Botswana Butchery restaurants in Australia enter voluntary administration, White + Wong’s eateries also close

A hospitality group operating popular New Zealand-founded restaurants Botswana Butchery and White + Wong’s will close its Australian eateries.

Hospitality business Good Group Australia was thrust into voluntary administration on March 31, impacting the Botswana Butchery chain and three other Asian restaurants across the Tasman.

New Zealand operations at Good Group are not affected.

The high-end Botswana Butchery chain began in Queenstown in 2007 and also has another restaurant in Auckland’s CBD. It launched in Australia in 2022 following the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Three high-end Botswana Butchery restaurants, including one in Canberra which opened only two months ago, would continue trading while their viability is assessed. The two other stores are in Sydney and Melbourne.

But White + Wong’s based in central Sydney and the Melbourne suburb of Chadstone, as well as Wong Baby in Melbourne, have all ceased trading.

In a statement, appointed administrators Andrew Sallway and Duncan Clubb of insolvency firm BDO Australia said an “urgent assessment” of the companies was underway.

“White & Wong’s Sydney ceased to trade upon our appointment, while White & Wong’s Chadstone and Wong Baby Chapel ceased to trade before our appointment”.

The administrators would be looking to restructure the businesses or sell it in its totality.

Botswana Butchery on Quay St, Auckland. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

In Australia, the chain offered an eyebrow-raising 1.6-kilogram wagyu tomahawk covered in gold leaf, which cost NZD$546 per person for a minimum of four people.

Prior to the chain opening across the Tasman, Good Group Hospitality made half of its more than 300 staff redundant amid the Covid-19 crisis.

Its distraught former workers said they felt let down by the decision, and that getting rid of them part-way through the 12-week wage subsidy period in 2020 was “cold”.

But Good Group said the pandemic had decimated its business, and it kept as many staffers as it could.