BUSINESS PROFILE: Mary's Group

Kenny Graham and Jake Smyth are the libertine duo turning their discontent into a legacy.

WORDS: Madeline Woolway

IT’S NO SECRET Kenny Graham and Jake Smyth founded their hospitality group on ‘hatred’. The pair first bonded over a frustration with the industry, but their decision to open six venues in Sydney — a city that’s come under fire for its unsupportive policies — begs to be interrogated.

In the Smarter Living newsletter, founding editor Tim Herrera wrote we often see disgruntled people as “dementors who suck the joy out of the room”, before making the case it’s possible to take dissatisfaction and use it to fuel creativity.

If there are two people who are proof that two negatives add up to a positive, it’s Graham and Smyth, and Mary’s Group might just be the Patronus Sydney needs. Driven by antipathy, they made fun their cause. The result? A suite of venues that reject the status quo while respecting the legacy of hospitality from bygone eras.

“At the same time, we’re not just going to roll out a bunch of cookie-cutter Mary’s that strangle the industry.” — Jake Smyth

Having met in Edinburgh, in Graham’s native Scotland, the duo found themselves reunited in Australia — Graham in Melbourne, Smyth in Sydney.

“We started talking about what we should do, which was built around a mutual hatred of the hospitality industry and how f*cking boring it was,” says Graham. With sneakers on the pavement in both cities, Smyth and Graham had an honest conversation about locations for a potential venue. “At that point, Melbourne was saturated with really great bars and Sydney wasn’t,” says Smyth.

Instead, hotel bars reigned supreme across the city in the pre-Swillhouse age. There was a gap in the market, which led to Graham and Smyth building a venue that would become the namesake for their hospitality group. “We knew what we wanted — something that wasn’t built on pretense or theme,” says Smyth. “The best way to do that is to build an environment you’re comfortable in.” And that’s why the Mary’s Newtown venue has the vibe it does — unabashed, but laidback.

“It’s 100 per cent personal,” adds Graham. “Chefs and restaurant owners aren’t always masters of environment, which is one of the major parts of hospitality. Instead, they’re just like, ‘Let’s overcharge for fancy food’. These people are not qualified to provide an environment for fun. If there’s one thing we’re qualified for, it’s probably that. We learnt how to cook and make drinks to facilitate the other part.”

According to Smyth, it’s all about the engagement between the people behind the bar and the humans in front of it. There’s no doubt it’s a successful approach. Not only have they added another five venues to their business since Mary’s Newtown opened in 2013, they’ve made their mark on the hospitality community and the public — an impact that’s evident in the interactions Graham and Smyth have with multiple passersby and the owner of a café within an hour-long interview.

With five venues — Mary’s Newtown, Mary’s City, The Unicorn Hotel and The Lansdowne — currently under their belt and a sixth — Mary’s Underground — set to open in May, Graham and Smyth are at the helm of one of Sydney’s most prominent hospitality groups. But that doesn’t mean they’re ready to rest on their laurels. Graham admits they were terrified of becoming ‘the burger people’. “We used to joke the concept was pick your spirit and pick your bar snack — ‘this one will be mezcal and popcorn’ — it’s so f*cking boring,” says Graham. “Ironically, we kinda turned into the Jack Daniels and burger joint,” admits Smyth.

Graham and Smyth are conscious the recognition they receive derives from the veneration Sydneysiders feel for Mary’s Newtown. And the awareness is at the forefront of their approach to opening new venues. “We value Mary’s Newtown so much; there will never be a Mary’s like Mary’s Newtown,” says Smyth. “We want to be respectful to every new venue we do and its environment. We don’t want to do cookie-cutter. When people come to Newtown, we want them to say, ‘Let’s go see the old girl’.”

While they brought their legendary burgers to the CBD, Mary’s City is a different beast. There’s no raucous bar serving up bourbon and beers; instead burgers and fried chicken are doled out with thickshakes. It’s about fitting the venue to the environment. The same ethos is apparent in the group’s third venue, The Unicorn Hotel, which opened in Paddington in late 2015.

