Blue Mountains native Pat Cummins on backing two brewers prepared to take a chance
Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins and a husband-and-wife brewing team might seem an odd pairing but Mountain Culture Beer Company’s trio have more in common than meets the eye.
When Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins first walked through the doors of the Mountain Culture Beer Company’s boutique brewery at Emu Plains in western Sydney on September 11, 2024, it was not just another media or a commercial obligation.
It was something far more personal.
“It was actually the first brewery I’ve ever been to,” Cummins reveals of the visit – the final piece of his due diligence before two months later becoming the craft brewer’s first external investor.
It was a milestone moment for the brand, which has become one of the largest independent brewers in Australia, whose products are stocked in all major national retailers.
DJ and Harriet McCready, the husband-and-wife team behind Mountain Culture, had earlier taken a leap of faith and sent a message to Cummins on Instagram after their friends saw him online enjoying their beer.
“They just said, ‘Hey, we would love to chat. We see you love the beer and the brand. That was about 18 months ago,” Cummins says.
“We started chatting, and then through that we built a relationship. We were pretty keen to work together.”
Founded in a heritage building in the heart of Katoomba, Mountain Culture has since added two more venues including Emu Plains, and a taproom in the inner city Sydney suburb of Redfern, which opened in November 2024.
Its flagship beer, the Status Quo Pale Ale, has been ranked number one in the GABS Hottest 100 Australian Craft Beer Poll for three consecutive years. The poll is the country’s most influential people’s choice survey relating to craft beer.
But what truly drew Cummins to the business was a profound sense of place and purpose.
His childhood with his four siblings was spent in the family’s red-brick home in Mount Riverview, a tiny town in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney.
His parents, Peter and Maria, lived there for nearly four decades. Maria sadly died in early 2023 and the home was sold later that year.
“The Blue Mountains is where I grew up till I was 20. Our home was about five minutes away from the Emu Plains site. The brewery is also about 100m away from where my dad worked for 30 years,” Cummins says.
“So being a Blue Mountains brand, it is very, very important to me. They are my people, I know so many people from the area.”
He says the pride of the Blue Mountains community is a big part of what makes the brand special.
“We think we are as good as anywhere else in the world and I think having a brand and a product like Mountain Culture proves that,” he says.
The Mountain Culture investment is one of a number the 32-year-old champion fast bowler has made in the past four years.
Cummins, who has a degree in business management, has built a portfolio of ventures that reflect his interest in sustainability, community, health and innovation.
In April this year he was among a group of investors in a $7.5m Series A round for a renewable energy grid management platform.
A year earlier he backed SureVision, an Australasian company that providing LED advertising solutions for sports venues, and which works with Cricket Australia.
Since 2021 he has made seven venture capital investments, including in Fyxer, a personal assistant service platform, and Nexba, a naturally sugar-free soft drink brand of which he also serves as brand ambassador.
“I’ve got a couple of people that I trust around me, but really, it is my money. So I make the decisions and I’m always looking for really good companies,” he says.
“I really like the founders of Mountain Culture and, being an Aussie company as well, I think that’s another big tick. I also think it’s got to be fun. That’s the criteria.”
Cummins’ business instincts are bolstered by a close network of advisers such as his manager, Neil Maxwell, his brothers and his lawyer.
“My manager, Neil, sees quite a few investment pitches. Both my brothers are financial planners. They are always great to talk to in this space. They’ve always got pretty strong views,” he says.
But time, he says, is the most important filter.
“I’ve known DJ and Harriet for 18 months now, seeing how the business is run. I am lucky that I get a lot of (investment) opportunities. But having the time and space to see how things play out, and seeing if it’s authentic and that they are the real deal, I think that is potentially the most important part of any process of investment decision making,” he says.
“I’m making a big commitment. I want this to be long term. Potentially after cricket, I’m hoping I’m still involved in Mountain Culture.
“It’s a long-term commitment. So it’s got to be with the right people, the right fit and something that I’m really passionate about. If you asked all my teammates, they are probably sick of me talking about Mountain Culture.”
From stateside to down under
When David James (DJ) McCready was born in the United States, his parents didn’t realise that naming him after his father might cause confusion. Thankfully, the nickname DJ stuck early and stayed.
His journey to the Blue Mountains began in North Carolina, where he started as a home brewer while still in his early 20s.
“I figured I could learn a lot more about brewing beer if I went to a professional brewery,” he recalls.
“So I was a brewer in the US until I was about 28, and then moved over here to be part of a start-up on the northern beaches, known as the Modus Operandi Brewing Company.”
It was in Sydney where fate intervened at a pub called The Keg and Brew.
