Hospitality operators are steering away from the full sit-down experience as more customers seek out high-end drinking spots. Is this Sydney’s “Cheers moment”? Or, as one operator says, it’s “easier to make money with bars”.
When the cocktail crew at Maybe Sammy opens a new bar at the current site of Hacienda Sydney in late spring, the new venue will join a flood of Circular Quay bar openings, reboots and pivots. So what’s driving the trend?
The Maybe Sammy team believes Sydney is experiencing a “Cheers moment”. “It’s a cultural moment, like when people realised the coffee here is the best in the world,” says Maybe Sammy co-owner Stefano Catino.
When Maybe Sammy first made the list of The World’s 50 Best Bars in 2019, Catino says you couldn’t walk into a Sydney pub like you can today, confident the bartender would know how to make a negroni.
The new, yet-to-be-named bar will occupy waterfront space at the Pullman Quay Grand Sydney Harbour, in a site above chef Giovanni Pilu’s incoming Flaminia restaurant, which will also open in November.
“[The bar] won’t be Italian, we want to offer a different experience, it’ll be more Mexican Riviera,” Catino says.
While Maybe Sammy and Pilu are part of a new Accor-driven hospitality group, Table For, aimed at upping the standard of venues in hotels, elsewhere in the Circular Quay precinct, operators are driving change for different reasons.
‘An unskilled 18-year-old can make 20 vodka lime and sodas in the same time it takes a qualified chef to make a batch of hot chips.’
Justin Newton, restaurateur
A few months ago, rooftop venue Martinez ditched its upmarket restaurant, recalibrating as a venue co-owner Justin Newton describes as “between a bar and an upmarket pub”.
“Our pitch wasn’t right, so we flipped,” Newton says. Clientele has doubled since the switch. City workers don’t always want to commit to sitting down for a meal, and are happy to order food on the hop with a QR code, as venues blur lines between bar and restaurant.
“We see the same thing at our cocktail bar, Apollonia – people now expect to be able to have dinner there,” Newton says.
“100 per cent it’s easier to make money with bars,” Newton says. “The example I always use is that an unskilled 18-year-old can make 20 vodka lime and sodas in the same time it takes a qualified chef to make a batch of hot chips.”
It’s the same story at Bar Patron, which followed the restaurant-to-bar switch in August. “Given our spot on the harbour, we felt Bar Patron should be a place to swing by for a margarita and a view, not just a sit-down lunch or dinner,” says Frank Tucker, chief executive at Bar Patron owner, Hunter St. Hospitality.
While it is still early days, Tucker has already noticed an uptick in customers who now drop in for a cocktail before a show at the Sydney Opera House.
The roots of that hybrid approach can be traced back to Opera Bar, which, until this week, had been trading for 24 years on the eastern edge of Circular Quay under the watch of chef Matt Moran and hospitality group Solotel.
“We’ve just got the keys,” says Ben Carroll, from incoming operator Applejack. Opera Bar will reopen on Thursday, September 25, under Applejack’s management. While a renovation is planned for 2026, Carroll says it’s business as usual until then, with Sydneysiders able to grab a drink and a plate of food.
The competition will heat up at Circular Quay again in a few months, when the Maybe Sammy bar and Pilu’s Flaminia open in the Toaster building on Macquarie Street. Ben Creek, who heads Table For, says there are more projects to follow, with Maybe Sammy co-owner Catino and Vince Lombardo already working on new venues in other Accor properties.
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