This story should make every business owner’s blood boil. 1800 lasagne, the Thornbury restaurant that picked up a chef’s hat and a visit from Jamie Oliver, owes its own staff close to $400,000 in unpaid entitlements. Administrators have told those same staff not to expect much of it back. How does this stuff still happen? Welcome to Australia, where corporate greed is often rewarded, not punished.

Founder Joey Kellock is back running the venue anyway, trading under licence through a related entity, while separately facing personal legal action from the ATO over a reported $423,000 in unpaid tax and super. The brand didn’t die. It just changed its name and started again.

This isn’t a one-off. It’s how the system is built, and if you’re an employer trying to do the right thing by your people, it’s worth being properly angry about it.

What actually happened at 1800 lasagne?

The business started in 2020 as a lockdown lasagne delivery run, opened a bricks-and-mortar venue in Thornbury that same year, and rode the cult-favourite wave all the way to a Good Food Guide hat in 2023. That same year, Kellock announced two new venues on High Street, Northcote. Neither ever opened.

By July 2025, administrators from HLB Mann Judd were called in. Their assessment: the business had been insolvent since March 2021, more than four years before anyone stepped in. Creditors voted to liquidate. The debts on the table included over $2 million owed to the ATO and $391,000 owed to employees, of which $382,000 was linked to related-party loans, meaning money the business owed the very people connected to running it, ahead of the staff who’d actually worked for it.

Employees at the creditors’ meeting abstained from the vote. The administrator could only tell them he was “trying to get some sort of surplus” to pay something toward what they were owed. No promises.

Weeks later, the venue reopened, trading under a licence held by an entity related to the same director and shareholders. Kellock was back at the bar.

Why is this legal?

Because phoenixing, in its lawful form, is baked into how company law works in Australia. A business can rack up debts, including wages and super it owes its own staff, collapse, and the people behind it can start again under a new or related entity while the old company’s creditors, including its former employees, go to the back of a very long queue.

There’s a genuinely illegal version too, called illegal phoenixing, where a company is deliberately stripped of assets to avoid paying creditors and then reborn. ASIC and the ATO both have powers to chase that. But proving intent is hard, it takes years, and by the time anything happens the operator has usually been trading again for a while. The gap between “legal restructuring” and “illegal phoenixing” is exactly where operators like this live, comfortably.

Meanwhile the ATO’s director penalty notice regime exists precisely because this keeps happening. It lets the Tax Office make a director personally liable for unpaid PAYG and super, which is presumably why Kellock is now facing that action separately. It’s a real consequence. It’s also a consequence that arrives years after the staff who were actually owed the money have already moved on, unpaid.

What were staff actually put through?

This is the part that gets buried under the ASIC filings. An investigation by The Age and WA Today reports that former front-of-house staffer Josie Van Doren, who worked at the venue for around two years, alleges Kellock regularly berated staff in front of customers from his seat at the bar. The investigation also reports allegations of excessive drinking and drug use, and verbal abuse serious enough to raise concerns for staff safety. Kellock has not responded to the specific allegations put to him.

Sit with the sequence for a second. Staff allegedly copped abuse while working there. Then they were owed hundreds of thousands of dollars when it collapsed. Then they watched the person allegedly responsible walk straight back in the door to keep running the same venue. If you designed a system to teach good employees that speaking up doesn’t pay, you’d struggle to do it better than this.

What does this mean if you actually run a business properly?

Most employers reading this aren’t hiding debts or berating staff at the bar. But this story still matters to you, for three reasons.

It sets the market you’re competing in for talent and reputation. Every operator who gets away with this makes it a little harder for staff to trust any hospitality or small business brand, including yours. Good culture is a genuine point of difference right now, not a nice-to-have.

It’s a warning about who you bring into your business. If you’re buying a brand, hiring a “name” operator, or bringing on a partner or senior leader with a track record like this, do the digging before you sign anything. A charming founder with a following is not the same thing as a safe one to work for, or with.

It shows exactly what regulators and courts are watching for. Unpaid super triggers ATO director penalty action regardless of company size. Allegations of abusive management conduct sit squarely inside psychosocial hazard obligations that now apply in every state and territory. Directors who think a collapse wipes the slate clean are increasingly wrong, it just takes time to catch up with them.

We worked with a founder bringing on an experienced operator with a big reputation and an even bigger run sheet of red flags nobody had bothered to check. A few calls to past employers changed the deal completely. Reputation is checkable. Do the checking before it’s your name in the investigation.

FAQs

What is phoenixing, and is it illegal?

Phoenixing is when a company collapses owing debts, including wages and super, and a new or related company continues the same business, often with the same people running it. Legal phoenixing happens through legitimate liquidation and asset sale processes. Illegal phoenixing involves deliberately stripping assets to avoid paying creditors, and ASIC can take action against it, though enforcement is slow and difficult to prove.

Can a director be personally liable for unpaid superannuation after liquidation?

Yes. The ATO can issue a director penalty notice making a director personally liable for unpaid super guarantee and PAYG amounts, and this liability survives the company going into administration or liquidation.

Why do employees rank so low when a company collapses?

Employee entitlements sit in the priority order of creditors, but secured creditors and certain related-party arrangements can still be paid ahead of them in practice, which is why staff are often told not to expect a full return, or any return at all.

What should we check before hiring or partnering with someone with a big industry reputation?

Talk to former staff and business partners directly, check ASIC records for prior insolvencies or related-party dealings, and ask specifically about how they manage people under pressure. Reputation built on media coverage isn’t the same as a track record of treating staff well.

Does psychosocial safety law apply to allegations like the ones raised against 1800 lasagne?

Yes. Every Australian state and territory now has enforceable obligations to identify and control psychosocial hazards, including bullying and abusive management conduct. A pattern of a manager berating staff in front of customers falls squarely within that duty, regardless of the size of the business.

The bottom line

The system let 1800 lasagne’s founder walk away from staff who were allegedly abused and are still owed close to $400,000, and start again under a different name at the same address. That’s not a loophole hiding in fine print, it’s how phoenixing works by design, and it’s exactly why director penalty notices and psychosocial safety laws exist. If you want your business to be the one people trust rather than the one they warn each other about, let’s cut through the BS and make sure your house is actually in order.