The year in review in bars, drinks, and bartenders

Welcome to the last Boothby newsletter and podcast for the year that has been 2024.

First up: thank you for your support of Boothby this year, for reading our emails, attending the events and awards we've hosted, and for all of your feedback throughout 2024. It has been a wonderful year.

2024 has been a big year for us here at Boothby: the Boothby Best Bars Awards (in Queensland, NSW, and Victoria), the third annual Drink of the Year awards; the first Bartenders’ Weekender in Brisbane (which is back next year!); the addition of Cara Devine’s weekly newsletter to the Boothby line up; we published the first issue of Boothby in print (which you can still get by signing up here); and it was a year in which we got to see bar scenes up close across Australia, visiting Brisbane, Toowoomba, Hobart, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Melbourne and of course, Sydney.

With that lens on the year, it’s possible to see some broad trends, which I talk about with Cara Devine in the last episode of Drinks At Work for the year.

We talk about a few of the best openings this year, and some of the notable closures. And while there have been many highlights to 2024, there have been some crushing lows as well — chief among them being the Swillhouse strife as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald.

I think we end the discussion on a positive note, though, as we also talk about some of the people who have animated 2024, and who are working to make the industry a better place.

I really enjoyed talking to Cara about the year, and this is a bit of a different episode to the usual interview format we do for Drinks At Work. If you’d like to see more shows like this in 2025, let me know.

A couple more notes on 2024 before we put the laptop away.

Many bars are doing it tough. There are more bars out there operating at a higher standard than there was before the pandemic. As a result, and as we’ve explored on Boothby this past year, it’s no longer enough to be a good bar — bars have to be great. The bars that survive and thrive today are the ones with a clear point of difference, with close attention paid to the details, and an emphasis on not just hospitality but creating a memorable guest experience.

Something has to be done about the cost of spirits, because it’s a hard ask to ask punters to drink more than a couple $25 cocktails in a night. With the excise on booze going up twice a year, there is no respite in sight.

And it’s not like the rent is getting cheaper, for punters or bar owners.

So there are some considerable headwinds to deal with in the bar business. With a federal election due in 2025, maybe there will be measures that will reduce the stress on hospitality businesses more broadly.

It’s unlikely, I imagine. Not because it isn’t needed, but because no-one in politics seems to be listening to small bar operators, smaller independent restaurants. So bartenders and bar owners, and the current crop of Australian distillers and producers, will be left to figure it out for themselves.

But if my travels to bar scenes around the country are anything to go by, whatever 2025 brings, it’s going to be delicious.

And there will probably be more Milk Punches.

That’s it from Boothby for the year. If you’d like to get the magazine delivered to your door, it’s a great way to support us in what we’re doing here — you can subscribe now and get not just the first issue but the next three issues.