The 'boring' couple behind the growing Boathouse empire

Pip Robb and Andrew Goldsmith squirm each time they are referred to in the media as “the Northern Beaches power couple”.

“We’re actually pretty boring,” says Robb, daughter of former Liberal cabinet minister, Andrew Robb.

“And we’re both pretty shy too,” adds Goldsmith, her fellow entrepreneur, business partner, husband and father of their two pre-school children.

Andrew Goldsmith and Pip Robb at their original Palm House venue. Credit: James Brickwood

It’s true they don’t appear in Sydney’s society pages - unlike, say, Justin Hemmes, the Merivale hotel baron who is a decade older. (“He’s also got a lot more money than us,” Goldsmith points out.)

Yet in just 10 years, they’ve built up a business which - to a sizeable part of Sydney - is synonymous with summer chic.

Both 35, they now run eight high-profile, mostly iconic waterfront outlets - beginning with the original Boathouse in Palm Beach, which opened in November 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis.

The original Boathouse in Palm Beach opened in November 2008.Credit: James Brickwood

Their Boathouse Group includes signature venues in Balmoral, Manly’s Shelley Beach, Whale Beach and the first of what will probably be many ventures outside Sydney’s Northern Beaches - the Boathouse Hotel Patonga on the Central Coast, a 20-minute ferry ride from Palm Beach wharf.

They have a dedicated homeware store selling the teapots, glass buoys, crab pots and furniture you might see in any Boathouse venue. A separate bakery cooking all the muffins and birthday cakes needed for the day. Plus an upmarket events space, Moby Dicks Whale Beach, with one of the finest Pacific Ocean views in Australia.

Their most recent risk is reinventing Barrenjoey House, a historic hotel opposite Palm Beach ferry wharf. On Tuesday Sydney’s most influential food critic, Terry Durack, gave the restaurant a glowing review in Good Food. Barrenjoey had been “Boathoused”, Durack wrote, defining that as “a sensory overload of white-washed floorboards, potted palms, statement lampshades, flowers, scatter cushions and shell mirrors.”

As he left, Durack looked back “at the frangipani trees, the splendidly restored homestead, and the linen-clad diners eating oysters and lobster flatbread” and asked if it was all a “mirage, a theatrical Baz Luhrmann fantasy of Sydney in summer”.

The all important rating, however, was “only” 14/20 rating, not the 15/20 which signifies a chef’s hat. Their chefs may be disappointed, but Robb and Goldsmith are not. A “fine dining” reputation might intimidate their core customers, they say: they still want locals to feel welcome to pop in for a glass of wine and a starter.

We’re meeting where it all started, at the original Boathouse. As usual, the deck overlooking Pittwater is a cacophony of breakfast chatter. We take a secluded table in the beautifully planted garden and order coffees (weak long black for him, iced latte for her).

The last 18 months have been hectic, Robb admits. Their daughter Adelaide was born (brother Darcy is four); they moved house (they’re now renting in Palm Beach); and they opened their first two hotels (both Barrenjoey and Patonga will offer accommodation later this year).

Their knack of taking faded destination venues and reinvigorating them with smart design, clever menus, enthusiastic local staff and a relaxed atmosphere might seem formulaic. But Robb says, each Boathouse is individual, “something appropriate for the site and for the community.”

“The reason we’ve done Patonga and Barrenjoey House is because we don’t want it to become a formula,” Goldsmith adds. “If we just kept launching more Boathouse cafes, our team would get bored.”

The Boathouse Hotel at Patonga is the couple's latest venture.

They met in 2007 in circumstances Robb is embarrassed to talk about. “Andrew had a little deli in McMahons Point, and I’d go in every morning for six months for a coffee because Andrew was the barista. “But I didn’t drink coffee so I’d throw it out as soon as I got to work.

“The girls in the office would just laugh at me, and say, ‘Oh Pip, what are you doing?’

“For months we didn’t know each other’s names. Then we met at the pub up the road, and we felt more confident after a few drinks.”

Robb was raised in Canberra, went to high school at Loreto Kirribilli and studied interior design at The Whitehouse Institute of Design in Surry Hills. After leaving Hills Grammar in Kenthurst, Goldsmith studied horticulture and landscape design at TAFE, but launched his first business, The Point Deli, when he was 21.

They soon found they were incompatible workmates. “Pip worked for me twice at the deli.” Goldsmith says. “She walked out both times.”

They also shared an office briefly in 2008 when Robb opened Armchair, a homewares store in Crows Nest. “I was rescuing old armchairs and covering them with designer fabrics and making custom-made lamp shades,” she explains. “We learnt very quickly that we can’t work together in the same room. We both want to be the boss”.

Today they have different offices, she in Palm Beach, he at Whale Beach. “Some of our most creative stuff comes when we bang heads,” Robb says. “Everyone knows now that if we’re doing creative stuff, they should go because we’ll battle it out.”

Their crucial break came in 2008 when they were offered the chance to reinvent Carmel’s By The Sea, a rundown burger joint squashed into the wooden boathouse where sea planes depart for Rose Bay.

“Growing up in the Hills, I didn’t understand Palmie,” Goldsmith admits. “I felt: how is anyone going to find it?” It took them almost a year before they took the plunge. Their landlord wanted it to be a restaurant, but as Robb points out “there’s virtually no kitchen and one loo for each sex”.

Though Carmel’s had been basic - plastic tables, fly screen door, Melamine trays - “there was something gorgeous, something we loved,” Robb says. “We still want everyone to feel they’re welcome, whether they are in their swimmers from the beach or dressed up for a birthday celebration.”

The name was changed to “The Boathouse”, the building transformed, and they took a crash course in Northern Beaches culture.

“In the early days, the ones ordering the $39 bottle of prosecco and asking for a discount on their meals were the ones with the $5 million Palmie houses,” Goldsmith recalls. “Whereas the people from the Hills district where I grew up would drive for an hour and a half and order an expensive bottle of French champagne.”

Robb’s father and mother Maureen lent them the money to open the original Boathouse. “No-one else would,” Goldsmith explains. “And they haven’t asked for it back which is positive. We’ve never had any other investors.”

“The business would have grown much quicker if we had,” his wife adds. “But we’ve tried to keep it family.”

That proved controversial in 2014 when the Boathouse featured on a Tourism Australia website promoting Australian restaurants when Andrew Robb was Minister of Trade (which included tourism) in the Abbot government. He was accused by Labor’s Anthony Albanese of a conflict of interest.

“I remember Dad standing up in parliament. I’ve never seen him more angry,” Robb says. “He had no idea about the website. He was livid because he felt sorry for us, knowing how hard we’d worked.”

The family had gone through a much more painful time in 2009, when Andrew Robb announced he was stepping down for three months to address a form of depression. His subsequent memoir, Black Dog Daze, revealed he’d suffered “positive mood variation” for years - meaning he’d wake up depressed every morning but be functional as the day progressed.

“It was my birthday when I heard he’d stood down and I was sitting here on the deck at Palmie,” Robb says. “It was actually a relief.

“It was very hard what we went through, but it made him better than ever, and I’m proud of him. We’ve had very successful men here who’ve said, ‘I’ve never dealt with this, but what Andrew has done has made me talk about it.’”

So what does the future hold for them? Probably more Boathouses outside Sydney, and more which offer accommodation. Whether or not they like the “power couple” label, they’ve outgrown the Northern Beaches.

Recently they’ve been looking at sites in Hawaii and California. Is America ready to be Boathoused?