David Spanton

Coming Up

Training at Albion High School and an early job at St. Gobain sit outside hospitality, but they frame a career built on initiative and on reading value in places others might overlook. David Spanton later founded Australian Bartender, a platform that put his name into the trade conversation well beyond his own venues. That same instinct shows up in the way he works with existing rooms: not as blank slates, but as businesses with history, risks and potential. Piccolo Bar became the clearest example of that approach. In 2021, David Spanton saved and rebooted the Kings Cross venue as an aperitivo bar, keeping the old address in play while shifting its function for a new moment. The move was not about replacing the site’s past; it was about giving it a workable future.

Where They Are Now

Ownership of Piccolo Bar in Kings Cross and Vermuteria in Potts Point places David Spanton in two nearby pockets of Sydney hospitality, with a style that reads as compact, urban and direct. Piccolo Bar, now operating as an aperitivo bar, continues a venue with deep local roots. Vermuteria extends that same footprint into Potts Point, where the offer is shaped by the room, the street and the pace of the neighbourhood. The thread running through Spanton’s work is stewardship. He has stepped into venues at moments when they needed intervention, and his method has been to preserve what already carries weight while adjusting the format to keep it viable. In a trade where turnover is common, that kind of rescue work matters.

In Their Words “The Piccolo Bar, is the oldest café in Kings Cross, dating all the way back to 1952. In 2020, I heard that it was about to be lost forever and so I felt compelled to take the plunge and try to save this hospitality venue.”