Justin Hemmes on his Melbourne moves, skyscraper plans – and how he beat anxiety

A small private road winds down to Justin Hemmes’ $100 million heritage home in Vaucluse, in Sydney’s east. At the front gate of the sprawling Victorian Gothic mansion, known as The Hermitage, I’m met by Hemmes’ housekeeper, Kirsty, who tells me he’s running late for our interview.

She leads me down a path and large sandstone steps towards the home’s entertainment terrace. Along the way we pass two garages full of cars. Hemmes owns a collection of mostly 1960s and ’70s-era muscle cars: Mustangs, Corvettes, Cobras. There’s also an ’80s Humvee, which is impossible to miss despite the camouflage paint job. It was once used in military parades, and can withstand landmines and a certain type of missile strike, in case you’re wondering.

There are nine or so cars in Hemmes’ garages with number plates that identify them as JH1, JH2 … The classic muscle cars are popular with his daughters Alexa, 6, and Saachi, 4, especially the convertibles. They love being out in them with the roof down, hearing the throaty roar of their engines, much more so than travelling in the sensible black Range Rover their dad also owns.

I take a seat on the terrace beneath a large olive tree and wait for Hemmes. The Hermitage, which dates back to the 1840s, has a panoramic view of the harbour and its famed bridge. It’s breathtaking, even on this overcast, still afternoon in May. Out on the harbour, ferries and yachts glide effortlessly past, while closer to land seaplanes buzz in and out, depositing well-to-do passengers at neighbouring mansions.

This is where Hemmes and his sister Bettina, the older by nine years, grew up. It was bought in 1974 by their father John, a businessman of Dutch heritage and survivor of a World War II prisoner-of-war camp, and mother, Merivale, a fashion designer whose clothes were worn by celebrities ranging from Liza Minnelli and Marlene Dietrich to Cher and Mick Jagger. As the property stretches down towards the harbour, there’s a pool, a hidden bath and a boat jetty, while small beach coves dot the water’s edge, forming part of the national park’s Hermitage Foreshore walk. From there, the grubby hoi polloi can rubberneck at how the privileged live.

After 20 minutes of waiting on the terrace, my phone rings with an incoming FaceTime call. It’s Hemmes, who’s on his electric bike, making the half-hour commute from his office in the Sydney CBD to his home. I see a light blue shirt, bike helmet and AirPods as his tanned face and aquiline nose fill my screen. “Sorry I’m late. I’m going to be another 10 to 15 minutes,” he says, as trees and clouds whizz overhead. “I hope Kirsty is looking after you.” Kirsty has indeed been very attentive; I expect the place would fall apart without her.

Hemmes runs the Merivale restaurant, pub, bar and hotel empire, the largest of its kind in the country, and arguably the most successful. He’s often at his venues until 3am, which means he probably spends more time at work than at this 7000-square-metre home.

Three decades ago, Hemmes made a brash entry into the Australian dining and nightlife scene, introducing new restaurants, bars and clubs with high-quality food and drink, and a keen sense of style and glamour. Properties such as Sydney’s Hotel CBD, Slip Inn and Establishment lifted the bar for the entire industry and quickly attracted everyone from the hottest, youngest crowds to celebrities such as Tom Cruise and royalty like Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik. The latter met his Australian wife, Mary Donaldson, at Slip Inn.

Today, Hemmes is Sydney’s undisputed hospitality king, with many of Merivale’s 104 outlets continuing to be dining sensations, from Totti’s, Mimi’s and Mr. Wong to Fred’s, while his Ivy entertainment precinct in the city remains regularly packed with customers – even on weekdays, when many prefer to stay working from home.

“Justin has reinvented the hospitality wheel,” says rival Stu Laundy, whose family runs the Laundy Hotels group. “When Justin takes over an asset, it pretty quickly is a much better offering under him and his teams of people. He’s certainly got a great imagination.”

For those who’ve danced at Merivale’s clubs, downed drinks at its bars and eaten at its restaurants, there are plenty more to come. Hemmes plans to open a further dozen outlets across NSW and Victoria after going on a $350 million spending spree over the past two years – a time when most of his venues were shut for months by the pandemic, and the business was haemorrhaging millions in revenue each week.

