“We’re designed—by definition—to help hospitality owners who find it hard to access capital,” says Jeremy Mangan, SilverChef’s CEO. “When banks say no or make the bar too high, our model lowers the cost of entry and gives venues room to adapt.” AN ACCIDENTAL INVENTION THAT CHANGED AN INDUSTRY The origin story is pure hospitality grit. In the 1980s, founder Allan English ran a hospitality equipment dealership in Brisbane. Hearing Pizza Hut would roll out a new class of conveyor ovens, he mortgaged everything (without telling his wife), prepaid for containers of ovens, and waited. Then the call: the rollout would be delayed a year. With the bank circling and sheds full of ovens, English went door-to-door to independent pizzerias. They loved the equipment but not the $25,000 price tag. One sleepless night later, he pitched a simple idea: rent the oven now; if you like it, buy it later. Operators bit.Then they asked for more: rebate part of the rent toward purchase, upgrade to larger units, swap out under-performing gear. English kept saying yes—and Rent-Try-Buy took shape. Competitors watched on with interest as English used the program to win share on dishwashers, ice machines, and more. So he wound down his dealership and invited other dealers to use RentTry-Buy to sell more equipment. What began as a survival hack became a scalable two-sided GTM: dealers gained a conversion driver and the ability to build longer term customer value; operators got affordable and flexible access to mission-critical assets; SilverChef created a sustainable, profitable product, co-designed with dealers to specifically support the unique business drivers of hospitality. FROM ASX LISTING TO GLOBAL FOOTPRINT SilverChef spent years on the ASX before being taken private by Next Capital roughly five years ago, a move that recapitalized the company and reset growth. About 11–12 years ago, the business expanded to New Zealand and Canada (acquiring and trading as EconoLease), and two years ago it launched in the U.S. 159 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 12, ISSUE 10 SILVERCHEF
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