Boathouse Group expands

The Boathouse Group is growing.

It has accumulated eight venues. Its most recent acquisition is the Palm Beach restaurant institution Barrenjoey House.

It acquired Barrenjoey House in early July.

Now it will be closed for maintenance, repair and interior updates. It will reopen in Spring, around the same time that the weather turns warm.

Barrenjoey House fits in nicely with group’s portfolio of Northern Beaches venues.

These include Moby Dick’s Whale Beach, Boathouse Palm Beach, Shelly Beach and Balmoral. There’s also Central Coast’s Boathouse Hotel Patonga which is also currently closed for renovations.

Group co-founder Andrew Goldsmith says any changes to the Barrenjoey House building will still be in line with its 100-year-old structure. “It’s always had a homey feel, we’ll just make it a little brighter, lighter, with lots of flowers, lots of white,” Goldsmith told Broadsheet.

He says the Boathouse Group had acquired the venue for strategic purposes.

“We’ve long been customers of Barrenjoey House and we loved the idea of doing a restaurant,” he told Broadsheet. “All our businesses are related – they all have a strong coastal theme – but we wanted to do something different from the cafes ... If we kept doing cafes, people might get bored. We don’t want to be a chain.”

The acquisition of the Paroonga Beach Hotel in October 2017 was just as strategic.

The Patonga is on the Hawkesbury River, an hour-and-half north of Sydney.

It includes a pub and accommodation and was purchased with the aim of offering rooms to guests who attend weddings at its venues.

The Patonga is only a 30-minute ferry ride from Palm Beach, Barrenjoey House and most of the rest of the group’s other venues.

“Patonga is historically a fishing village and a few boats still go out every day. When they visit, people say it’s like stepping back in time to the 1950s. We want the hotel to capture Patonga's sleepy coastal village spirit," Goldsmith told Broadsheet.

23rd July 2018