The Maybe Group and Jon Adgemis’ Public Hospitality Group end partnership

Jon Adgemis’ Public Hospitality was hit with another blow today when the operator of award-winning Sydney CBD cocktail bar Maybe Sammy and Randwick pizzeria Maybe Frank decided to split from the group.

Maybe Group founders Vince Lombardo and Stefano Catino announced the end of the partnership with Public on Friday, July 12.

“Stef and I believe we can best serve our venues by bringing them back under The Maybe Group’s wing,” Lombardo says.

Lombardo says the running of Paddington tequila bar El Primo Sanchez will also “transition” from Public to The Maybe Group through a licence agreement, a move complicated by the pub in which it operates being listed for sale this week.

This follows hatted Greek restaurant Alpha leaving the Public portfolio last month and an abrupt collapse of a business partnership with Love Tilly Group last year. Lombardo concedes these events have “obviously had an impact” but says Adgemis has supported their decision.

Public’s operations have grown quickly in recent years, ranging from Sydney’s Oxford House to Melbourne venues with star chefs Karen Martini (at Saint George) and Guy Grossi (Puttanesca at The Clifton Hotel). It announced its milestone deal with Maybe Group in April 2023.

Named after jazz icon Sammy Davis Jr, Maybe Sammy debuted on the World’s 50 Best Bars list in 2019 as the best bar in Australasia, a feat it has repeated every year since. Public came knocking to collaborate on the February 2023 launch of El Primo Sanchez, a Mexican-inspired bar in a hotel Public snapped up on Oxford Street, Paddington.

Sanchez’s success led to Public’s approach to acquire the Maybe Group in early 2023. While the terms of the arrangement are undisclosed, the Maybe Group deal wasn’t a big-ticket play compared to other agreements Public had made – for example, the $68 million it forked out for the Noah’s Backpackers building in Bondi in 2022.

It was, however, important from an operational and conceptual perspective. The plan was for Lombardo and Catino to lend their hospitality nous to Public’s rapidly expanding portfolio of pubs, bars and restaurants.

Lombardo told Good Food last year his group would thoroughly review the existing Public venues to see how their hospitality offering could be finessed.

But a month after the Maybe Group deal was announced, a story in The Australian Financial Review outlined Public’s level of debt. The group has been under the microscope since some agitated lenders emerged and its acrimonious parting in November with Love Tilly Group, with which it had partnered on projects in Balmain and Redfern.

But Public bec​ame weighed down by debt, a​nd Adgemis spent months hunting for a refinancing deal. After a failed $500 million refinancing attempt and alleged tax raids, the group reportedly recently secured a $400 million lifeline. Adgemis, a former KPMG dealmaker, struck the deal with a consortium led by Deutsche Bank.

Catino confirmed the end of the partnership would not disrupt the operation of the three venues.

“Although Maybe Sammy and Maybe Frank have been under the Public umbrella for the last year or so, we have continued to operate them as our own, so there will be no change to the guest experience in those venues or El Primo Sanchez,” he says.

Public Hospitality has been approached for comment but did not respond in time for publication.