Few people have had as great an influence on Sydney hospitality over the last decade and a half as this year’s recipient of the Most Outstanding Contribution award.
John Duncan, managing director of The Keystone Group, helms a company that employs up to 800 people, with venues that range from hotels like the Newtown Hotel (nominated this year in the Pub of the Year category), characterful wine bars like Gazebo, Manly Wine and The Winery (which itself is up for Wine Bar of the Year), to bars and restaurants like The Rook (nominated for Bar of the Year) and Rushcutters.
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This year Keystone began a strategic joint venture with The Australian Turf Club to create The Stables — if you haven’t seen this members-only club high atop Randwick Racecourse (and its one-of-a-kind views), you’re missing out.
Duncan has seen The Keystone Group grow from its earliest days, back in 2000, when King St Wharf’s Cargo Bar — the first of their venues — was born.
Christened amid the excitement and fanfare that came with the Sydney Olympics that year, the success of Cargo Bar spurred on the opening of Bungalow 8 and the high-end style bar theloft.
Duncan’s background is in construction, and it stood him in good stead as Keystone expanded quickly through the first decade of this millenium. In more recent years, this appetitie for creating new venues hasn’t diminshed, and Keystone’s venues have not just kept pace with Sydney’s notoriously fickle trends, but have set their own trends and thrived.
It’s this longevity and inventiveness that demonstrates how Keystone, and Duncan, have shaped the Sydney hospitality scene since 2000.
Not only is Duncan responsible for overseeing the development of venues that the public wants, he’s assembled a team that includes some of the leading lights of Australian hospitality — as one would need to given just how broad the types of venues under the Keystone umbrella are. And it is under Duncan’s leadership that The Keystone Group have forged partnerships not just with The Australian Turf Club, but also with Mercedes Benz Fashion Week and Cockatoo Island Film.
Hardly a year goes past without the high-profile launch of a new Keystone venue, so we’ll be among many watchers waiting to see what they come up with next.