Wallaby hotelier Bill Young has listed his twice-loved Friend in Hand of Glebe, to focus on the family’s growing stable of large-format pubs.
Built 1858, the two-storey Friend is a vestige of Glebe’s blue collar past. It is close to the big Broadway Shopping Centre and adjacent to Roxy Pacific’s West End Residences development of 232 apartments, and surrounded by numerous other developments.
Young bought the pub mid-2019 from the Byrne family, who had owned it for the previous 36 years. He executed an extensive $900k renovation across both levels of the 337 sqm site, expanding the gaming offering to 19 machines and applying a smoking solution, as well as completing the integration of upstairs for a genuine dual level trading footprint.
The site also holds scope to acquire and incorporate neighbouring residential sites.
The Friend finds a profitable revenue mix across bar, bistro, gaming and wagering, with a midnight liquor licence plus early-opener flexibility.
Bill Young, the former prop for Australia’s Wallabies, is next generation to Bill Young Snr, whose first pub was the Friend in Hand, which he held for five years before selling in 1983 to the Byrnes. Nearly four decades later the Young family bought it back for around $10 million.
The Youngs have been long-term owners of the Concord Hotel, Palace Hotel and Wisemans Ferry Hotel, and became acquisitive in recent years, adding Lantern’s Five Dock Hotel, the Hotel Illinois in Five Dock, and most recently Gallagher’s Royal Hotel in Ryde.
Glebe’s Friend is the smallest of the litter, and has been operated under management.
“Our family has enjoyed a long association with the Friend in Hand Hotel, and whilst our second stint operating the hotel has been a little shorter than the first, we firmly believe in both the strength of the business and the catchment area,” says Young.
“Following consultation with my family, we’ve concluded that the recent expansion of our portfolio means we probably can’t give it the necessary time and focus it deserves.”
Sale is being managed by HTL Property’s Andrew Jolliffe, Dan Dragicevich and Sam Handy, who expect it to be another hot property in the steady stream of Sydney city-fringe pubs to market this year.
“Very few, if any, comparable, renovated CBD hotels come to market, and for this reason alone we are excited about the market’s reaction to this unique Sydney opportunity,” offered Dragicevich.
The Friend in Hand is being sold via Expressions of Interest, closing Thursday, 16 September.
