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In this episode of the Hospo Dojo podcast, I chat with Grant Collins, multi-award winning mixologist and founder of Sydney's Gin Lane and Dry Martini. Grant talks about his journey from the UK to Australia, how Gin Lane came to be, and what goes into creating unforgettable bar experiences, and what it really takes to make a hospitality brand last. Mr. Grant Collins.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

That is me.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Mixologist and founder of Gin Lane in Sydney. Back in my hometown.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Good old Sydney.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

That's amazing. How long have you had Gin Lane for?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Seven years, no. 2017 uh took that over.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Is that in in Chippendale?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

In Chippendale, yeah, Kensington Street.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Okay. Is that like near Spice Alley?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah, it's literally backs onto Spice Alley, so.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Okay, beautiful. And how's it been?

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Yeah, it's been interesting. Um, first few years were great. Um my business partner is lives in Singapore, so he wasn't sure about the gin concept. He was actually asking me who the hell drinks gin, but we were opening right in the middle of the gin boom. Um, so yeah, he entrusted me with that. He doesn't drink. So um he trusted me to come up with that concept. And then yeah, 2017 to 2020 was awesome. We we sort of hit the ground running and then COVID. COVID, COVID, COVID. Um, and then yeah, the I think the last 12 months has been challenging for everybody. So um, but yeah, touch woods been good. I mean, we've been in the top five gym bars in Australia for the last five, six years. So yeah, been kicking some goals. And we opened a martini bar literally 50 metres down the road six months ago called Dry Martini.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

So onwards and upwards. Beautiful. And you know, as a as a consultant yourself and and also operator, you've got skin in the game, which a lot of consultants don't have. You know, I had many of my own venues, I've sold them off, and now I'm just focusing on my consulting. How do you, you know, manage your consultancy and running a venue at the same time?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

A lot of work, a lot of seven-day weeks. Um, yeah, I mean, you've got it there. If you've got skin in the game, there are no shortcuts, right? If you've had your own venue, you know you have to be there, you have to be on the grounds. Um, surround yourself with good people, um, surround yourself with some really good staff, and we've got a great team there. So um, yeah, hopefully it's still there when I get back to you.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Well, could I see you, mate? You're doing you're doing really, really, really well. You've won more than 50 industry awards over the past two decades. What's what first drew you into the craft of you know mixology and cocktail making?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Uh well, I think I was born into hospitality. Um, my father owned a fish and chip shop in Cornwall. Um, yeah, I probably didn't stand a chance. I tried to do other things, but drew me back in. Uh, he had me sort of preparing the fish and chips at 12, 13 years old. So yeah, I don't think I stood a chance of not being into hospitality, but I did go to college, uh, did a degree in sports science. Um, thought I'd do a bit of travelling before I sort of came back and jumped in the fitness business, but started collecting glasses when I was in the USA travelling and got the bar bug, and yeah, 22 years later, still here. So thanks, Dad. It's always my destiny, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

It's always the case, and you know, I I find uh common denominators in my family is very big in hospitality. From my grandfather came here in the 70s and started out with kebab shops. Yeah. So fears it. It's just like it doesn't you can't leave it. You can't leave it. It's in your blood, right? It's in your blood, and uh it's written in the stars. Funny story. My grandfather had a kebab shop in Mount Druid, which is Western Sydney. I know Mount Druid. The first uh first Westfields that was there, and he had called it kebab 22. And you know, I asked him a question, I said, Why'd you call it kebab 22? He goes, Well, KFC had 11 secret herbs and spices. I had 22, so we called it kebab 22. That's where he got his name from. So on that creative process, like then, how do you, you know, what's your creative process when developing a new cocktail? And where do you typically start? Is it flavor, is it story, is it presentation? What is it?

