Musical cheers: Rocky Ridge to take over Fox Friday’s Perth venue in brewery-go-round

South West craft brewer Rocky Ridge Brewing Co. will take over the Fox Friday brewpub in Burswood. The award-winning brewery based in Jindong, which has venues in Busselton, Duncraig and Melbourne, confirmed it had acquired the business from NSW brewer Mountain Culture. The rebranded Rocky Ridge Burswood will open in late August, according to Rocky Ridge which will operate the venue via a license agreement with a third-party hospitality operator. Fox Friday went into liquidation in April due to what its owners described as “significant financial challenges”. A month later Mountain Culture, which counts Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins as an investor, bought the struggling brewery’s assets from administrators but decided it was not possible to run the WA brewpub from the east coast. Confirming the acquisition following queries from The West Australian, Rocky Ridge owners Mel Holland and Hamish Coates said the possibility of taking over Fox Friday’s former Perth home arose during a catch-up with Mountain Culture founder DJ McCready to discuss new beer collaborations. “The opportunity for us to take over the Burswood venue was casually mentioned,” Mr Coates said via email. “It instantly felt like the perfect fit.” Given that the couple launched their first Perth venue, Rocky Ridge Duncraig, in February, opening a second metro outpost so soon is “nerve-wracking”. “Our team loves a challenge,” Ms Holland added. “This new location also gives us a chance to centralise our Perth distribution, reducing our carbon footprint (and) inching us closer to our goal of reaching net zero.” Mr Coates said they’d been “blown away” by the support for the Duncraig taproom and looked forward to bringing a “little bit of our Rocky Ridge magic” to another community. “We’re seriously excited to keep growing as an independent, family-run brewery,” he added. Rocky Ridge Burswood will re-open after a refurbishment, including an expansion of the current 20-tap system to accommodate the brewer’s extensive roster of core, limited and seasonal releases. Port Hedland-born Benn Hooper and wife Sarah originally took over the failing Fox Friday microbrewery in Hobart in 2019, before expanding to venues in Victoria and WA. The Perth brewpub opened in April 2024 at the Burswood site previously occupied by Blasta Brewing, which moved to a venue further along the same street. Last month Mountain Culture, which opened a popular brewpub in a former Blue Mountains video store in 2019, acquired all of Fox Friday’s assets, including operations in Hobart, Melbourne and Perth, plus the Moonah Hotel and Cellars in Hobart and Melbourne’s Carwyn Cellars. On Tuesday, the brewery’s founder DJ McCready, who hails from Asheville, North Carolina, announced plans for the venues. While the Mountain Culture founder said the Richmond brewpub and Hobart taproom would both be rebranded as Mountain Culture venues, he would only say the Perth brewpub had been on-sold to an “awesome independent craft brewery from WA”. Mr McCready said running a WA business from the east coast was not possible. “We love Perth — people in WA support us in a big way — but the reality is that running a venue so far away, in the hands-on way we like to … feels like too big a stretch right now,” he wrote on Facebook. The previously Fox Friday-owned Moonah Hotel and Cellars in Hobart would continue to operate without change, while Carwyn Cellars in Melbourne would be sold back to its original owners, the Carwyn family. This latest acquisition follows Mountain Culture taking over the former home of Good Drinks Australia brand Atomic and launching joint venture Village with Wildflower Brewing and Blending, both in Sydney. In November last year Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins, who grew up in the Blue Mountains, came on board as the brewery’s first investor. In January, Mountain Culture scored a hat-trick of GABS Hottest 100 titles, taking top spot for the third consecutive year with its Status Quo Pale Ale. Even with those runs on the board, Mr McCready said this week that taking over Fox Friday’s assets was a “big move” for the burgeoning brewer. “We started as a humble brewpub in Katoomba and it’s never lost on us that the fans we first met there are what built this brand into what it is today,” he said. “Buying Fox Friday’s assets gives us a chance to create new fans and most importantly, new local communities. Connecting with them in the most authentic way possible… in person, at our pub.” Mr McCready said the sale of the Perth brewpub “will be a great move for fans of craft beer out west”.

Musical cheers: Rocky Ridge to take over Fox Friday’s Perth venue in brewery-go-round

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