Inside Otis, a neighbourhood cocktail joint built by bartenders (while trading)
How two bartending mates (and their friends) did a bar reno.
It’s the dream, right? You bartend for years, making money for others, taking instruction from high above — working for the man. But then, one glorious day, you get the keys to a bar of your own.
That’s what happened for bartenders Dan Teh, formerly of Glebe neighbourhood joint The Little Guy, and Conor O’Brien (ex-The Baxter Inn, Earl’s Juke Joint, Burrow Bar and more). In March this year, they sent out the press release that the doors to Otis had opened and was ready to serve. But the story isn’t that simple.
Because they actually took over the space, which used to be a vegan restaurant called The Golden Gully, on Norton Street in Leichhardt last year — all the way back in August. But being bartenders going into bar ownership for the first time, as Conor says in the video below, they didn’t have a lot of budget at the start.
So what did they do? They ran the bar as they found it, to get the money coming in. Cash flow is everything. And when the bar wasn’t trading, they were renovating.
“We essentially went, it’s gonna cost us a little bit more money or we can just work and we’ll generate a little bit more cash flow,” says Conor. “And we’ll just be exhausted on the other side of it.”
Bit by bit the space transformed, with the striking orange colour scheme appearing in December — and the bar launching to friends, family and the neighbourhood on December 20.
“The positive of it was that we got to introduce ourselves to the locals that had already been coming into Gully,” says Kelsey Blacksmith (ex-The Baxter Inn, Rosenbaum & Fuller), who’s managing the bar. “And they sort of got to experience the change and the rebrand with us.”
And that’s kind of the point for a place like Otis — it’s a neighbourhood bar, first and foremost; whilst Leichhardt definitely isn’t a long way out, it’s not a quick cab from the Sydney CBD either. It’s just that Otis is a neighbourhood bar that reflects the high standard of talent in the bar industry today.
As Kelsey said when I visited the other week: “You shouldn’t have to go to the city for a good drink.”
In the video here, Conor and Kelsey walk us through the little pieces of what makes Otis special, talk about how they rebuilt and rebranded the bar whilst keeping the doors open and the drinks coming, and loads more.
You can find Otis at 153 Norton St, Leichhardt, or online at otisbar.au and on Instagram at @otis.leichhardt.
