Bills up

It seemed like one of the saddest hospitality stories of COVID: one of Sydney’s most famous cafes was to close — a victim of the pandemic and changing fortunes.

But a few months after Bills Darlinghurst 'closed' and the premises were put up for an October 22 sale, it reopened. And owner Bill Granger now has no plans to close the cafe that launched his career.

“It’s staying open,” Granger tells Local Paddo via Zoom from London, where he is in lockdown with his family. (His four London cafes are presently shuttered due to restrictions, offering only takeaway.)

He says conditions locally have changed so much in Sydney since the 2020 lockdown that the group now has no plans to shutter any local venues, and in fact is about to launch a new Bills — its fourth in Sydney, in Double Bay.

“The lockdown was crazy, because everything was suddenly closed,” he says. “We had all these costs and absolutely no income. Darlinghurst was so small we couldn’t do the numbers to make it work to stay open during shutdown.”

But he says the easing of restrictions has seen his Australian empire, which includes cafes in Bondi and Surry Hills, bounce back.

“We had our biggest Sunday in a year this weekend across all the [Sydney] cafes, it was huge,” he says. “Strangely, trade has just come back again. People want to get out.”

For all the worrying times, both in Sydney and across the world, Granger remains eternally optimistic about the cafe business he launched in Darlinghurst in 1993.

“Double Bay was meant to happen last year but all this mucked it up,” he says of the COVID crisis. “But it is such a great spot. We’re really, really excited about it.”

Bills Darlinghurst

433 Liverpool St, Darlinghurst