What does community mean to you?

Dominique | Te Whanganui-a-Tara

Dominique sees hospitality as an act of generosity and community, creating spaces that care for others.

“My mum is an incredible host. One of those people who just naturally will always make sure everyone’s glass is full. Everyone’s got enough to eat. Everyone’s got somewhere comfortable to sit. And so I guess in a way, hosting was or is something that came quite naturally to me, having had it role-modelled to me my whole life.

My name is Dominique Fourie McMillan and I’m a proudly South African, mum of three girls and now a restauranteur by trade. I would argue that, as opposed to like two or three decades ago when people came to restaurants for the food, now everyone can cook well, pretty much.

You can go and watch a zillion YouTube videos on how to make a perfect steak or cook a piece of fish. But people are coming to our restaurants less for the food and more for the experience.

More for the energy, that energy that you get when somebody else looks after you and when somebody else wants to look after you. So the people who do that, the people who do that really well, I think, are incredibly special.

Community is not so much a thing you belong to, it’s something that you do. It’s a very active word. It’s got a lot of intention behind it. Community for me is asking yourself ‘how do I show up for the people around me?’ None of us can be resilient to everything all the time. But when you’re in a really strong community, you take turns being resilient for one another. You have to be really intentional about it in how you show up for other people.

So about a year and a bit ago, a friend of mine, Chris, who also is in hospitality, we were having this conversation about what’s happening in hospo, because hospo is a place where people come to top up their social battery. It’s a sanctuary for people from the reality of the world. They come to venues to eat and drink and relax and sort of forget about their problems. And for us, in the hospitality industry it’s our responsibility to provide that for others. But who fills up our tanks in order for us to give?

For me generosity is like an infinite never ending cycle. The guests show us generosity by visiting our venues, and then in turn, it fills up our tanks and we can show it back to them and so it goes. So we spoke about how we could give something back to the industry specifically aimed at the hospitality industry that would sort of restart that sense of generosity. So we host this monthly event up at Loretta just for hospitality. And it’s sort of a masterclass but also just a community hangout in a way. And my goal is just that people leave that session feeling better than they did when they walked in. Just topped up.”