With the bulk of Merivale’s 4500 staff on JobKeeper, Hemmes snapped up more venues for them to work in on their return. To do so he renegotiated and expanded Merivale’s debt facility, believed to be about $500 million, with its main lender, the Commonwealth Bank. Of the $350 million splurge, some went on properties in Sydney and the NSW coast, from Byron Bay to Narooma, but almost a third was spent expanding into Victoria, where Merivale acquired the famed Lorne Hotel on the Great Ocean Road and the multi-storeyed Tomasetti House in Melbourne’s Flinders Lane. More still will be spent giving these properties the Merivale makeover.

“When Justin takes over an asset, it pretty quickly is a much better offering under him and his teams of people. He’s certainly got a great imagination.”

Laundy says Merivale has been his family company’s main competition for the past decade, as they bid against each other on properties. “We run into Justin quite often. He’s got a very keen eye and if he’s on to something, I know that we’re on the right track.”

Hospitality is foremost about pleasing people, and Hemmes, who failed the first semester of his university business degree and dropped out, has mastered it. In so doing, he’s achieved the goal he put down in his school annual at The Scots College: to become an entrepreneur – one who’s built his family fortune to $1.12 billion today.

As he’ll tell you, it got there because he lives and breathes it. Born into an affluent family, he also had a good head-start. His parents made their money in property and fashion, and later by starting a fledgling restaurant and bar business in Sydney. But while they were wealthy, their millions were never significant enough to put them on the nation’s rich list. Now, with that $1.12 billion fortune, Hemmes has put his family in the elite club of the 150 wealthiest Australians.

And he’s about to risk it all with his most audacious plans yet: to build a skyscraper on the sprawling Ivy site on Sydney’s George Street, which some property developers estimate would cost as much as $300 million to build, and also the development of a new entertainment precinct surrounding his first property, the Hotel CBD on Sydney’s King Street. Hemmes describes the plans as the “biggest challenge of my life” and a “game-changer” for Merivale. The last time Hemmes bet so big was when he was developing Ivy – the very time that Merivale almost went under.

To fill in time while I wait for Hemmes, I wander into the kitchen off the terrace and look at the drawings by his daughters taped from floor to ceiling on the glass walls and door. The girls, who he sees regularly, live with his former partner, model Kate Fowler, in a $7.5 million house Hemmes bought for them in nearby Dover Heights. Photos of his daughters, parents and extended family are dotted around the adjoining dining and living rooms.

I step back outside and walk across the lawn towards the harbour when I notice a flash of colour on the upstairs level of the house. A waif-like person has flitted past the wall-to-floor windows in this wing of The Hermitage, which features a castellated tower that would be at home in Rapunzel. I realise it must be Hemmes’ girlfriend Madeline Holtznagel, a 26-year-old model. Just as I’m wondering if she’ll come down and say hello, Hemmes finally arrives.

He apologises again for being late, quipping he’d be late to his own funeral, and offers to make coffee, heading off to the kitchen. “Soy milk okay?” he asks over his shoulder. Hemmes has changed from his cycling gear into white sneakers, black pants and a black short-sleeved shirt. At more than 180 centimetres tall, he is rangy-limbed, with sandy-coloured hair pulled back into a small man-bun, blue eyes and a scraggly beard flecked with grey.

As our chat moves inside, Hemmes explains that he cycles to and from work most days for exercise. He occasionally drives when it’s raining, which it has been a lot lately, but most of his cars are like artworks to him, collected for their craftsmanship. “They’re incredible pieces of machinery, incredible pieces of design.” And the Humvee? “Driving to work, you never know!” he laughs.

Hemmes not only collects cars, but races them as well. In late May, he spent half a day zooming around Bathurst’s Mount Panorama in a Porsche. Bathurst is a three-hour drive from Sydney; naturally, he got there on his private jet. Over the years, Hemmes has competed in car races, won and lost some, and had accidents, spinning and flipping cars off the tracks.