SPEAKER_00 4:25

All of the above, really. I mean, you have to go out a lot, right? You have to experience the world. Um, obviously, I'm originally from the UK, so I'm going back again to London in a few weeks, and I'm going to Greece as well. So I'm looking to open something for Hilton Group towards the middle of the year, and I'm it's a Mediterranean concept, so I'm going to go to Greece and evolve that. So you have to immerse yourself in it. And from that, ideas pop up. I mean, I've got a million voice notes in my phone. Um, it never stops. The creative process, I'm sure chefs are the same. The chefs that I know are the same, it never stops. Um, so you come up with an idea, you note it down, maybe you tuck it away, maybe it's in your pocket for 12 months, maybe it's in your pocket for two or three years, and then you're like, oh yeah, that that drink there. Um, but we we can go as deep or as sort of simple or classic as is needed for the concept. So if you take gin lane, for instance, we've got if you want a regular gin and sonic and a beer, you can have that. If you want to dive in and get experiential, then you can have that too. As a consultant, you know, you've got to do horses for courses. There's no point in going in there and doing a super experiential drink and then no one engages with it. Um so yeah, I mean, I get a lot of inspiration off desserts. Um, I eat a lot of desserts uh because the flavour matching and the way they create it is very similar to creating a drink. Um, sometimes stories. So sometimes when I'm back home, I fly back to the UK, see my family in Cornwall. I'm walking literally along the Cornish cliffs and I smell the sea spray. And I, you know, I'm walking through Heather and Gort and I'm like, oh my god, okay, this is I've got to bring some of this back and do a drink. So I go back to Sydney and I'll do a you know a Cornish martini or coastal sour or something like that. Um, with the appliance of science now with rhodovapors and uh ultrasonic infusers, you can make drinks which are quick pretty quick to make, um, but you can infuse all those things into them, you know, using sea salt into gin, using gauze, using heather, and infusing them into um into something. And you've got a two or three ingredient cocktail, but you've got all these amazing um experiential elements in there. So it's not all about setting fire to things, um, although we like doing that too. So, yeah, multifaceted, I suppose, the creative process, but it's something that never stops. Sometimes I wake up at three o'clock in the morning with an idea, and I'm like, boom. Yeah. That's gonna be gone, right it's down, much to my wife's demise. Um, so yeah, it's an ongoing process.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

That happens to me all the time. Like I worked on this project for about a two months, and just before we're about to submit the plans to DA, I had like, and I've done I did many revisions for this one concept. I woke up at 3:30 a.m., I'll never forget it, and it was a Sunday morning, it's 3.30 a.m. And uh my wife was asleep, and I just said, shit, I need to change this now. I said, This is gonna blow their labour costs, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna allow them to submit it. So I went and I just went back on the computer. I spent six hours at 3.30 in the morning, and I redid the entire the entire layout, and then I submitted them the new drawings in the morning, and I said, guys, this is your new layout. I'll talk about it to you later, but this is gonna cut your labour cost by 50%. And I'm like, I don't know why we didn't think about this earlier.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

I've done similar.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

And then they just turned around and said, Thank you so much. So for me, that gave me a sigh of relief because it was that point, and as a consultant, you know, yeah, we charge for our time. Time, time for us is something that we can never get back. And when we're giving our time and we're giving our energy to other people, you know, we do it from the best of our heart, but we also want them to succeed. You know, you never want a project to go belly up.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

100%, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:06

And you want to try to set the foundation for them to be able to pound the pavement later and create that success. And I know that you do that really well, and that's why you're working for the people like Hilton and other organizations like that, because they entrust in you, right? Sure. And the same thing happens vice versa in our way, and especially when you work for small business, guys are turning over under a million or up to two, three, four, whatever that case may be, but in that SME category, right? That SM category, you want to make sure that you know there are sometimes you have a thought in your head as a consultant, and you might want to bite your tongue because it might be more work for you, but you got you can't do that.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, yeah. We were talking about that in the the bar talks yesterday. Um, not letting your ego get in the way, right? You you you come up with something you think it's gonna be amazing. But it's about reading the venue and reading markets, buddy, and you you have to get that right. And to be honest, that that's everything that's more important, and creating the culture and creating the staff culture and the service culture, that's more important than the drinks creation. Because you can have the most amazing drinks which are kicking goals, but if they're not delivered correctly and they're not consistently produced, then you know it's not gonna work.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

