The team behind United States cocktail bars Death & Co has announced it’s launching two venues in Australia, with a stellar two-week training programme on the table for successful applicants to take place in June this year.
Due to open in Melbourne CBD and Brisbane in Spring 2025, the new bars will represent the Death & Co group’s fifth and six venues globally and the first outside the US. Their flagship venue launched in New York City in 2006 and has been a regular entrant on the World’s 50 Best Bars list. The group now also has locations in Los Angeles, Denver and Washington DC. More details on the Australian locations for both venues are yet to be revealed.
The group also revealed a recruitment search has begun for experienced venue managers and bar managers to lead the two new sites, with an enviable training and mentoring program based in the United States for the successful candidates.
A two-week training programme for those lucky enough to be selected for roles at the new venues includes flights to Death & Co locations in New York City for cultural immersion, Denver for hands-on training during service and Los Angeles as the last stop before returning to Australia to help realise the potential of the new Melbourne and Brisbane bars.
Signature drinks at the cocktail bars’ US venues include the Oaxaca Old Fashioned, Naked and Famous, and the Conference. All three feature in the bars’ 2014 book Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails, which includes 500 cocktail recipes. The book has been credited with lifting US interest in craft cocktails.
Australian Venue Co currently owns and operates over 200 pubs and bars across Australia, including Cargo Bar and The Winery in Sydney, and iconic Melbourne pubs like The Swan Hotel and Skinny Dog Hotel. The group has additional outposts in New Zealand via the New Zealand Venue Co. Further details on their involvement with the Australian Death & Co venues were not available at the time of publication.
Information on how to apply for roles at the new venues is available via Death & Co’s Melbourne website.
Photograph of Death & Co’s LA bar is not a representation of how the Australian venues will look. Supplied by Death & Co.
Greg Sunning
