Closing time: why Geelong hospitality venues are shutting up shop

PETE Raimondo made a hard call to close down his central Geelong venue nearly two years ago but believes it would have been worse if he tried to hang on.

 

Pistol Pete’s Food n Blues hosted bands and served meals in Little Malop Street for 10 years, but changes in visitation, more people working from home and rising costs were among the factors that led Raimondo to permanently shut the doors at the end of June 2024.

“You try to look at it from a non-biased point of view and say: ‘What do we need to do, can we keep on going or do we need to make some changes and what are those changes?,” he said.

“If it’s changes you can implement and if they work then you can keep on going, but sometimes there’s not really much you can do.

“So we looked at it without emotional ties, without it being you or your venue or your business that you’ve put a lot of work into; you don’t want to let it go.

“At a point you have to just have a good hard look and make the call that you need to make as opposed to the one you want to make.”

Raimondo said he could not speak for other operators but said shuttering his business at that time was the right call.

 

“Sometimes you can look forward and say: “Oh, it’s going to turn” but at that point I wasn’t confident,” he said.

“Had we not made that decision, we would have made it a little bit later and in a lot worse position.”

Pistol Pete’s Food n Blues is a recent example of a closed hospitality venue in Geelong’s CBD, and it is not the last.

Although the Australian Business Register states there are five more accommodation and food services businesses in the suburb of Geelong in March this year compared to March 2025, figures from the City of Greater Geelong reveal 19 food businesses in the suburb of Geelong closed in the 12 months between 1 May 2025 and 11 May this year. The shuttered venues include No. 10 James Street, Gooley’s and the Geelong Hotel.

Businesses closing before that included Mexican Graffiti, Wah Wah Gee and Atman Restaurant and Bar.

Piano Bar Geelong will add to the list of closures within weeks. Opening on Little Malop Street in 2015, the venue will have its last singalong in July, with owner Andy Pobjoy announcing last month he was shifting the business to a pop-up model.

 

“Hospitality businesses are always the canary in the coalmine,” he said.

“I know everyone says this, but we are the first ones to feel it when the the squeeze comes and then we’re the last ones to recover when the good times starts to come back.”

Pobjoy said he did not see a way for Piano Bar Geelong to survive the next 12 to 18 months.

“So I’m just calling it before we get into any trouble,” he said.

“We’re not trading at a loss. We’re certainly not making money. But already post-Easter, you can see the spend has completely dropped off. People are so worried about what’s around the corner.

“A lot of people have been ahead in their mortgage and being good at saving and all that sort of thing, but there’s so much uncertainty out there at the moment and it’s really playing into what people feel like they can spend and safely spend.

“Even if the Strait of Hormuz opened again tomorrow and oil went back to $65 or $70 a barrel, the tail on this is huge, it’s going to take a long time to wash through.”

Pobjoy said Piano Bar Geelong had been lucky to be popular for birthdays and hen’s nights but believed the culture of “just going out for the sake of it” had faded in Geelong.

 

Spending habits were now different, he said – people were previously spending 40 per cent on food and 60 per cent on alcohol on a night out, but this had flipped to 65 per cent food and 35 per cent alcohol.

“The patterns are changing and we can’t hold a gun to people’s heads and we can’t tell them they have to behave a certain way as a consumer or as a customer,” he said.

“But it throws our business model completely out the window if we don’t have a critical mass of people to give it an atmosphere and spending enough money to keep the lights on.”

Geelong mayor, Stretch Kontelj, said the city was consistently hearing about how it was a challenging time for some businesses.

“I will be meeting with several local traders over the coming weeks to assess these challenges and explore how the city can best support the issues they are facing,” he said.

“So far, they’ve raised a wide range of issues in central Geelong, including safety, parking, transport, homelessness and how the city is changing.”

He said the city was advocating for a Special Economic Zone in central Geelong to facilitate more building and more residential developments.

The city’s Business Concierge service received 445 enquiries for assistance and advice about regulatory requirements and permits, up 2.7 per cent from 2024, with 15 per cent of these coming from the suburb of Geelong.

“We’re committed to creating a more vibrant and welcoming central Geelong by activating public spaces and fostering a lively atmosphere,” the city’s acting executive director of growth and place, Jacquie Randles, said.

“Delivering events like Tastes of Greater Geelong in partnership with hospitality businesses and opportunities to operate on the Waterfront are just some of the ways we are supporting traders in central Geelong.”

Raimondo, who continues to work as a music promoter, said there was no one thing that would have kept the doors at Pistol Pete’s Food n Blues open, and the hardest part were the issues outside of his control such as increases to insurance.

Pobjoy said Geelong had enormous potential but he was proud to be able to close Piano Bar Geelong on his own terms.

“It’s time to make the tough decision and to go out on a high, and protect our brand and our reputation of being somewhere always fun to go to that’s always got an atmosphere and a bit of a vibe,” he said.