By Vanessa Cavasinni, editor Australian Hotelier
Colonial Leisure Group’s (CLG) national managers revealed to Australian Hotelier their focus for 2017: excellence in their newest pubs.
Grady Patching and Lawrence Dowd, national operations manager and national general manager respectively, spoke to Australian Hotelier for the 2017 Annual Industry Leaders Forum, assessing 2016 for CLG, and looking forward to 2017.
In 2016, the group – which has venues all over the country, with a main focus in Melbourne, Perth and north Queensland – purchased the Newtown Hotel in Sydney off the Keystone Group, and the Fox Hotel in Brisbane.
“When sourcing new venues for the group we focus on the strengths of our own business, understanding the market and characteristics of the venue. We felt that both Newtown Hotel and The Fox Hotel had great potential to offer the area something new, and complemented the current pubs within the group.”
Patching and Dowd said the focus of the 2017 will be on integrating the two new venues into CLG, and make them “the best pubs in their suburb”.
“It is important when you expand like we have to ensure that you slow down and make sure the management team and venues are coping with the expansion. This is something we are focusing on now as we have added great venues and we now just need to embed them into the family before growing again.”
You can read the full interview, here.
Grady Patching will be taking part in two panels – Blurring The Lines: Where Pubs and Restaurants Meet and The Year Ahead – at the Pub Leaders Summit on 20 March in Sydney. Purchase tickets to the Pub Leaders Summit here – do so before or on Monday 20 February to receive a $100 early bird discount.