24/03/2022
The End of an Era
To our amazing patrons, supporters and family,
It is with a very heavy heart that I must announce the end of an era.
My beautiful restaurant, D’s Authentic Japanese will be closing permanently in three weeks, on Saturday the 16th of April.
As many of you know, we have had a particularly tough run over the last few years, having had to endure several devastating events.
D’s Authentic Japanese was formed in 2015 by my business partner and Japanese brother Koji Harada.
Chef Koji, formerly of Nobu Burswood created D’s to become a bridge between cultures - a conduit for understanding and love between the people and cultures of Japan and Australia.
Over the last few years, we have succeeded in our original goal of building this bridge, however business has always been tough.
I came on board as director of D’s in 2016, after being asked to do so by Koji-san and poured all my love and my life savings into making D’s into what it is today. As many of you know, just before the announcement of the national border closure due to COVID-19, Koji and his wife Mayo had to leave Australia in order to process their visas offshore. Unfortunately with the border closure in place, they are still unable to return to Australia.
After Koji and Mayo left, I was very lucky to have found our current chef Jaeyong. Unfortunately, Jay recently met a similar fate, having had to return to Korea for visa reasons and now also being unable to return to Australia any time soon.
One of the main reasons I hadn’t closed D’s earlier than this is because I wanted to support Chef Jay and his family as they go through the process of obtaining permanent residency in Australia. As I am now no longer able to help them through sponsorship, one of the main reasons for keeping D’s open is now gone.
We now find ourselves short of a chef and have been experiencing seemingly endless short-staffing issues, and as such have had to operate at a heavily reduced capacity.
To add to this, as most of you are aware, Koji and I had purchased a brewery together just before the pandemic hit, Shizuku Brewing - which has been growing steadily ever since. The original plan was for Koji to continue running D’s while I look after the brewing business. Unfortunately due to the events mentioned above, this did not pan out. Instead, Koji found himself stuck in Japan, and I found myself having to run both businesses, averaging a rather unhealthy 100 hour work week over the last nearly 3 years.
I am turning 30 this year, having been married to my extremely patient and loving wife for 10 years now and it is about time we start thinking about having kids of our own - unfortunately this will not be possible if I continue working such long hours.
As the lease on our Connolly venue comes to an end on April 1st, I have decided that the best thing to do is to close D’s permanently.
As such, I am searching for someone to take the reins. I intend to sell D’s assets to someone with a dream to open their own venue. All kitchen and service equipment are available for purchase, set up just as they are at our Connolly venue. We have proven that it is possible to operate the highest rated Japanese restaurant in the Perth metro area with this setup - hopefully someone with better luck than I will have great success with it, especially given that the effects of COVID finally seem to be easing up.
I only intend to recoup some of the funds that I had originally put into the business through the sale of these assets, so I will be letting them go at a reasonable price.
If you or anyone you know may be interested in this offer, please contact me directly on 0450 365 853 (ideally by text first) to arrange a time to discuss.
To our amazing supporters, THANK YOU!
Despite not having paid myself properly for the last few years, I felt it was always worth keeping D’s going just to share in fellowship with our patrons, helping them to be happy, healthy and have many stories and laughs to share along the way.
May we share in each others company again some time in the future.
P.S. - I have an important positive announcement to make in the very near future. Stay tuned!
With warm regards,
Jeremy Randall
Director @ D’s
