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Gillian Letham, Brisbane's Queen of the Suburbs
Gillian Letham never meant to build an empire of suburban bars.
When she first stepped behind the bar of The Mill on Constance in 2013, she didn’t have a big beer palate. She wasn’t even supposed to be there – she was just helping out her partner Gerard and his friend Lorcan.
She ended up running the place. Then opening The Oxford Tap House with Gerard the following year. Then opening The Woods Bar in 2019 when The Mill closed. Now, in 2024,* they’ve opened Clover Neighbourhood Bar: a light-filled bar with terracotta-coloured walls and a slight 70s feel.
“I like to be busy!” she says.
Ask any bar owner, however, and they’ll tell you that running just one bar is enough to keep you busy. And in These Troubling Times, hospitality venues are struggling across the board. So when Gill manages to keep three bars running smoothly, and find more time to visit her family in Scotland than when she owned one bar… she must be doing something right other than just “keeping busy".
If you go to The Ox, The Woods, or Clover, you’ll see they each have their own distinct personalities. But they also all share some aspects that keep drawing people to return time and time again – besides good beer and longhorn skulls, of course. They all have a warm, welcoming vibe and a keen attention to detail.
“Hospitality, it’s all in the detail and the service,” Gill says. "As long as you do that well, you can put it in lots of different situations. And some things can change and be slightly different venue to venue… but the overall ethos of: the customer first.”
At her bars that means remembering the names of your locals who come in every week. That means ensuring the cocktails are made the same by every staff member, every time. And it means that having a great tap list and a strong food menu is just the beginning.
We’ve all fallen in love with a venue before, and very rarely is “good beer” the only reason. Usually, it’s because you feel like you belong – and someone worked hard to help you feel like that. This especially true of bars in the suburbs, which for many are an extension of their living room.
“There has to be an element of warmth and comfortableness to come back time and time again," she says. "Because it’s the same.”
Without really meaning to, Gill went from not drinking beer to owning multiple bars and being a pillar of Brisbane’s beer community. Eleven years in, she’s a little bit wiser, and now she actually pays attention to how much money she’s spending on beer.
Gill – or as I call her, The Queen of the Suburbs – sat down with us on The Crafty Pint Podcast for a chat about the differences between city bars and suburban bars, the secret to running a good venue (“Forks facing the right way”), and why it’s so important her staff have a life outside of work.
Hospitality is hard. Gill is very open about that. And yet she still loves it.
"Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely times this is easy. I would much rather come to work and work the bar than be at home doing housework!”
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*The Ox in 2014, The Woods in 2019, Clover in 2024... By my reckoning, Gill's due to open her next bar in 2029.
Mick Wüst is the author of the book Beer Drinker's Toolkit, a fun and approachable guide to beer. He's also a freelance copywriter for the beer industry. You can find him on Instagram as Schoonerversity.
The beer(s) or moment(s) that turned you on to good beer:
I'm sure I'd had good beers before this, but the first barrel-aged imperial stout I ever tried made me feel like Popeye with spinach.
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Balter XPA
- Wayward Raspberry Berliner Weisse
- Boatrocker Ramjet
The last beer you enjoyed:
A IIPA from Woopi Brewing that tasted like fruit salad and resin.
Three things that represent you:
- Book - World War Z (seriously, give it a go - it's better than it sounds)
- Travel - Greece
- Food - all the bread and hot chips