“If you’re not having accidents, you’re not driving hard enough,” he says of the bingles he’s had on and off the track. In his 20s, there were multiple speeding tickets, a drink-driving conviction and the $290,000 Scarab speedboat he flipped with friends on board on Sydney harbour, some of whom suffered minor injuries. It’s a reflection of the risk-taking attitude he applies to both his personal and professional life.

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Hemmes, who turns 50 in August, is still moving in the fast lane. He has the rich boys’ toys: the private jet, a seaplane, the luxury cars, a stake in a private island (Haggerstone in Far North Queensland) and multiple marvellous holiday homes. He attends endless parties and fundraisers for charities, politicians, celebrities and businesses, slipping frictionlessly between the different social sets. He enjoys other extreme sports, too, such as kitesurfing, and is once again jet-setting internationally.

“Justin is someone who every minute of the day has something going on,” says his friend of more than two decades, James Symond. “He’s either out kitesurfing, four-wheel-driving or scuba diving. It’s like he’s got a limited amount of time, and he’s a man with a mission to fill up that time.”

Hemmes has always had beautiful, young girlfriends, too, which has earned him a dual reputation as a playboy and one of the nation’s most eligible bachelors. He’s been dating Holtznagel, whom he affectionately calls “Maddie Mumu”, for almost two years. The age difference has raised eyebrows, with some wondering if and when he will truly settle down.

The commentary on his personal life, and tags such as playboy, annoy sister Bettina, who works on the interior design of Merivale’s properties and is considered by many to bring the aesthetic flair to the empire. “It’s always really bugged me, because he’s so hard-working.” She tells a story about the 2018 opening of Totti’s in Bondi. “We arrived with Mum, and the rain was crazy, and water was coming in, and Jus disappeared. And we’re like, ‘Where’s he gone?’ He finally comes back and he’d been up clearing the gutters,” she says. “That kind of thing happens a lot with him.”

For his part, Hemmes shrugs off the gossip about his love life and hedonistic lifestyle. “I just do what I love. I never really analyse those sorts of things.” He says the playboy tag has been around for a long time. “What’s a playboy? Someone who has a lot of fun? Maybe I’m guilty of that, but I get much more pleasure out of working, building and creating rather than living a life of leisure.” I ask if he thinks he will ever marry. “I had two kids with Kate. In my definition of life, we were married. I will see where life takes me.”

“What’s a playboy? Someone who has a lot of fun? Maybe I’m guilty of that, but I get much more pleasure out of working, building and creating rather than living a life of leisure.”

Symond says Hemmes is open and honest with those with whom he has relationships. “There’s nothing sinister about Justin, he just loves to love. Do I see him having more children? Absolutely. Do I see him necessarily with a marriage certificate? I wouldn’t bet on it.” Symond, who helped build Aussie Homes Loans with his uncle, founder John Symond, says it’s easy to misinterpret his friend from his public persona.

“To look at Justin and think he’s simply a party boy who’s out for a good time, you do so at your peril, because he has a tremendous amount of layers. He’s one of the smartest people I know, and one of the hardest workers I know. Justin grew up in a very wealthy environment, but he took a small fortune and turned it into a bloody big one, and he hasn’t done that out of luck. He’s done that out of strategic thinking, with a wonderful vision and taking some serious risks.”

In the circles he mixes in, Symond knows many people who’ve inherited wealth and chosen not to work. “Half the time it’s just as easy for many of them to say, ‘I’ll just manage my money, or I’ll sit on the couch, or I’ll go on holidays permanently.’ Justin didn’t need to work but he and his sister, Bettina, decided to give it a go, and they’re bloody good at it.”

Just how good will be the question Hemmes has to answer if he proceeds with his plan for a skyscraper on the Ivy precinct, which includes a warren of laneways and is home to at least 13 Merivale outlets, as well as a ballroom and penthouse that are used for functions. Hemmes envisages a multi-use tower that will redefine the space between how people work and play, and he wants it to be a magnet to draw them back into the city. It will test the fortune he’s built and his relationship with the banks.

“Ivy was always bought as a development site, and the building that we put there was always a holding site,” he says as we sip our soy-milk coffees. “The time is right to do a redevelopment that speaks to George Street and reimagines how people work, connect and socialise in the city. We have to create amazing spaces in the city to encourage people back into the city. We have to reimagine how they work, what a workplace looks like, and blur the lines between the workplace and social space and the public space.”