“I had a bunch of my beers on tap there at the time, so I figured that would be a conversation starter,” he says.
It worked. Harriet walked into the bar, DJ started pouring beers, and the couple have been together ever since.
In 2019, just as they both turned 30, they decided to take the leap and go into business together.
“We were like, ‘Let’s have a crack at it and see what happens. It was an interesting ride. A lot of times we thought we were going out of business,” DJ says.
But he says resilience has defined their story.
“I’ve always had this philosophy that you go where you look. We kept looking at the success we believed it could be. That mindset got us through really challenging times.
“We were on the knife’s edge financially and just dealing with stuff going wrong but we kept looking forward.”
Harriet agrees, reflecting that in the early days, she thought the business would go under within the first few months after it was hit by the Blue Mountains bushfires and Covid-19.
But paradoxically, she says it was easier to fail back then. As Mountain Culture grew, so did the responsibility.
“When your team grows, the stakes get higher,” she says.
“Suddenly a lot of people are relying on Mountain Culture for their pay cheques. That scared me more.
“We joke about some of the moves we’ve made, that they have looked crazy on paper. But we’ve always believed in the product and the brand. I’ve seen the way people respond when they try the beer for the first time; it gives you the confidence to keep going.”
Their growth hasn’t just been professional. The couple have a daughter, Dorothy, who is just over a year older than Pat and Becky Cummins’ eldest son, Albie.
Balancing a fast-growing business and a young family hasn’t been easy.
“It’s always really nice to create something like this with your partner because it is all-consuming. In the beginning, there was no line,” Harriet says.
“We did whatever needed to be done – renovating the building, painting on weekends, bartending. DJ was the brewer and he’s phenomenal at it. I was more on the marketing and branding side.
“We had very different but complementary skill sets.”
As the business matured, so did their roles.
“You’ve got to get clear on who does what. You do hear horror stories about working with your partner but, honestly, I really enjoy it. It is like when you go out for a date and you are not supposed to talk about your kids, but you do anyway.
“I love talking about the business. I love watching what DJ is working on come to life.”
But despite the growth of the business, Dorothy is the centre of their world.
“The business can be a hungry beast, but as long as we never dropped the ball with her we felt like we’d be okay,” Harriet says.
“I’m a perfectionist. But becoming a mother taught me that sometimes 80/20 is perfectly fine and think we’ve done a pretty good job. There’s no exact metric to measure it by but we’ve tried really hard to make sure she never loses out.”
The challenges of taking a risk
Mountain Culture this week opened its first Melbourne venue, after purchasing and rebranding the Fox Friday venues in that city and in Hobart. The Hobart Taproom is scheduled to open later this month.
The group recently expanded into collaborations with venues like The New Brighton Hotel in Manly, Wildflower’s “Village” in Marrickville, and “The Backyard” in partnership with The Suburban in Ringwood, Victoria.
DJ says the firm has been growing at 40 per cent year on year for “a long time now”, and this year will likely become the third-largest independent beer producer in the country.
Cummins says: “I hope it’s the best beer company Australia has ever seen.
“It’s such an authentic community around the Blue Mountains, and that spirit is flowing into places like Redfern now. Whether it’s Melbourne or Hobart next, I think the company’s focus on community, innovation and crafting something that beer lovers – and even non-traditional drinkers – can enjoy is what will drive long-term success.”
Mountain Culture’s ability to scale while retaining its independence is a source of pride for its founders. Cummins is their only external shareholder and there are no immediate plans to add more.
So the decision to bring on outside investors, especially someone as high profile as Cummins, was not taken lightly.
“Harriet and I were 100 per cent shareholders in Mountain Culture until Pat came on board,” DJ says.
“We’ve always been very protective of what we built – our team, our culture, our brand. But getting to know Pat, we felt that shared drive. It made sense. It felt right.”
That sense of responsibility has only increased.
“It’s another step, adding shareholders. When it was just the two of us we were rolling the dice for ourselves. Now we’ve got employees building their lives and families around careers at Mountain Culture, and investors putting their faith in us. We can’t be cowboys anymore,” DJ says with a smile, before adding: “But it is good. It brings checks and balances.”
Cummins is aware of the risks involved in backing a fledgling beer company, but stresses he is no stranger to taking chances – at least on the cricket fields of the world.
“With time, you get a certain level of confidence that you can put money into something and put your face to it. It is still pretty early days for the company so of course there is risk there,” he says.
“But I play cricket for a living. We lose games, hopefully less than we win, but risk is part of my day job. It doesn’t scare me.
“If anything, it is what makes an opportunity like this even more exciting.”
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