I sit down with Jason Williams — Director at Housemade Hospitality in Sydney, spirits evangelist turned venue operator, and the man with his face on a gin that became the official pour of the Singapore Sling.

Jason's path into hospitality was deliberate from the start — Eagle Boys Pizza at 13, a Hyatt Regency resort, nightclubs in Brisbane, cocktail bars in Melbourne, and eventually a Group Bars Manager role at Keystone before getting headhunted to Singapore to run the bar consultancy arm of Proof and Company. Over eight years, he worked on some of the most significant bar openings in Asia Pacific — Raffles, Atlas, a $500M Four Seasons in Seoul — before returning to Sydney to co-found Housemade Hospitality with his business partners.

Housemade now operates 13 venues, including four across the heritage-listed Hinchcliffe House at Circular Quay. They hit five years this year. One of those venues had to close. Jason talks about that too.

We get into what scaling a group actually costs you — your attention, your relationships, your ability to taste every cocktail in every bar. He shares where he thinks bar consultancy is heading, why he thinks most people are using AI like embarrassing Facebook posts from 2010, and what it means to miss your best friend's wedding for a bar opening and know, without much doubt, that you'd probably do it again.