Thousand percent. And with with changing, as you're saying, um, a lot has changed in the beverage world, especially with the rise of lobeslash non-alcoholic beverages. Has that how has that impacted your venues and your menus across the world? We've we've just embraced it.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Um I mean, you know, sometimes when I'm doing work in in other places, Maldives or something like that hasn't really caught on. In the UK it's it's blowing up. Here in Australia, it's blowing up. So we we try to take a sort of holistic review at it and say, okay, if you want to come in and not drink, that's completely fine, but we want you to have the same experience. So we we stay away from mock tail lists um and sort of pitching holding people. We we create a whole list pretty well, 95% of it with zero alcohol. So if you're not drinking, you're not ostracized, you're not out of the group, you can come in, pick whatever you want off the list, and you can create a zero alcohol. That's all and that that works where it will.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yeah, one of my good friends, Dan Hughes, uh very well-rounded chef and Simi many, many years. Um he says the same thing about, you know, vegetarian dishes. Right, vegetarian non-meat eaters, he's like, I want them to be able to enjoy the same experience and have that beautiful risotto. Oh, well there you go. Well, there you go. Probably eating some of his food there. Because he he he that's what he champions. He he really wants to champion that. Um, on the vegan space, uh, I currently work with Fables, so something a product that you're probably eaten many times. Yeah. And uh we're working with the guys and they've they've got amazing product, um, and just how versatile it is. And and you know, it's about championing those uh it might seem as a minority, but what people don't understand is that minority has a veto vote. You're a vegan. If me and your buddies, am I gonna go out to eat? I care about you, right? I know that I can get 90% options everywhere, you might only be able to get five percent. Am I gonna take you to a place where you can't enjoy your meal? Right? And the same thing you go with non-alcoholic drinkers, yeah. And I think that, you know, being in this time and especially everyone has different levels of consciousness or whatever their whatever it might be, even their preferences, um, you know, we need to consider that vote. Uh and yes, it might take might take you more time in research and development, but again, like what you've done is to be able to just swap out those items and go, yeah guys, you can have the same drink, no alcohol.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

It's about making people feel included as well. You don't want people to feel excluded or as I said, it's on the outside. Um, and it you know, on a business front, it it keeps a group together longer. You know, if you've got two or three friends who are not drinking, you want them to have fun and experience experience the experiential cult ups. Don't just say, oh no, you can't have that because you're not drinking. Include them. You know, there's no reason why they can't just because they choose not to have alcohol, they still can't have a fun experience. So, yeah, the guest experiences you know is is is absolutely everything.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

That's amazing. What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs who want to build a concept-driven bar like yours?

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Plan well and don't spend what you can't afford. Um, again, I was talking about this yesterday in one of the chats as well. You know, I think my first small bar that I opened back in 2014, I spent $1.2 million on the fit ad. Um Gin Lane, we spent $35,000 on the fit out. Um Gin Lane was more profitable than the $1.1 million venue. So plan well. Don't let your ego get in the way. Do your market research. Um and yeah, I think probably baby steps is good. You don't have to sort of jump in and get it right the first time. Um and evolve the business as well. So don't sort of go too crazy. But yeah, market research and know your markets and know your guests and know who you're looking to get your return on investment from. I think that's super important.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah, it's a journey, not a sprint, right? Exactly. And if you're looking for a sprint, then hospitality is not a business for you.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Up at the moment, no.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Not at all. Not at all. Never has been. All the ones that says it was, it never works, right? Exactly. Yeah. If you haven't won a side hustle, sure, you can do events, you can do pop-ups, uh, get something that's low cost, you know, you can do private bartending. That will give you that'll let you double in the industry at a low cost, and it's something that you can turn off tomorrow and turn on. But when you sign to a lease and you commit to a bank and you start getting funding and all this sort of stuff, and you get partnerships, start getting people that you need to report to, it's it's not something that you can just give up tomorrow because it's not making money, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

100%. And Sydney's such a crowded market. I mean, Melbourne too. Um, I mean, a lot of major cities now in Australia, you need those unique points of difference. So if you're gonna open your new venue, not only think about it, do your research, but make sure you've got some good hooks in there as well to bring people back.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

That's amazing. And finally, what brings you to Food and Hospitality Week this year?

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Um, invites. So I was obviously I'm from Sydney like yourself. Uh they asked me to propose some chats, uh, gin being one of them. Love talking about gin. Um that was the first sort of uh show that I was doing here. And then the business of bars, very similar to what we just tugged on then. If you're gonna open your first bar, what are the steps to do? Do you just sort of jump in? I told a great story yesterday about a couple of friends of mine in the UK who I was partnering with in in London in 2005. Uh they wanted to open a bar, had no clue what they were doing, but they just had that pipe dream, right? Uh one of them uh remortgaged his house, the other one had a loan off his parents, and the other one took a side hustle on the um as a part-time job as a stripper just so they could open this bar in Battersea in London. They opened it on £30,000 uh 2006, I believe. And in 2018, um they had 35 venues and I sold it for 50 million bands.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

So yeah, that's amazing. Yes, there's some hard work pays off.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Hard work pays off and passion pays off, right? They wanted to do something and they they stuck with it.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

That's it. Well, Grant, thank you so much. Thanks for coming out to Food and Lost Pally Week.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Thanks, mate.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

It's been a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for having me, I hope you've enjoyed the podcast. Um, and yeah, look forward to catching up with you in Sydney.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Yeah, for sure, mate. We'll have to do it again.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Cheers.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Thanks, mate.