When I remark that that’s going to cost quite a lot of money, and ask what the amount might be, Hemmes laughs. “To me in business, it’s always about trying to create something special and then making it work financially. It’s driven by the concept and then backed up by a financial plan.” He refuses to talk numbers; nor is he keen to put a timeframe on the realisation of that dream, which was first mooted in 2018.

A skyscraper would be a huge gamble. “With all his success in the past, he’ll probably get it going,” predicts Stu Laundy. “You get to a size where you’re getting too big to fail. He’s got a very large portfolio backed up by some incredible properties. If he builds a skyscraper on his whole Ivy complex, he may have a monument as the CBD grows in strength in the next five years.”

It seems the only thing bigger than Hemmes’ hospitality group and his lifestyle is his ambition, as he scales up to disrupt himself. “Everything has to continue to evolve,” he says. “Everything has to continue to get better.”

While Hemmes seems to live a charmed life, it hasn’t always been easy. There was a time when he wasn’t so confident. In his 20s, he was hospitalised three times for anxiety. “When something went wrong, I’d be like, ‘It’s the end of the world. Oh, how could that happen to me?’  ” he says, putting on a high-pitched voice.

A friend, Richard Jones, intervened, dragging Hemmes to a seminar at the Sydney Entertainment Centre by America’s master motivator, Tony Robbins. Hemmes was a reluctant attendee, considering such events that promise to unleash the power within oneself to be something of a cult.

In his 20s, he was hospitalised three times for anxiety … Then, he says, “I learnt one thing …”

“It actually changed my life,” he says. “I learnt one thing, which was: your perception is your reality. So, you can perceive the same thing in so many ways and that becomes your reality. For example, the death of a loved one, you can see it as a positive, rather than a negative. Rather than, ‘I don’t have this person in my life any more and how am I going to survive?’ Instead, you go, ‘What a wonderful contribution this person has had on me, or put into my life. I’ve learnt so much.’ ”

For Hemmes – who yes, eventually walked on hot coals at Robbins’ seminar – it was a light-bulb moment. He started applying the lesson to his life, and the
anxiety dissipated. “It’s how you deal with stuff, and it’s anything from a break-up to a business kerfuffle to bad news or good news.”

Hemmes admits he was nevertheless a wreck when he developed Ivy, the project of which he’s still the most proud. The ambitious $150 million precinct opened in 2008, just before the global financial crisis. Sydney had nothing like it. It was Hemmes’ vision, but it overstretched the company financially. There were rumours of cost blowouts of as much as $50 million, caused by lengthy delays and approval processes, which were sucking Merivale’s cash flow dry.

The rumours fed fears Merivale would collapse, and customers started cancelling bookings and functions. As pressure grew from Merivale’s banking syndicate, Commonwealth Bank and St. George, Hemmes nearly pulled the pin on it. He credits his dad and one banker in particular, Gail Kelly, who was at St. George and who would later become Westpac’s chief executive, with helping him through it. While Merivale survived, some have ever since been waiting for Hemmes to fail.

Of course, there have been other missteps too, both personally and professionally. Some years ago, there were embarrassing claims that Hemmes had an Establishment staff member, who was alleged to have stolen money,
illegally strip-searched by his security staff. The case was settled out of court.

There were also headlines in 2018 when he and his family refused to recognise his half brother, Edward Cameron, whom his father had with a mistress, but never met. The NSW Supreme Court awarded Cameron $1.75 million from the estate of John Hemmes, who died in 2015.

Hemmes says the risks he takes today with Merivale are more calculated than they were in his youth. “I’m so hungry to create and to continue to grow the business,” he says. “The talent pool that we have is so strong, and they’re also really hungry, and they want to do more. So, I’m giving them the tools to do more,” he says about the $350 million in recent acquisitions. “I haven’t even touched the surface on where I’m going. This is probably the most exciting time in my life now. The businesses that we’ve got and the projects that we’re undertaking; having kids. You only have one life, you have to enjoy what you do and be passionate about it. The business is my life.”

