Varsity used to be as simple as burgers, sports on the big screen and cheap beer.
Then the brains of the chain realised that over the course of a decade, Perth punters — like themselves — had grown a bit. They now want even more ‘experience’ from a trip to the pub.
The result is Varsity’s ninth outlet, a magnificently fitted out Albany Highway megamart site and literal game-changer offering Perth’s first chance to try duckpin bowling.
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When it opens on Saturday, Varsity Cannington will become the biggest of the outlets dotted across the suburbs of Perth, with room for about 1000 people and a step up in all it offers, too.
“The thing that you notice is the scale, in that it is everything amplified,” Varsity Group operations manager Jake Curnow told PerthNow during a walk-through tour this week.
“Its just a bit damn bigger and a bit damn better. I think it will blow people away when they walk in the door.”
Like other Varsity bars, there are sports screens everywhere you look.
But this one has more of them, including a giant one in the beer garden, along with an amusement arcade with about 50 machines and its own redemption store, no less than 88 beers on tap, Varsity’s menu of food and cocktail favourites, a function room and plenty of high tables so there won’t be a bad seat in the house.
Then there’s the eight-lane duckpin alley, which Varsity hopes will be an inviting and lucrative point of difference in Perth’s thriving competitive socialising sector.
Duckpin is like — bit not quite — tenpin bowling.
For starters, the pins are smaller and more stout, and the ball you heave at them has no finger holes and bears closer resemblance to a grapefruit or shot put than a tenpin bowling ball.
The alley is short, special dorky shoes aren’t required, and there’s a number of fun games to choose from that don’t always involve trying to knock down all the pins.
“What this really does is adds to the experience and gives you a place to spend the day,” Mr Curnow said.
“If you’re coming down with kids, you can send them into the arcade for an hour or so while you enjoy a beer and watch West Coast play, or you can come and enjoy the games with them.
“Have a beer, go play some arcade games, do some bowling and then sit down because the footy’s about to start. And then you can go have that bowling challenge again.”
The scale of the Cannington bar is a far cry from the hole-in-the-wall operation that was Varsity’s original incarnation in Nedlands in 2013.
Mr Curnow said each bar opened since had been a required step-up to stay relevant in the market, and Cannington was no different.
“Much like our customers, we’ve also grown up a little bit here as well,” he said.
“We started off dealing with uni students, and now we’re at the point where we are dealing with (those people who are here as) dad for the first time, and he’s bringing his kid down for the first time so he can watch the footy and relive what it was like going to uni at UWA.
“What’s going to keep them coming is the experience they get here.”
