Penny Hospitality restructures after challenging 2023

The group behind venues including the General Havelock Hotel and Paper Tiger bar says business is back on track after a challenging year and major restructure.

Penny Hospitality’s Hugo Pedler. Picture: Emma Brasier.

The hospitality group behind Adelaide venues including the General Havelock Hotel, Paper Tiger bar and West Oak Hotel says business is back on track after a restructure resulting in the closure of its marketing unit and following a challenging year for the local industry.

Penny Hospitality has put its centralised marketing and operations entity - Penny Hospitality Pty Ltd - into liquidation, in a move managing director Hugo Pedler describes as a restructure designed to provide more independence to venues within the group.

It follows the closure of Gouger St pasta and wine bar Super Bueno in December, which was blamed on disruptions caused by the Central Market Arcade redevelopment.

Mr Pedler said it was important to clear up speculation surrounding the group’s other venues, which were trading well following a challenging 2023.

“There’s been a lot of talk around town since we closed Super Bueno - Penny’s closing, everything's closing - that’s definitely not the case,” he said.

“Penny Hospitality (Pty Ltd) was just the centralised marketing and operations - it had nothing to do with the venues themselves. We restructured in the middle of last year to remove marketing from that, and my partner started her own marketing agency so we gave the marketing services to her.

Penny Hospitality’s Hugo Pedler at one of his bars. Picture: Emma Brasier.

“And we’ve restructured the Penny entity to a new entity, which was once our festival and operations branch - to move more into operations of venues but also do acts, artists stuff.

“We’re rolling over a fresh leaf for the head entity for what we do, and I guess with less focus on Penny as a business and less connection between the venues, and back to trying to do each venue as best we can.”

Mr Pedler said 2023 was a difficult year for the city’s hospitality industry, but there were positive early signs this year.

“There’s a lot of restructuring going on in the industry right now - people have got to tighten up the belt as we look to macro and micro economy changes,” he said.

“I’m confident that by the end of this year we’ll see things get back to normal, but we know we’ve got a tough winter ahead for everyone so we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do as hospitality operators to survive.”

Mr Pedler said further investment would be made into several venues this year, including a new balcony planned for West Oak Hotel on Hindley St, where new cafe West Oak Deli would open next week.

A new restaurant is planned for the General Havelock and a new seaside kiosk is due to open in the middle of this year.

Liquidator James McPherson from Meertens said debts owed by Super Bueno and Penny Hospitality Pty Ltd were minimal - around “a couple of hundred thousand dollars each” - with most of that amount owing to the ATO.

He said cost of living pressures were posing a challenge for many of the city’s hospitality operators.

“Foot traffic’s down and spend’s down - it really reflects what’s happening at the grassroots level of the economy right now,” he said.