Paddy Coughlan is the man behind Sydney’s inner west treasures such as Marlborough Hotel, The Lord Gladstone and Miss Peaches. He’s spent the past 12 years turning dive bars into pubs buzzing with live music, sport and craft beer.
He meets up with Ricardo Goncalves for a drink at his latest venture The Lady Hampshire in Sydney’s Camperdown.
Tell me about The Lady Hampshire.
“It didn’t have any history of being a decent type of pub. It kind of struggled a lot over the years. It had been closed. We had been taking note of what’s been happening in Camperdown.”
How did you turn it around?
There’s the nuts and bolts that you can see, but that’s the simple part. It’s more about understanding what’s been happening in Camperdown and coming up with an offering that suits that.
How do you pick your locations?
Location’s a big part of it. I think we’re always looking for opportunities in areas that are changing. It’s kind of an interesting thing. Camperdown’s on the cusp of Newtown, so what we identified a few years ago is there’s a real change in demographic in Newtown, as people get priced out of the Eastern Suburbs. And so all those creative, artistic people who were living in Newtown, they don’t move away, they just get pushed to the fringes of Newtown. Places like Enmore where we own a pub as well, places like Camperdown…What we look for is that – in suburbs that are expanding and getting in on the fringe.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt?
I think attention to detail is something. I still talk to my managers. It’s the little one percentage as we call them. Making sure customers get served properly, as customers leave you’re resetting the dining area, and just generally making sure people are being looked after, people are getting served quickly, in a friendly manner. We’re in the hospitality game, people are meant to enjoy themselves here.
The key lesson would be to fail fast. If I look back on it now, after 2 or 3 months, I knew that was a bad deal. If I walked away, I would’ve really been able to constrain the losses there, and could’ve lost a small amount of money, instead of staying there and wasting 12 months, and walking away having lost a lot of money.
‘Fail fast’ applies to our day to day business. We might start a 2-for-1 meal promotion. You’ll know after 1 or 2 weeks whether it’s gonna work or not, and if it doesn’t work, cut it. Fail fast, come up with something else.
Was it a big deal running a pub like the Four in Hand at the age of 22?
It was crazy. I was a kid and didn’t really know what I was doing. But I had good training on the front part of the business. I just learnt back of house stuff on the go. It was just survival. I don’t think I was particularly good at it. I had a couple of big businesses losses back in those days that taught me a lot of lessons about managing back of house.
What did you do after that pub failure?
I picked myself up, dusted myself off, went into another pub with a mate of mine. We had no choice. I lost a lot of money and we just started again from scratch, and we just worked 7 days a week. Eventually 7 days a week became 6 days a week, became 5 days a week. We also bought and sold pubs to build a capital bank. We had no access to capital. In those days, banks wouldn’t lend money to us, so we had to build a bank of capital. We did that through buying and selling businesses, all with the idea of one day being able to buy a freehold pub, which in our business means you own the building at the land.
What advice would you give someone in the industry?
Because of the casual nature of employment in pubs, a lot of people don’t give it that kudos. There’s a lot of moving parts to a pub. If you want to eventually one day own a pub, you need to go and learn the business.
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