“Is this normal for Melbourne?” the customer said as I leant across the bar to take his order.

“Is what normal?” I asked.

“Just being able to, like, sit at a bar and order a drink and have a chat. Where I come from it’s all sports bars with blaring TVs.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Welcome to Melbourne.”

Sometimes it’s easy to forget how special the independent bars of Melbourne are, with outstanding drinks and service in a casual atmosphere that makes just about anyone feel welcome. But it’s been a tough couple of years in hospitality.

On March 5, one of Melbourne’s most influential cocktail institutions, The Everleigh in Fitzroy, announced its permanent closure along with that of its sister venue Bar Margaux. A spokesperson for The Everleigh cited accrued COVID-era debts and difficult trading conditions for the closures.

The reaction among Melbourne’s cocktail lovers was an outpouring of grief and gratitude, along with much hand-wringing in the hospitality industry. How could such a well-respected venue fail? Is this the death knell for Melbourne’s world-class independent bar scene?

The power of regulars

I’m part-owner of a small bar, Goodwater, in Northcote, and I work shifts at another, The Catfish, in Fitzroy. These days, the already iffy calculus of profitability looks even more shaky to us than usual. The many “for lease” signs along Melbourne’s neighbourhood high streets tell the grim story of nightlife on the ropes.

“People just aren’t going out and having six martinis any more,” says Oska Whitehart, co-owner of Carlton’s Bar Bellamy and a former employee of The Everleigh. “At The Everleigh, guests would stay all night drinking cocktails, but even at our joint, people are having one or two then moving on.”

And yet, bars continue to open. A younger generation of independent Melbourne bars (Bar Bellamy included) are killing it by any measure, while stalwarts like The Catfish, Whisky and Alement, and Above Board are still going strong, despite weathering the pandemic and a tough economy. New venues are announced nearly weekly.

I know at Goodwater, it’s our regulars that keep us going. Walking into my bar and being able to greet half the room by name is not only rewarding (especially after all the blood and tears that hospitality extracts from us), it’s how we survive financially.

‘When things seem bad, it’s an opportunity for new, passionate people to get in and make their dreams come true.’

Hayden Lambert, owner, Above Board

At Bar Bellamy, Oska and Dani Whitehart agree, saying their little bistro-cocktail bar seems to work so well in hard times because of the local community. Dani says fostering that feeling requires a hands-on approach. “People want to know the owner and know where their money is going,” she says.

“Being present is really important. Maybe that’s part of the problem with some of the more established venues,” she muses. “Losing touch with their staff and with the community.”

Lean business models for lean times

With Bellamy often full to capacity, Oska and Dani have recently taken over the space next door and will open a new venue in early May. Called Melitta Next Door, it will be more casual and affordable than Bellamy, with a focus on easy drinking and snacking.

“It’s a different approach,” says Dani. “Bellamy is a passion project, while Melitta is the answer to a question: what does the neighbourhood need and want?”

With a fast-paced approach to service and fewer late-night hours, Melitta will require less staffing and less training, a deliberate choice in a difficult economic climate.

Going niche

While Bellamy had the advantage of opening post-COVID, unsaddled by that period’s debt, boutique whisky bar Whisky and Alement in Melbourne’s CBD is celebrating 15 years in operation this year, managing to weather the pandemic and keep on trucking. “It’s the community,” says owner Brooke Hayman when asked how they did it.

“We had a core group of whisky lovers who jumped online as soon as the lockdowns hit, and we did huge virtual tasting sessions of up to 150 people.” When lockdown ended, she says, they all flooded back to the bar, keen to rediscover the warmth of in-person service they so dearly missed.

Meanwhile, just up the road, whisky and craft beer bar Boilermaker House shut its doors last year due to redevelopment plans for the site. There are no plans to reopen elsewhere.

Like Margaux, Boilermaker had a large floorplan, meaning high rents, and a fully staffed kitchen without really being a restaurant. That’s a lot of cost to bear in hard economic times.

In many ways, Collingwood cocktail bar Above Board is a close sibling to The Everleigh: both are venues internationally recognised for their laser-focus on the craft of the cocktail. Yet while The Everleigh has stirred its last martini, Above Board survived COVID and is busier than ever.

“We’re appealing to a small market,” says owner Hayden Lambert. “We make that work by keeping very little stock on hand, we run lean with staff, and we keep our offering really tight,” he says.

Lambert also travels frequently, spending his own money to do bar takeovers and attend bar industry events throughout the Asia-Pacific region. These efforts have helped keep Above Board front of mind among the region’s top cocktail professionals and lifestyle media, meaning the bar is often filled with tourists.

Signs of hope

Despite the raft of closures, Lambert sees positivity in the bar industry. “There’s a lot of cheap real estate and great talent out there right now begging to be snapped up. When things seem bad, it’s an opportunity for new, passionate people to get in and make their dreams come true.”

“Something finishes and something begins again. That’s the way of things,” he adds.

Ultimately, we can post-mortem the closures and analyse the successes until we’re blue in the face, and we’ll never have an answer to the unsolvable riddle of why some venues work where others fail. Every operator I spoke to for this article gave me the same answer: “Who knows?”

For those of us who make small business our life, maybe part of the appeal is the mystery of making such tenuous ventures work. It’s as much blind faith, recklessness and magical thinking as it is sound business planning. Open a bar, close your eyes, and make a wish.

Fred Siggins is co-owner of a bar in Northcote, Goodwater.