‘The pub life’: How hotel barons keep it in the family

Laundy, who recently turned 84, plans to leave the business equally to his four children when he exits the pub game.

“We do talk about a lot, and I give them my opinion of what I believe. But you can’t rule from the grave, can you?” he says. “I’d like to see them all get on well and stay in the business.”

Succession is increasingly in the air within Australia’s biggest family-run pub groups, where up to five generations are pulling pints together, and it’s particularly critical in an industry where owners rarely sell out of the business.

“They just keep bolting on, and now we’ve got the next generation coming through as well,” says Ben McDonald, head of pubs at property agent JLL.

“We’re seeing a lot of those younger ones coming through, working with the families and taking more leadership roles within themselves. So I can’t see that dynamic changing any time soon.

“If the fundamentals are good from a location point of view and trade point of view, they’re really, really attractive businesses, which is why you see these generational hoteliers and groups continuing to buy.”

Other Rich List pub and pokie owners include: one-time panel beater Sam Arnaout ($3 billion) and Justin Hemmes ($1.58 billion), whose parents started Merivale in fashion and property.

Andrew Jolliffe, one of Australia’s top pub brokers, says children of pub owners often have other interests but usually come back into the family business, bringing what they have learned.

“There will be family members at their pubs every day of the week,” he said. “I think Australians like that.”

Here’s how three prominent family-owned pub empires, the Laundys, Gallaghers and Bayviews, are managing succession.

Austin Gallagher remembers his first shift as a “dishie” at his father’s pub group, which owns five hotels across NSW.

“At around 12, school holidays came around and my brother Jack and I were keen to work, we are a year apart so were always together,” he says. “Our first shift was in the kitchen at our restaurant, Uncorked, as dishies for a big function that was on.

“It left us drenched in sweat, covered in sauce, and our hands looked like we just got out of a five-hour bath.”

He remembers tagging along with his parents to management meetings and new venue openings as a kid. “We would be organising and clearing out the cellar, setting up function rooms, filing in the office for a shnitty [schnitzel] and chips and unlimited pink lemonades.”

His parents, Patrick and Angela, have been behind some of the nation’s biggest pub deals, including the Railway Hotel ($47.5 million); the Longueville Hotel ($50 million) and the recently reinvigorated Jacksons on George ($20 million).

Patrick says it was important that his four children make up their own minds about whether to join the family business. Three of his four children are now involved in some of the family’s venues which fall under the Gallagher Hotel banner, with Jack, 24 and Austin, 23, each managing pubs.

“It was a big opportunity for them, but, and fortunately too, all three of them are hard-working and intelligent kids. So they’re an asset to me,” he says.

Austin admits he wasn’t very interested in pubs when he was younger. “Growing up, I did have many other ambitions and pubs weren’t really an interest. As a kid, you don’t really understand them.

“As I got older and started going out to pubs with mates, working busy services with a team … seeing guests enjoy something that I was a part of, is when it really made me excited and ambitious about the industry.”

Now he can’t see himself doing anything else and is becoming more involved in the marketing and food side of the business.

“I’m able to bring some of my own ideas and experiences into decisions by collaborating with my mum, my boss,” he said. “​I hope we continue to buy new businesses and develop existing ones in the hospitality industry, whether that’s bars, pubs, restaurants or accommodation.”

While Patrick has no immediate plans to expand the business in the near future, he says things are constantly changing and “never say never”.

“I’m sure there’ll be another one in the future. I’ve got to keep the kids entertained.”

Danielle Richardson grew up running around bars with her father, Arthur Laundy. While all four Laundy kids are involved in the family business to some degree, Danielle and husband Shane are the most hands-on.

“I’ve probably been involved my whole life given I was born into it,” Danielle says. “From a very young age, we all as kids would go with Dad on a Saturday to the pub and would run around the bars while he’d be doing all things pre-open.”

Richardson brings outside experience from the supplier side of the industry with stints working for Campari, Carlton and United Breweries and Coca-Cola Amatil.

“I’ve gained a lot of understanding on the importance of brand, food and beverage trends and the importance of delivering not just a product but an experience,” she says.

Her father has been at the forefront of change in the industry. Laundy was a major backer of pokies in pubs in 1997, a bet that paid off; the machines generated about $300 million within the first five years.

Lately, he’s been on a buying spree; in 2023 alone, he bought Watsons Boutique Hotel ($110 million), The Mona ($60 million) and Hotel Illawong in Evans Head ($58.3 million).

The company has been a major sponsor of the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs since 2020, and the four children have interests outside hospitality; Craig was the small business minister in the second Turnbull government, while Stuart had a stint on The Bachelorette.

Four of Laundy’s 13 grandchildren are also working in the family business. Danielle’s daughter, Molly Willis, 20, has been waitressing alongside her cousins at the Red Lion Hotel since high school and now also co-ordinates events from the Bass Hill head office.

“I absolutely love working in the family business. I love getting a gist of all the different aspects,” Molly says. “I think no matter what, there’ll be some sort of aspect in hospitality in my future. Where exactly that lies? I don’t know.”

She wants to eventually operate her own pub, inspired by how her grandfather interacts with customers.

“It’s always a skill that I wanted to have, the interaction, the customer service, making people happy,” she says. “It’s a very particular skill, it’s one that I think definitely has been passed on in our family.”

Wayne Bayfield says pubs have come a long way since the ’70s and ’80s when there were a couple of beers on tap and INXS was playing in the front room.

“When we started, I think we had three beers on tap. We now have about 40 beers on tap,” he says. “Grandma was doing the snack bar, not a kitchen full of chefs. Obviously, we didn’t have pokie machines.

“It’s a lot more complicated these days than what it was back in the early days.”

Wayne and his brother, Mark, took over the Dee Why Hotel, north of Sydney, and expanded to include many of the state’s most famous pubs, including The Caringbah Hotel, The Light Brigade, The Sands, Newport Mirage and The Newport Arms. Their father, Neville, was a publican for major brewer Tooth and Co, which operated from 1835 to 1985.

After Neville died, the brothers scaled down. They sold the Newport Arms in Pittwater to Justin Hemmes for $47 million in 2015 and The Light Brigade Hotel in Woollahra to the Laundy family for about $20 million last year.

They now run two pubs as well as a number of bottle shops under Bayfield’s Liquor Superstores and Bayfield’s Online.

Wayne’s son, Kaine, has been running operations for the group since 2011, but really has been working for the family business since he was eight, collecting trolleys over Christmas for the bottle shop.

He worked on the floor at the Newport Arms during university, eventually managing that pub as well as the Dee Why Hotel.

“I was going to do something, but I got distracted and then just started working in the pubs and loved it, so I stayed in it,” Kaine says.

Once he eventually takes the reins of the Bayfield Hotel Group, as the most involved of Wayne’s five children, he wants to continue its growth and success.

“I want the business to be running well so that the family are … happy with the results and want to keep the pubs, so I have a job,” Kaine says.

For him, the constant industry evolution is part of the attraction. “It’s always changing. It’s a very different world the pubs today than they were, back in the 70s and 80s.”

Zach George, Kaine’s nephew and Wayne’s grandson, has just started working on the floor at the Dee Why Hotel, opting to take a gap year before university.

“The first six years of my life, I actually grew up in the units upstairs from the Newport Arms,” he says. “From day one, I’ve always been surrounded by the community and culture that the pub life brings.

“It was pretty special when I finally got to the age, and I was able to start doing some part-time work for the family business.”

He’s still tossing up whether to study something like commerce and then bring what he learns into the family business, or go down the medical path and study to be a physio.