Mick Cussen, has lived in the town for the last couple of years working as head chef at the Paragon Hotel and earlier this year - looking for a change - took the leap and opened his own takeaway shop, Mudgee West Takeaway.
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With a small staff, Mick was reluctant to promote the shop too much before they got a handle on things, though that didn't quite go to plan when customers started flocking to the shop on day one.
"We've had excellent feedback. We've done bugger all to promote it because we wanted to take it easy and we didn't want to get smashed. Yeah, that's backfired. We got smashed," Mick said.
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"I went to Newcastle, three o'clock this morning, pick up tables and chairs, because we didn't have any.
"I ran a takeaway before we run that for eight years. And it was the same situation, it was a little shop that we developed into a takeaway. With this I saw the same possibility. The mini mart wasn't what I wanted, but the location and the size of the shop was."
The location is angling for a retro theme with old pedal cars and car parts to complete the shop's decor. Just recently, Mick's daughter Sam conducted a pin-up style photoshoot for the shop.
With a smaller menu, Mick said they can offer food that's handmade and of better quality than you might expect from a shop this size.
"It's big burgers at good prices. Pretty much I want to give people what I'd expect by paying eight bucks for a burger," Mick said.
"Just a bit of the old school - and we found that with our old shop we tried to run it the way it used to. And then we just went 'nah, we're going to sell what we want to eat'. That's when business went through the roof. And that's what we want to do here.
"We batter our own fish, scallops, all our crumbing It's all done in house. we're not buying premade frozen stuff. I think quality comes through. I'll roll 15 kilos of meat a day and even down to lettuce and onions, we cut all of that ourselves."
Mick said it's all about what the customers want.
"We've found that there's a few things customers have said like, 'you don't have this' and I'll go, 'okay, we will put that on the menu', seven, eight or nine people have asked for it. Let's do it," he said.
"We're sort of growing the menu with what people want as well. We try to be as good as we can and as fast and efficient as we can. Yeah, hopefully we will grow and grow and grow."
Mudgee West Takeaway is open Monday to Saturday, with Friday and Saturday open until late.
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