The Emperor of Rhye

In the early 90s, unemployment was my shadow. Loyal, broke, stubborn. With logic borrowed from a drunken gambler, I decided to start a business. How hard could it be? I'd never owned one, never planned to. My business skills matched my cash flow—zero. Still, I chose sandwiches.

My business plan: bread from a bakery that believed baking was art, fillings from a deli with imported meats and cheeses no one could pronounce. Armed with a heat-sealed plastic bags, ice packs, and audacity, I marched into battle.

Each dawn, stumbling in darkness, I loaded eskies with sandwiches priced like gold. My market research involved roaming Brisbane’s CBD, the Valley, and Spring Hill, selling style over substance to office workers with budgets bigger than sense. Astonishingly, they bought. Sandwiches flew off my ice packs faster than reason could catch up.

Success arrived suddenly. Too suddenly. Soon, I had five sandwich routes, staffed by young women inexplicably content selling lunch. My empire, built on rye and salami, was as fragile as it was ridiculous.

Then came the Melbourne Cup. And with it, destiny.

The orders started early. "Can you do something special for the race?" they asked. "A catered lunch?" they said. I didn’t hesitate. I saw my moment. My magnum opus. The event that would take me from sandwich man to sandwich maestro. Visions danced in my head—linen-draped tables, platters arranged like Renaissance still-lifes, office workers gasping with joy as I delivered handcrafted lunches like edible symphonies.

I poured everything into it. Bulk orders. Decorative flourishes. Extra napkins. Fruit skewers. Cheese cubes with little toothpicks. I imagined press coverage. Maybe a write-up. Maybe expansion. Maybe franchising. I didn’t sleep the night before. I was conducting an orchestra of bread and ambition.

On Melbourne Cup morning, I stood over tables stacked high with food. It looked glorious. I believed.
And then—it began to collapse.

The scale was off. The timing worse. My team was small. Too small. There were no backup drivers. No buffer time. No contingency plan. Just me, a van, and an ever-growing mountain of sandwiches against a ticking clock. Orders backed up. Streets were jammed. Tears flowed. The city moved slow while I spiralled fast.

We scrambled, flailing through deliveries like doomed marionettes. Some orders got there. Many didn’t. Most were late. Way too late. Customers fumed. Phones rang off the hook. My dream, once plated with garnish, wilted in the heat.

By the next week, the dream was dead. Word spread. "He ruined our Cup lunch," they whispered, then shouted. Regulars vanished. Doors closed. "Two hours late," they spat. "Never again."

I knew it was over. I knocked on café doors, selling off what remained. One café took pity, or saw profit, and bought the routes. I handed over the eskies. I walked away.

Bruised. Embarrassed. A little wiser.

Yet, walking away, I felt it shift. The thrill wasn’t the bread—it was the making, the spark. Maybe I’d try again. Not sandwiches. Maybe technology.

Never bet your soul on sandwiches at the Cup.

FSF