How pub king Justin Hemmes changed Sydney’s social scene

BEHIND the hospitality king’s breezy manner is a driven businessman.

Merivale CEO Justin Hemmes presides over the $1 billion Merivale food and beverage empire. Pictures: Sam Ruttyn

IT’S a trek 18-year-old blokes make faithfully every Friday and Saturday night. The pub. But Justin Hemmes flicked his Scots College mates’ regular sessions on the schooners at Double Bay’s Golden Sheaf. Instead he was windsurfing, diving, go-carting, trail-bike riding, pig hunting. “Late bloomer,” he says of himself. “I didn’t go out to pubs until I was 20. It was pretty much only males there and it was a bit of a boys’ club and I wasn’t really part of the boys’ club. I felt a bit out of place.”

Then a family trip to London, Rome, New York and Morocco opened his eyes to a world of possibilities and questions. What’s with the sticky carpet, testosterone overload and top 100 hits on high rotation in Aussie pubs? Why can’t we get a quality meal or sit on a plush lounge and sip a cocktail? Where are the women? Where are the games and tunes to groove to?

“So I thought we could do all that in one building. Why do you have to leave? Just change levels.”

With the unwavering backing of his father John Hemmes, Justin began injecting new sophistication into Sydney’s pubs. More than any other entrepreneur, he changed the face of the Sydney social scene.

Merivale CEO Justin Hemmes presides over the $1 billion Merivale food and beverage empire, employing more than 3000 people.

His breezy public persona belies a shrewd and driven businessman.

The quest kicked off half his 44-year-old lifetime ago. Now he presides over the $1 billion Merivale food and beverage empire, employing more than 3000 people. In the past year,
10 million visitors have wined, dined, celebrated and danced through 60 venues that are household names to locals and beacons for interstate and international visitors — Establishment, Ivy, est., Mr Wongs, Papi Chulo, sushi e.

Hemmes’ breezy public persona belies a shrewd and driven businessman. He hires smart people, keeps them close, works them relentlessly and lavishes on them luxury trips and glamorous parties as rewards. A coterie of mentors and business advisers from the top end of town have his back, and are in awe of his creativity and appetite for risk and change. Few customers would realise he is a business graduate of UTS. Nor would they know Establishment almost didn’t get off the ground after every bank in town shut its doors on him before Commonwealth Bank finally gave him the funds to create an entertainment precinct of unprecedented scale
in Australia.

“What you have with Justin is a guy who is incredibly creative and who loves his business and drives it as far as he can,” says mentor Bruce McWilliam. “If you go into a Hemmes establishment you’ll see staff who adore their boss even though he is exacting and demanding. He never holds back, he always pushes himself.”

It was not Hemmes’ intention to steer the family company into hospitality. His father and mother, Merivale Hemmes, a fashion designer and milliner, had a cult following in the ’60s and ’70s in Sydney for their chic and avant-garde fashion stores. The House Of Merivale was the first outlet in Sydney to sell the miniskirt and the grooviest space to listen to the latest hits from Europe and the US. Chrissy Amphlett was among the staff before she became a rock legend and the likes of Liza Minnelli, Cher and Mick Jagger were devotees.

Hemmes pictured with his dog Thunder at his home in Vaucluse.

No longer Sydney’s ultimate playboy, a great night now involves “pats with family dog Thunder, takeaway or a home-cooked meal and a couple of episodes of (Netflix drama) Narcos”.

Hemmes’ canny father was also building a formidable property portfolio. A York Street site in the centre of the city planted in Hemmes the creative seed from which the new generation of the family business would spring. He wanted to create a multi-level, multifaceted venue that women would want to go to.

Out of self-interest? “Not for the self-interest that you’re thinking of,” says the man who is like Australia’s version of babe magnet and corporate visionary Richard Branson (who Hemmes knows and admires as a businessman).

“No, I think it just creates a nicer atmosphere. I just felt it gave a calmer … environment and introduced music into bars from DJs as opposed to you know, top 100 or top 40.”

He laboured on the building site of Hotel CBD for two years then packed his car with a cattle dog and a mate from the site for a road trip around Australia. A month later his father was on the phone. “Dad wanted me to come back and run the pub because they had someone in place and it just wasn’t working and he asked me to come and help. So I came back and worked at CBD.”

Up-and-coming young chef from Melbourne Luke Mangan was hired to run the first-floor restaurant while Hemmes ran the rest, selling his mum’s homemade Indonesian rice noodles as a unique pub lunch in the ground-floor bar. There was a cocktail lounge and another level dedicated to pool and arcade games like Segar Rally. The place went off. His sister Bettina — now Merivale’s inspired interior designer — was living in an apartment on the top-floor of the building but soon escaped the mayhem to make way for an expanded nightclub.

Hemmes recalls standing on the spiral staircase one evening soaking up the hedonism.

“It was so tight and people were dancing and cheering, you know, then suddenly everything stopped. All the lights went off — sound, everything — then emergency lights come on and I was like, ‘Oh, my God!’”

In the basement he found a couple in a compromising position who had inadvertently flicked the power switches.

“It was fantastic. It was alive.”

Hemmes with his partner Kate Fowler and daughter Alexa at their home in Vaucluse.

