Sydney bar and nightclub The Argyle will close early next year ahead of plans to reboot the popular party destination into an upscale restaurant, while sibling venue The Cut Bar & Grill will reopen at The Rocks this week after a four-year hiatus.

It’s part of sweeping changes at Hunter St. Hospitality and Pacific Concepts, the hospitality giant that owns Rockpool Bar & Grill, Sake and The Bavarian. The group is looking to shake off recent financial turbulence with the appointment of new chief executive, Frank Tucker.

Tucker believes most of the groundwork to steady the sprawling group has already been done, with the shuttering of about 30 food venues, including some of its prized Fratelli Fresh, Rosetta and Burger Project outlets.

“A lot of [the closures] were not extending leases during COVID,” he says of the cuts. Now, Tucker says, the group is in a growth phase again. While many other hospitality businesses are retreating to the mid-market in a reaction to a tight economy, Tucker is moving in a different direction.

In January, he’ll close The Argyle bar and nightclub at The Rocks and reopen it as a premium restaurant. On Friday, September 20, the group will also reopen The Cut Bar & Grill, The Rocks restaurant that served its last steak four years ago. A short walk away, the group is opening a new bar next month, The Cloakroom. Entry to the 15-seater will be old-school: via a doorbell.

“That’ll take us back to 44, then 45 [venues],” Tucker says. It’s a figure he expects to quickly grow into the mid-50s.

Tucker hopes the new strategy will cast off some of the uncertainty that has plagued the organisation since private equity firm Quadrant merged Urban Purveyor Group with chef Neil Perry’s Rockpool group nearly a decade ago. The sprawling business has posted some alarming losses, such as a reported $75.7 million loss for the 12 months to June 30, 2022 for parent company Pacific Hunter.

While Tucker officially stepped into the chief executive’s job in July, he had already been acting in the role. He has plenty of experience in the business, lured to Australia by his predecessor, fellow American Thomas Pash. During Pash’s tenure, there was an at-times uneasy relationship between the group’s premium brands, which operate under the Hunter St. banner, and its affordable food brands, which now fall under its Pacific Concepts brand. The period also included the public departure of Perry from the business and frequent talk of offloading the group.

Tucker insists a sale isn’t in his plans and points to “accountancy practices” contributing to some of the previous multimillion-dollar losses. The pandemic didn’t help. “The group itself is viable, profitable,” he says.

It has taken knocks, such as fast-food venture Burger Project, which Tucker says is currently mothballed. “That it didn’t work is proof you can have a great concept and it is not [guaranteed],” Tucker says.

While affordable brands such as Mexican brand El Camino Cantina and Munich Brauhaus remain cornerstones of the business, Tucker sees potential growth for its premium restaurants, though not necessarily through expansion.

“I don’t think you’ll see another Rockpool,” Tucker says. But expectation on internal progress is massive. Recently named the eighth best steakhouse in the world in the world’s 101 best steak restaurants list, Rockpool has been given “two years to get to No.1″ by the chief executive.

But in a market of high interest rates and contracting consumer spending, what is the strategy behind turning a successful club such as The Argyle into a premium restaurant? Part of it is driven by a change in the district’s demographics, Tucker says, with more dining destinations opening around Circular Quay.

“If I look at Bridge Street, there’s more and more premium restaurants,” he says. As for The Rocks, he says more hotels are opening and cruise ships are bringing discerning customers.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art, the casual terrace cafe on level four with panoramic harbour views will reopen this month as an upmarket restaurant.

“The 20- to 23-year-olds have been good to us,” Tucker says of The Argyle’s core clientele. But his gamble is on a venue the polar opposite to the one it replaces. When the yet-to-be-named restaurant opens next year, he sees it as the next step for the surrounding Argyle Stores precinct – one that listens to rather than dictates to the market.