Small bars, big dreams in Cairns
Former Sydneysiders Darren and Jacqui Barber missed having a small local bar to drop into when they moved to Cairns, so they created one in the city called Three Wolves.
Then they made themselves quite busy indeed, opening another one - a tiki bar called Flamingos - and another one - a bar attached to their Wolf Lane gin distillery, and another one - Fox small wine bar in the Cairns suburb of Stratford ... and a homewares and coffee shop!
"We were based in Sydney; born and bred there."
"We sold a business in Sydney and wanted to get out of that rat race. We’d just got married in Port Douglas and we decided to sell up in Sydney and move up here to Cairns. We had no plans, no jobs.
"We opened a bar"
"When we moved to Cairns, we noticed there was a lack of the small bars like the ones we used to drink in – ones for locals – so we thought what better way to fix it than open a bar ourselves."
A few years on, and the couple now run three small bars (one attached to their gin distillery) as well as a coffee shop that sells plants and homewares. They have added to their little family too. Son, Harley is 3.
"Really good reception from day one"
"We got a really good reception from day one. We had a line up on opening day for the bar, and it hasn’t really slowed down since.
"What we found was that Cairns has a lot of really like-minded people, and we live somewhere that is absolutely stunning. It’s so easy to go on adventures here, and less stressful… more affordable. For us, starting a family, it made so much sense.
"Cairns has the infrastructure now to run any type of business in the world."
"With what we’re doing, we’re trying to create a culture as well as a business. We serve the local community, particularly those in the few suburbs nearby to our businesses and we found that we had built a loyal customer base really quickly.
"So much room to expand in Cairns"
"There’s so much room to expand like this in Cairns … in the restaurant scene, clothing scene, shopping… there’s just plenty of room for growth."