No noise. Just Ovation.

No fanfare. No launch party. Just 1,250 staff, a dozen legacy contracts, and a sharp plan. Ovation Hospitality didn’t kick down the doors of New Zealand’s hospitality industry. It walked in quietly, took off its coat, and got to work.

This is not a story that starts amid the steam, clutter and clank of a bustling kitchen. It begins, as these things often do, with a spreadsheet, a boardroom, and the polite machinery of corporate retreat.

Downer EDI, the Australian infrastructure giant, wanted out of hospitality. In 2017 they’d spent A$1.2 billion acquiring Spotless – a bold move that the New Zealand Herald reported at the time “left the market gobsmacked”. Seven years, several write-downs, and a strategic rethink later, Downer was ready to sell – including Spotless, a familiar face in hospitals, stadiums, schools and retirement villages.

As the Australian Financial Review dryly put it: “The $3.9 billion Downer EDI has boarded up the food truck and is reversing out of the business of hawking hotdogs and beers at sports stadiums and the like.”

What remained was a solid, if unloved operation. Still cooking, Still serving – but no longer part of the plan.

Enter Ovation: a new name, a fresh mindset, and a very deliberate kind of ambition.

A new kind of hospitality company

“We’re not here to stick a new logo on the door and hope for the best,” says Ovation CEO Patrick McCartney. “We came in clear-eyed and with no illusions. Not to burnish the brand, but to fix the foundations.”

Ovation Hospitality Services NZ was incorporated in April 2024. By December, it had snapped up Spotless Catering, Alliance, and Epicure. It marked the first move outside Sydney for its Australian parent, the family-owned Doltone Hospitality Group (DHG).

While Doltone is famed for its iconic venues – think Darling Harbour, the Sydney Town Hall, Hyde Park and the Sydney Opera House, along with the stunning revamp of Paddy’s Markets – acquiring Spotless NZ marked a clear shift. Less sparkle, more substance; a step from grand events to everyday service.

“Everybody participates in a food experience every single day,” McCartney says. “So, it doesn’t have to be overblown. It needs to be simplified and focused on the elements that really count.”

Earning every plate

At its heart, Ovation is a service company, built on relationships, not reputations.

Many of its major partnerships – Go Media Stadium (Mount Smart), Health New Zealand, Toyota, Foodstuffs, Christ’s College, Whanganui Collegiate and Northbridge Lifecare Trust – came via Spotless. But McCartney insists these weren’t handovers. Instead they are “relationships earned, meal by meal”.

He pauses, then continues. Hospitality, he says, is an emotive business. “Dining in a hospital or a school hall feels different to a bar or Mount Smart with 25,000 people. But the principles of hospitality – the intent to care, the pride in delivery – they don’t change. We want to match expectations and exceed them wherever we can.”

These aren’t mere words printed on a laminated A4 pinned to the tearoom wall. They’re lived every day by the 1,250 people who came across when Ovation took the reins. 

“The transition’s been smooth,” says McCartney. “We’ve already seen easy wins from the re-energised team. The decades of Kiwi experience we’ve inherited – that’s transferable know-how. We think it’s exportable.”

And that ambition is real. DHG’s Group CEO, Joseph Murray, describes the acquisition as “strategically significant” – the first step in a trans-Tasman expansion envisioned during the reset of the pandemic years. Ovation, he says, is the engine room driving DHG’s broader ambitions: a lean, multi-faceted group spanning events, hospitality services, and tourism. 

School dinners, stadium wraps, and a second chance

There’s no getting around it: Spotless came with baggage. Solid contracts, certainly – but morale was frayed and vision absent. By the end, the New Zealand arm felt like one of those tired ’80s motor lodges – faded signs, mouldering spa pools, heavy maroon curtains that blocked out every hint of daylight, and kitchens still bravely flaunting Formica benches in burnt orange. 

McCartney sees Ovation as a fresh start. “Although we’re a new company,” he says, “we have 55 years of hospitality experience to draw from. Whether it’s nutritious dinners for hospital patients or faster food for footy fans, we’ll deliver something exceptional.”

But Ovation didn’t stumble into these sectors – it sought them out. The underappreciated corners of everyday life: schools, hospitals, senior living. Places where food isn’t just fuel, where steady, consistent care counts far more than flashy promises.

“We’re a proudly, avowedly Aotearoa company,” says McCartney. “We’re based here, in Parnell. We’re hiring here. We’re building here.”

A chef with pedigree: a company with purpose

If Ovation’s ethos is straightforward – service, done well – its ambitions stretch much further. And few embody this more gracefully than Group Executive Chef Touvai ‘Tee’ Poloniati.

Widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s most exciting young chefs, Tee drew acclaim at SkyCity’s The Grill, where 1News captured his poise, artistry, and calm command in the kitchen. But Tee didn’t come to Ovation to replicate restaurant glamour or court acclaim.  He came to lift others.

As Group Executive Chef, his role is part teacher, part mentor – a kind of Super-Chef Emeritus guiding dozens of kitchens from Kaitaia to Bluff: school dining rooms, hospital wards, airport cafés, and senior living villages, places where the food might be simple but the expectations never are.

His approach isn’t prescriptive; it’s patient, collaborative – drawing out the very best in others. 

“Tee doesn’t walk in with a new menu,” says McCartney. “He helps people sharpen their own.”

He listens more than he talks. He guides without ego, admired by peers and beloved by his teams, Tee is the antithesis of the red-faced, plate-hurling stereotype. His influence is subtle, understated, enduring.

“He understands people,” says McCartney. “He understands what good service looks like – consistently, and at scale.”

And back in Sydney, DHG’s Joseph Murray is paying close attention. “This deal is strategically significant,” he said in a statement. “It’s the first step in building a leading, multi-faceted hospitality group.”

New Zealand, in short, is no longer a satellite. It’s the centre.

The final course

Ask McCartney what’s next, and he grins. “Well, we’ve made a good start. But we’re only just setting the table.”

It’s a line repeated warmly through the company – from the boardroom to the kitchens. If Act One was about regrouping and restoring confidence, Act Two will demonstrate precisely what this new hospitality model can do.

Ovation’s goal isn’t serving more meals. It’s about redefining what hospitality means – in those ordinary, extraordinary theatres of everyday life.

“It’s where people live their real lives,” McCartney says. “That’s where we want to be.”

No flashy launch, no applause necessary. Better ingredients, sharper timing, quiet confidence. A second act with its sleeves rolled up, the oven on, something transformative simmering.