Phil Cockman is the founder and owner of Canford Hospitality Consultants. His experience in hospitality, food and beverage and liquor licensing within Western Australia spans two decades. During this time, Canford has made a name for itself as a trusted brand within the world of liquor licensing.

Prior to this, Phil worked in major hotels and accommodation properties in Switzerland, England and Scotland. Further, he has worked for more than a decade in South East Asia. This portion of his career consequently included the Food and Beverage Manager position with the prestigious Singapore Cricket Club. As a result, Phil’s travels and work experience have placed him in good stead to continue leading Canford forward.

His time in Perth has seen Canford consult to clients all over metropolitan and regional areas.  For instance, he has worked for the Margaret River Wine Region and within the heart of Perth’s CBD. Moreover, he has worked all the way up to the North West shelf, Kalgoorlie and beyond.

Because of Canford’s scope and ability to work with clients big and/or small, local or regional, it provides us with unique perspective. This is a big advantage when it comes to consultation on any and all projects brought to our door.

Phil’s experience that he brings to the company is invaluable.  No operation/idea within our field that is out of reach. Because of this, he is always looking to provide assistance, guidance and consultation to any and all  businesses trying to begin/further their journey.

Applying for a tavern restricted licence means a public interest assessment is required, and the application itself had to go up for advertising. Further, given their intention to use the second floor of the Rowing WA building as the venue, a significant development / change of use application was required – which we assisted with, alongside the liquor licence application. This involved dealing with several different Government departments at the same time – something Canford has had experience in with projects like the City Beach food and beverage precinct, Bathers’ Beach House and the Beach Street Co. in Fremantle.

The Public Interest Assessment document was largely focused on Nic and Evan’s strong hospitality reputation and popularity that they have developed under the General Public banner. This, alongside their in depth vision they had for the premises, gave us a lot to write about from a public interest perspective and allowed us to put together a strong argument for the approval of their licence.

Throughout this process, Phil (our Director) consulted on various other aspects of this project – from kitchen & back of house layout, general compliance matters through to satisfying acoustic & parking issues in the development application.

An advertising requirement followed the lodging of the liquor licence application, which attracted numerous objections. What followed was a document exchange process in which Canford put forward further detailed submissions to address all issues raised by the objectors. This process took an extra few weeks but eventually, with all of the evidence and submissions lodged, the Director of Liquor Licensing approved the application and moved ‘The Rowing Pavilion’ tavern restricted licence to a conditional grant.

This was a great result considering the amount of time and effort put into the project purely from a liquor licensing side – and given that the objections process (at the time) delayed the overall project timeline, it was very satisfying to bring Nic & Evan the conditional approval.

From this point, Canford assisted where appropriate in helping the General Public team to move the project and fit-out towards completion. This involved assisting in the program towards opening, and ensuring all required documents and certificates were in place and attending Council and Licensing Authority inspections.

This project was a long-time coming, and we are very glad to have been a part of The Rowing Pavilion and it’s success. As of December last year, The Rowing Pavilion is open for trade and has already received a very warm welcome.

If you haven’t already, stop in for an early morning coffee, or an afternoon beer and pizza. Congratulations to the team and best of luck for the future.