Andre Shi — who also owns Vault 21, Prohibition Smokehouse, Catacombs Nightclub, Deja Vu and Graze and Glow — is the new proprietor of Pizza Bar, at 117 Stuart St.
He officially took over ownership of the restaurant on Thursday after making initial inquiries about a month ago.
Mr Shi said he really admired the previous owners and the reputation they had built, and planned to keep everything just the way it was.
“I think Pizza Bar produces the best pizza in town.
“Obviously, personal preference — and then a lot of my friends and family all loved it.
“They serve great product and have good atmosphere in that place as well, so we’ll continue exactly as it is.”
Mr Shi said he liked all the restaurant’s flavours.
It was very close to all his other business so would be easy to manage.
Despite Pizza Bar raising the total number of businesses he owned in the city to six, he had not thought about that before and did not think it was that impressive, Mr Shi said.
There was still “a long way to go”.
He definitely would not be able to run them all by himself and was grateful to have a talented and hard-working team by his side, he said.
“Without my team, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this.”
Dunedin had everything needed to run a great hospitality business, but the industry needed more hospitality-focused talent.
He had been meeting full-time hospitality operators in Auckland and hoped to bring some talent to the city to serve the community.
Catacombs Nightclub had also been fully renovated recently, which had received great feedback over the past couple of weekends.
Vault 21 had been his first acquisition in the Octagon, originally known as Ra Bar.
It was “a key hospitality spot” and he wanted to make sure the level of service was high enough that it could become a destination area.
While the market was “pretty slow”, Dunedin was reasonably sheltered compared with bigger cities.
“As long as we work hard and provide good service and the product that our local customers want, we’ll go pretty well.”
tim.scott@odt.co.nz
