Sydney pubs: Publicans moving from city to the bush, as establishments set record prices

STEAKS and snags are making way for smoked ribs and lamb shoulders as hip Sydney publicans take on the humble country pub.

Hotels, pubs in the bush are being snapped up at record prices.

STEAKS and snags are making way for smoked ribs and lamb shoulders as hip Sydney publicans take on the humble country pub.

With billionaire hospitality groups such as Justin Hemmes’s Merivale and Bruce Solomon’s Solotel dominating the metro hotel scene, smaller players have been forced to go bush to claim their stake in the pub game, and rural areas are now getting the city treatment.

The past month has seen the sale of several floundering country pubs to young Sydney buyers — none more notable than the Heritage-­listed Tamworth Hotel, sold to Bellevue Hill-born Daniel Whitten and his business partner Luke Prout last month for $4 million.

Luke Prout outside his establishment which he purchased for $4 million.

The most notable pub sold was the Tamworth Hotel.

Soon after it was the nearby Courthouse Hotel, also in Tamworth, which was snapped up by Balmain’s Chris Cornforth and Fraser Houghton for $1.5 million in what was their second major buy in the country music capital.

The duo paid $500,000 for a converted bank building in 2014 and later transformed it into Tamworth’s first boutique pub The Pig & Tinder Box, offering dishes such as smoked duck and roast trout.

They also have a third bar — Percy’s — in Orange.

Chris Cornforth and Fraser Houghton bought Courthouse Hotel in Tamworth, their second big purchase in that town.

The business partners also purchased this old bank, converting it to The Pig & Tinder Box.

While there are bargains to be had in the bush, the tide may be turning with The Figtree Hotel in Figtree, Wollongong, selling recently for a record $5.75 million.

For Whitten, the decision to ditch the big smoke and go inland was the only way to expand his portfolio in the wake of a record year for hotel sales, with more than half a billion trading in NSW alone.

Hemmes made up $100 million of that alone, acquiring four Sydney hotels in 2016.

The Figtree Hotel recently sold for a record $5.75 million.

“We had some capital behind us but not like Justin Hemmes-style capital,” laughed Whitten.

“The only thing that was really available to us were leaseholds, and when you take on a pub in that way you spend years working hard and then you just have to hand the keys back and walk away.

“So to secure a freehold we had to look a bit further inland and my business partner, who grew up in Tamworth, told me about some opportunities there, so we decided to have a look.

“There were actually around five pubs for sale in Tamworth and The Tamworth Hotel was the nicest by far. We realised we didn’t need to change much … it really just needs a bit of reinvigorating, particularly in the food and beverage and gaming department.”

Mr Cornforth and Mr Houghton also snapped up The Court House for $1.5 million.

Bill McDonald — who heads up the rural hotel sales department for CBRE — admitted that Sydney’s soaring real estate prices could be just the thing to take the country pub, which until recently had been closing at a rate of 20 a year, off the endangered list.

“In the past year the majority of Sydney operators that I have come across are now looking regional,” Mr McDonald said. “It’s really no different to homebuyers being forced out of metro areas.”

And it’s not just cashed-up city slickers snapping up local country pubs. As The Sunday Telegraph reported last week, locals in ­regional towns are also banding together to save the local watering hole — giving people a place to meet and creating jobs in the process.