat or actually going up slightly. And it's clear that this is just, I think that they, I think that they should just. pass a law saying tax the debt. I think it goes back to this stupid thing of, there's all these

tricky financial things to do where, you know, people basically raise money by making other things be in debt. Yes. And you just sort of say, okay, if you're going to do that, here's a fucking huge tax. So don't do it anymore. They take a perfectly good business. They load all this crap onto it and then it falls over. It's happened endlessly in the And somehow we've got this system where you go, I know, well, we've got to do that to let capitalism work. But capitalism doesn't work. So just stupidly, things just perfectly good businesses then collapse. And these poor 500 employees who still have their job because it's still operating.

It's just undervolunteers in Australia. But it must be nights of uncertainty for all of them. Very, very tough. And then the horrendous. And let's say life-changing problem of people who got gift cards from barbecue or having their value cup. Ruin their Christmas or birthday present, which is. Yes. And they may as well just put it in, put the value of those cards into an electric barbecue doesn't actually destroy them.

Yeah. Because it's not fire. Okay. All right. Well, look, I think this is troubling. That said, as a shareholder in a tracer, can we possibly, would private equity buy us out? Because the founders do well. The founders do well when you get bought out by private equity.

So maybe. Oh, no, well, then I think that's great. Yeah, I know. I think it's worth looking into it. I mean, what a great way for the chaser to fall over laden under the debt of its own purchase. It's going to fall over eventually. You know what we should do is the chaser should set up a satirical private equity firm and then buy out the chaser in a sort of, you know, snake eating its own tail style restructure. We have talked about a satirical hedge fund before.

If anyone listening has any ideas about how to do that, still interested in the idea. Well, I, we are, we still own chaserbank.com. Oh, well. Yeah. What a great idea. Okay. No, we should definitely do that. Are you a fit and proper character to operate a, to get a banking license?

Well, you need a financial services license. I think Craig. Craig can do that. Yeah, Craig, Craig will send Craig and he can mock them until they give him one. All right. Go and buy a barbecue. Just, you know, if it's electric, bear in mind. Do some research about how quickly it cools down.

Yeah, but like, you know, you know, You know, your patriotic duty listener, dear listener, is to go out and buy a barbecue this afternoon. For whatever you do, just to save the Australian economy. Don't buy the cheapest outdoor table because it doesn't work if you, I don't want to put it outdoors. Or buy two. Yeah, actually, if I had another outdoor table over the top of the first one, it wouldn't have cracked in the sun. Thanks, barbecues galore.

We're part of the Aconicless Network. I'll get you tomorrow. And we've got podcasts galore. Actually, we don't. We need to stop my podcast.