18 minute read
Never Say Die: The Setbacks and Success of a Pub Family
from Hotel SA July 2023
by Boylen
BY DION HAYMAN
Half a century of hard work, risk taking and rebounding from setbacks are the enduring hallmarks of the Cassin family’s hotel journey.
On July 4 this year, Allen and Gina Cassin celebrated 30 years at The Grove, along with their son Daniel, who is the hotel’s general manager.
Thirty years is an incredible achievement - but it’s nearly 50 years since Gina set her future family’s course as a teenage girl.
YOUNG LOVE
At age 14 - yes, 14 years old - Gina started as office girl at the Enfield Hotel, working for Ron Myers.
He was an innovative and dynamic kind of leader and Gina picked up a lot of his traits.
Allen had just been discharged from the army. He was on a working holiday when he stopped in Adelaide and landed a job at the Enfield Hotel and fell in love with Gina.
The year was 1974. The couple were married three years later and spent two years running pubs in WA before returning to Adelaide.
That’s when Allen made the fortuitous decision to take a job at the Belair Hotel.
Here they met their now longstanding friend – Peter Hurley, his uncle Jock and their partners Jenny and Pat.
“Dad said in the early days, Jock was a bit apprehensive about them (Allen and Gina), but by the end they were best friends,” Daniel said.
The Cassins’ relationship with the Hurleys further evolved when Gina began working at the Hotel Royal in Torrensville.
Before long, it had morphed into a partnership as they joined forces to take over the lease of the Reservoir Hotel at Newton.
It was the advent of Sunday trading in the early 80s and no-one was quite sure how warmly it would be received, so they decided not to risk overstaffing and promptly assigned Gina to work as the chef on Sundays.
It wasn’t the greatest of decisions as hungry patrons waited - and waited and waited - for their meals.
Thirty years is an incredible achievement but it’s nearly 50 years since Gina set her future family’s course as a teenage girl.
“They realised pretty quickly that Mum wasn’t going to cut it as a chef,” Daniel laughed.
“I didn’t make it, put it that way,” Gina added.
A RISK - BUT NO REWARD
Undeterred, the Cassins decided to fly solo for the first time.
In a bold move, the enterprising couple took on the lease at the Kent Hotel, Port Adelaide, which would later become the Port Anchor.
The Cassins’ memories of that gruelling venture are testament to just how family-friendly hotels have become in recent decades.
Daniel: “Mum’s told me a couple of times they were scared for their life.”
Gina: “My body shakes when I think about it.”
Allen: “There were a lot of rough patrons that frequented the hotel, so much so the police wanted to put hidden cameras around the bars and stuff like that. I said, ‘will this be shown in court when you charge these people?’ and they said, ‘yes’ and I said, ‘well that puts our family in a little bit of bother’.”
Gina: “One day, I looked out the window and a ladder appeared in front of me and this guy was climbing up the ladder and heading for our room so we pushed the ladder away.”
Within 18 months, the Cassins had seen enough.
“It wasn’t our lifestyle,” Allen said. “We probably lost money there but it was something that wasn’t us.”
So, like the Colts’ abandonment of Baltimore in the dead of night in March, 1984, Allen and Gina set path for their own Indianapolis, without notice.
Quite simply, anywhere would do.
“The day we left,” Gina said, “we snuck out the door, no goodbye party. Nothing.”
That anywhere became the Marion Hotel where they worked and lived upstairs – and where they had baby Daniel, who is now 32.
Those modest digs were soon upgraded in the form of the penthouse on the fifth floor of the Arkaba when Allen was appointed manager of the Hurley Group’s latest acquisition.
A NORTH EAST ADVENTURE
Their biggest break and arguably most prudent decision was now within sight.
In time, the leaseholds for both the Hackney Hotel and the Golden Grove Tavern became available.
“Mum always tells me she didn’t even know where Golden Grove was,” Daniel said.
But if Allen didn’t know, he made sure to find out.
“We felt it was a growth area,” he said.
“Over the years, many people have come to me and said, ‘oh they’re running out of land at Golden Grove’ but they keep finding more land.
“Even now, they’re talking about 500 houses going up the road again.
“When I used to drive Daniel to school, I used to drive past sheep in the paddocks, now there’s all houses there.”
Although once bitten, the Cassins knew they couldn’t be twice shy about taking a punt on the Grove with the imminent arrival of gaming in SA.
It was a gamble that paid off in spades when they were offered the freehold of the pub within two years by the Hickinbotham Group, who even financed them at a friendly interest rate to take it.
But nothing worth having comes that easily.
TACTICAL ‘WARFARE’
The Cassins stumbled head first into fresh challenges in their new venture.
They had a vision for what they wanted their pub to look like and it didn’t include the bikies who frequented it.
Persuading them to move on resembled tactical warfare –replacing the beer cans they liked with stubbies, removing the posts from the front of the pub where they parked their bikes, slowly weeding out their girlfriends from serving as bar staff, and replacing the entire female bar staff with men.
Eventually, the bikies disappeared in disgust… but so too did the cash flow.
“We didn’t sleep at night for a while,” recalled Gina, who was equally concerned about retribution.
“After we got rid of the bikies, there was a lull and you thought, ‘this is not working’ for probably six months or a bit longer. I was worried about it but the business did come back,” Allen said.
“We put in things like Schnitzels Plus which is a really family-themed restaurant, there were about 20 schnitzel toppings you could choose from, a salad bar, a dessert bar, and we had Playstations for the kids too,” Daniel explained.
“And then we put in live music which is something we still have today.
“Some days, even as the operator, you think, ‘am I overspending here?’.
“But it’s worth it, even just having a solo artist on a Sunday can really bring a good atmosphere to the room. It’s that little bit extra that makes the feel of your room a lot better.”
DANIEL’S JOURNEY
Daniel has worked at the Grove since he was 12, bagging ice in support of the local football clubs.
By 16, he had left school to work full-time in the pub.
“I actually finished year 10 and have the highest education in the family,” he boasted.
“I did a little bit of front bar work before I was 18 but mainly in the bottle shop and then became a duty manager around 21.”
Daniel abandoned ship to work as Duty Manager at The Lion for two years, much to his parents’ dismay, but they all now agree it was a masterstroke.
“Doing something like that is the best thing you can do. You get experience from other people, you learn different ways to operate the hotel,” Daniel said.
He returned to the family business in 2017, giving Allen and Gina a wellearned break from the front line.
He takes great pride in their AHA|SA award won in 2009 for the Best Gaming Venue in Australia.
“That was a big achievement for us, we had just finished a major renovation on the room, our first since gaming was introduced to South Australia.”
And above all, he utilises the experience and knowledge of how to run a successful pub, chiselled out by Allen and Gina over nearly five decades’ of toil.
“Dad’s a good honest publican, he’s the one that sits in the front bar and has a pint with the customers.
“Mum’s the brains behind the business, the back office guru,” he said.
FRIENDS AND FORTITUDE
Gina is the first to admit having Peter Hurley in their corner has played no small part in their success.
“He’s given us opportunities that we probably wouldn’t have had,” she said.
“If we needed help financially, he was always there. I just can’t speak highly enough of Peter.”
But she crystallised the Cassins’ recipe for success with this:
“Just be prepared to work hard.
“And work with your staff – they’re not working for you, you have to work with them. Don’t sit back in your chair and just crack the whip.”
“A pub really is a 24-hour operation and you have to give it your all every day,” Daniel added.
“It’s hard work but it’s really rewarding.”
Oh, and another thing… employ a chef on Sundays.