Family is core to understanding Hemmes. “He is a pretty remarkable guy — the product of two great parents, which is where he and Bettina get their creativity from,” says McWilliam, whose powerful network extends from Kerry Stokes to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The death of John Hemmes early last year was a huge loss. Two days before he died, he told Hemmes’ 27-year-old partner Kate Fowler that she was pregnant. The next day Fowler, the daughter of New Zealand professional golfer Peter Fowler and his wife Kim, woke her partner to the news, holding two positive pregnancy tests.

“He would have died so happy that Justin was having a baby,” McWilliam says.

Alexa, who turns one on November 5, is “the best thing in world” to Hemmes. “Nothing compares,” he says, sharing a video of her giggling. “Look at that. She’s just smiling all day. You actually develop a whole new additional love you didn’t know you could even tap into.”

As women may have noticed, Hemmes is no longer Sydney’s ultimate playboy. His idea of a great night is “cuddles and rumbles with Alexa”, pats with family dog Thunder, takeaway or a home-cooked meal and a couple of episodes of (Netflix drama) Narcos.

Fowler does great salad while he loves cooking whole fish or meat on an open fire at the Hermitage, the family’s waterfront Vaucluse mansion that John and Merivale bought when Justin and Bettina were young.

John was always a “sensible supporter” of his son, McWilliam says. More than once he backed Justin when he wanted to create new venues which would seemingly cannibalise clientele from his existing bars and restaurants.

After CBD, Hemmes wanted to convert his father’s existing terraces on Sussex St into the Slip Inn — where Mary Donaldson was to meet her Prince of Denmark.

“All dad’s friends were like ‘Oh, I can’t believe you’ve got this blind faith in your son. He’s mad, (a) opening up down the road (from CBD) and (b) in an area that’s completely dead’,” Hemmes recalls.

With the $700,000 Slip Inn development he proved them wrong and soon upped the stakes to build the $50 million Establishment complex in the city. He doubled down a few years later to launch the $150 million Ivy, across two city blocks just up George St.

Finding a bank to finance Establishment was a humiliating experience, says Hemmes.

“I remember sitting in meetings and just being belittled by them and I thought ‘I never want to be in this predicament again’. It was just like being bullied.”

It never gave him reason to doubt the project: “I just thought it was so obvious that it was a good idea.”

Hemmes’ love for his new daughter “is a whole new additional love you didn’t know you could even tap into.”

How times have changed. Hemmes’ loves nothing better now “cuddles and rumbles with Alexa”.

Family life is everything to Hemmes.

His expansion outside the CBD and into the suburbs began with Surry Hills and Darlinghurst six years ago. It’s spread to Paddington, Coogee and Newport.

The new Merivale vibe is family-friendly, rather than heaving nightclub, and it will soon be unveiled in Enmore and later Alexandria.

With each transformation the dingy pub corners are cleaned out, natural light floods in, women’s bathrooms get glamorous mirrors and soft lighting, views are opened up and food is created by innovative chefs, some lured from Michelin-starred restaurants.

And the names change, shaking off the old habits of the tired hotels Hemmes avoided as a teen: Coogee Beach Palace becomes Coogee Pavilion, Newport Arms becomes The Newport, Alexandria Hotel becomes The Alex.

The first time Hemmes walked into the Coogee venue, it was as a potential buyer. And, despite the stench and the appalling state of the place, he saw immediate potential: “I either have that adrenaline pumping through my veins or I just get a mind blank.”

He purchased the Alexandria Hotel “site unseen” and in doing so saved it from being turned into an apartment development. His plan is to retain the historic 1930s bar while opening up the courtyard.

There is no immediate plan to launch overseas or interstate, or to take the type of risks he did with Establishment and Ivy.

“As you get older you become more risk averse. I’ve taken my risks, my big risks,” he says.

A young Justin Hemmes with his beloved father John.

APPLE OF HIS DAD’S EYE

Seeing stinky rundown pubs which ooze potential gives Justin Hemmes a rush of adrenaline. But with the Newport Arms last year, it was different.

“My father had just died so I was a bit preoccupied,’’ Hemmes says. John Hemmes never knew of the $50 million purchase, sealed two days after his wake.

With his father’s death early last year at 83, Hemmes lost his unconditional backer, his greatest defender and his most passionate promoter. It came after eight years of illness caused by a cancer called multiple myeloma.

“When you become immobile and you can’t feed yourself, you can’t go to the bathroom, you can’t do anything and you’re that sort of active and colourful and proud individual, it’s pretty depressing,” Hemmes says.

“You get depressed, you get angry with life and … it was awful. So it almost came to a point where it was actually a relief.”

His father’s instructions for his wake were characteristically optimistic.

“I want it to be a party,” Hemmes says his father boomed at him one morning.

“I don’t want people sad. I don’t want sad speeches. I want drinks. I want music. Al Green! You must play Al Green! Barry White, I love Barry White. Play Barry White and everyone gets drinks and food.”

And party they did, with five bands and DJs at the family’s waterfront Vaucluse home.

“Yeah, it was fantastic. And really good speeches from everyone. It was fun. Everyone had a ball,” Hemmes says.

Hemmes’ mentor Bruce McWilliam calls him “the apple of his father’s eye”.

“He was so proud of him,” he says.