Meet Cassia restaurant manager Prateek Arora
There are so many hospitality workers whose passion and hard grit not only oils the machine but is the machine, and then there are some you meet that just embody the trade. Born and raised in New Delhi, Prateek moved to Aotearoa New Zealand in 2012 on a student visa and completed a hospitality degree before taking up a role as a runner at the then newly opened Cassia in 2014. It wasn’t long before his gumption – and his growing passion for boutique gins as well as his existing knowledge of whiskey (fun fact: Prateek he collects both whiskey and box-fresh trainers – amassing over 200 pairs of the latter at this stage, some of which he wears to work) saw him move into bartending. He moved on to managing the bar, then managing the whole place.