In Hemmes’ mind, the only things holding him back are time and the number of venues he can acquire and develop. The reality, of course, is that there are other challenges. There are staff shortages after the international border was closed for nearly two years, and prices for venues, particularly pubs, have hit record highs. Hemmes snaps up property as if it’s a game of Monopoly, and like his father, prefers to own rather than rent.

Another significant cloud on his horizon is the $129 million class action brought against Merivale by Canberra law firm Adero, which alleges the hospitality group underpaid thousands of former staff. Similar cases of alleged wage theft have hit a number of other hospitality operators in recent years, from Neil Perry to George Calombaris, as well as listed companies such as supermarket giant Woolworths. The latter has agreed to repay current and former staff $420 million after it faced an action brought by Adero.

Adero’s managing director Rory Markham didn’t respond when asked about the Merivale case, where it alleges Merivale’s WorkChoice agreement short-changed penalty rates and other entitlements for a decade, and was never validly approved in the first place, and that staff should have been paid industry award rates at all times. Hemmes is reluctant to discuss the case because it’s before the Federal Court, saying only: “Staff have always been the most important part of our business. My staff know how passionate I am about caring for them and for the workplace and creating a great experience.”

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In terms of how he survived the pandemic, Hemmes says he initially thought the lockdowns might last a few weeks, months at worst. He gave a one-off payment of $550 to each of his staff in the first week after shuttering all of Merivale’s businesses. When it became apparent this was going to be bigger than anyone thought, he began lobbying the government and his close friend
Josh Frydenberg, then federal treasurer, for government support. As the JobKeeper policy was designed, Hemmes was one of four businessmen consulted by Frydenberg.

“We were in a lucky and in a very unique position that we are of a scale that could weather the storm,” he says, declining to provide detail on exactly how they did that. Pre-pandemic, Merivale’s annual revenues were believed to be close to $400 million.

“I don’t really like to discuss the financials,” he says. Along with his sister and mother, Hemmes controls an elaborate network of privately-owned companies and family trusts, which make it impossible to get an accurate picture of Merivale’s financial position. What is certain is that growing at Hemmes’ recent speed – including through a pandemic which triggered the
biggest hospitality shutdown in modern history – has been a high-wire act that would have required a lot of leverage, and a strong cash flow to service it.

Josh Frydenberg, James Symond, Seven Group Holdings chief executive Ryan Stokes, Built founder Marco Rossi and Warner Music Australasia president Dan Rosen are among Hemmes’ close friends, who all keep in touch via a WhatsApp group. Rosen, who’s known Hemmes for about a decade, says when COVID-19 hit, it was all about the Merivale staff. “To him that was paramount, his staff are like his extended family.”

The friends chat daily on WhatsApp. “It’s important to encourage people when they need it, and to also keep them on their toes when they might be getting a little too big for their boots,” laughs Rosen. “We all lead very busy lives and have challenging jobs, and some of us have very public profiles.” Symond says when Hemmes started in the family business, many of his friends were actually his employees. “His dad was very keen on saying, ‘Justin, you are who you’re hanging around with. You need to be with people that you love and respect, and who can help lift you up and can help focus your visions and your dreams in the future.’ ”

Symond recently celebrated his 50th birthday with a party at Hemmes’ upmarket Italian eatery Uccello, with 100 of his friends and family. Hemmes gave a speech, as did Ryan Stokes. At the end of the night, Symond went to settle the bill. “Justin turns around and gives me a hug and says, ‘Jimmy, I love you. I got it.’ I said, ‘Jus, mate, it’s a big bill, mate!’ He said, ‘Jimmy. I got it.’ It was a $70,000 bill!”

Merivale’s Lebanese restaurant Jimmy’s Falafel, also part of the Ivy precinct, is named after Symond. The two men share more than just friendship; Symond credits Hemmes with saving his life. Symond has multiple myeloma, the same cancer from which Hemmes’ father, John, died. A few years ago, Symond was in hospital receiving treatment when Hemmes came by one morning for a visit, bringing breakfast.