“When we first opened The Unicorn, people were like, ‘Why don’t you open another Mary’s?’” says Smyth. “We bought a classic Art Deco pub as our third venue instead of just pushing out a series of Mary’s. It would have made us a heap more money, but it wouldn’t have been creatively satisfying and it would have been bereft of integrity.”

It’s about respecting a venue’s history, says Graham. “We’d never look at a pub and think it could be anything other than a pub. At some point, it’s been the hub of a community and it’s been taken away through mismanagement; the biggest motivation for us is to bring it back.” “If we’d opened another Mary’s, I don’t think we’d be here having this conversation right now,” says Smyth. “I don’t think people would be taking us seriously enough to be going into The Lansdowne or reopening The Basement.”

The attitude sets them apart from much of Sydney’s hospitality industry, which has become dominated by operators fixated on tethering multiple venues to a group brand. “There’s no greater danger than restaurant groups to the vibrancy of our community,” says Smyth. “I firmly believe that. I feel like we can comment on this because we have such a variety of venues. It’s not just restaurants with a different theme.”

“When you work with amazing people, it’s a big motivator to try to create opportunities for them.” — Kenny Graham

Graham and Smyth aren’t just critical of the industry, though, they cast the same cynical eye over their own operation. “I think we’re pretty good at asking ourselves questions,” says Smyth. “We are part of an industry we’re critical of, and not just critical as in negative — we’re looking at it and asking what can we do better and what we can contribute that’s honest and has integrity.”

It’s the reason Smyth spent four months last year getting down and dirty at The Lansdowne. “I was there 50 hours a week — out of the office, out of the other venues — fully focused on the food and service because it wasn’t right,” he says. “We pulled the exec chef [Jimmy Garside] out of The Unicorn and Mary’s and said, ‘You and me together — we’re going to get this right’. We redid the wine list, redid everything and now we’re seeing a huge response to Mary’s Pizzeria. I don’t know a restaurant that’s got it right 100 per cent of the time — Attica was a Thai restaurant and now look at Ben Shewry.”

When it comes to expansion, it’s about more than filling the Mary’s coffers. “It’s not about our own progression and self-worth,” says Graham. “When you work with amazing people, it’s a big motivator to try to create opportunities for them.”

And that’s where the self-questioning comes in. “When we expand as a group, at what point does it just become about us?” asks Smyth. “Are we just suffocating the next generation of people underneath us? Are we just taking up real estate and having conversations and it’s all about us?”

Along with teaming up with other industry players (Porteño, Young Henrys) to open venues such as The Unicorn Hotel, Graham and Smyth have encouraged employees to take the reins of different projects. “We got a shoe in from Joey [Valore] and Elvis [Abrahanowicz] from Porteño and we’re forever indebted and grateful,” says Graham, adding that they’ve tried to pay it forward with ventures such as P&V Merchants. “That was Louise [Dowling, former bar manager at Mary’s Newtown and The Unicorn] coming to us with an idea and a dream,” says Smyth.

Rumination, though, is something Graham and Smyth revert to constantly and they’ve yet to make peace with their role. “I was asking Dave Chang because he’s one of the classically great mentors in the industry,” says Smyth. “Think about the people he’s brought through, Christina Tosi, Rich Hargreave, Paul Carmichael — he’s bringing all these people up, but they’re under the Momofuku umbrella. It’s kind of like, well, would Carmichael have opened his own venue?”

Chang didn’t answer — “I was hammered,” says Smyth — but the question stands. “That’s what we’re wrestling with right now. We do have a role in it, and until the answer appears from the cloud of consciousness, we’ll continue down the path of supporting great people with their own dreams as much as we possibly can. At the same time, we’re not just going to roll out a bunch of cookie-cutter Mary’s that strangle the industry.”