“Justin pops in with his big beaming face and says, ‘Breakfast!’ And I look at him, and obviously, I didn’t smile or anything. And he looks at me, and says, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy, what’s wrong?’ And I said, ‘I’m in the hospital, Jus, what do you expect?’ He said, ‘No, there’s something happening here, you’re turning white and grey.’ And I’ve gone, ‘Jus, leave me alone.’ ” Hemmes called the nurse who dismissed his concerns, so he demanded she get her superior, who diagnosed Symond as having a heart attack.

Many of the Merivale venues and wines take their names from family and friends. Mimi’s restaurant at Coogee, in Sydney’s east, is a nickname for Hemmes’ mother, Merivale, now 91 and one of his heroes. “She was an incredibly talented individual, my mum, a creative genius, who was so far ahead of her time. Mum was very business-focused and very family-focused. She worked incredibly long hours, and still looked after the family. She’s a mentor to me, she’s my idol.”

Bert’s Bar & Brasserie on Sydney’s northern beaches is named after Bettina, while Felix, the French brasserie in the city, gets its name from one of Bettina’s sons. The house wines on Merivale menus bear the names of all the Hemmes children. Fred’s takes its name from Bettina’s dog, while Charlie Parker’s, the basement bar at Fred’s, is named after her neighbour’s dog.

“Mum was very business-focused and very family-focused. She worked incredibly long hours, and still looked after the family. She’s a mentor to me, she’s my idol.”

Bettina had wanted to shorten the bar’s name to Charlie’s, as the space was once a shop occupied by a man called Charlie, who made and sold venetian blinds. “I said, ‘Why don’t we call it Charlie’s, it’s Charlie’s,’ ” she says. “And Jus just looked at me and said, ’We can’t call it Charlie’s – it means something else, ‘Teen.’ I said, ‘Ohhh, okay.’  ” Charlie is slang for cocaine.

James Symond was shocked when he learnt Hemmes had named a restaurant after him. He might have preferred a cigar bar, but Hemmes pointed out that no one smokes cigars any more. “How many friends do that, name a restaurant after you?” he asks. “And not only that, he makes a shitload of money out of it!”

Jimmy’s Falafel has proven to be another hit for Hemmes, with 20-plus people regularly queued outside the restaurant and another 20 waiting for their takeaway orders. However, not all of Merivale’s properties are so popular these days. Slip Inn, the go-to place of the mid-to-late ’90s, is today a shadow of its former self, while Establishment, the place to be in the 2000s, is only half-full with a business crowd on many weeknights.

As Merivale transformed from a property and fashion retail group with a couple of small bars and restaurants into the country’s dominant hospitality group, keeping the family culture from which it grew will become more challenging. As will convincing Melburnians that they want or need what a Sydney import has to offer.

“Melbourne is arguably a city at the vanguard of food and beverage in the Asia-Pacific,” says Andrew Jolliffe, managing director of HTL Property, Australia’s leading pub broker, who has sold a number of properties to Hemmes. “There’s a divide that has to be crossed between NSW and Victoria.” Unsurprisingly, Jolliffe predicts Hemmes will do it.

So does the man himself. “Restaurants, bars and clubs: I know how that model works. I know the modelling inside out. I can look at a room or a building, and I can tell you how much I will need to spend and how much it will return, and I will be within 10 per cent,” Hemmes says. “The ingredients are the same: great product, great service, great environment at a great price. I have amazing people around me. I live and breathe it. I’m at the venues until 3am. I’m at the restaurants and bars. I see everything.”

My afternoon with Hemmes has stretched well past 5.30pm, and he asks Kirsty if she can get a bottle of wine. It’s a French petit chablis. “You’re not driving, are you?” he asks. I agree to have a glass, but say I’ll have to depart shortly. Kirsty has already reminded him of another meeting. “They can wait,” he says. His Apple Watch hasn’t stopped buzzing in the few hours we’ve been chatting. A stream of notifications and calls has flooded in, which he’s swatted with the palm of his hand as if shooing a fly.

Wrapping up, he suggests that a key part part of his success has been that he never creates venues to be a fad. “If you want to make something successful, you have to invest in it, and you have to believe in it. I’m not one to do things by halves.”

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