In an industrial backstreet on the NSW Central Coast, Fabric Studio has created a home for Goons Brewing that combines a working brewery, neighbourhood pub and bodega with the easy familiarity of a mate’s particularly well-put-together garage.
Home to ‘Not Bad’ Aussie Lager and ‘Pretty Good’ XPA, Goons Brewing arrived at the project with an established identity and loyal local following. For Brent Fitzpatrick of Fabric Studio, the task was less about inventing a hospitality concept than translating that personality into a physical space.
“The brief was never about creating a polished craft beer destination,” says Fitzpatrick. “Goons already had an irreverent identity and a loyal local following. Our job was to give that personality a home.”
Completed in December 2025, the venue needed to accommodate more than brewing and drinking. A bodega, events space and rotating roster of food trucks all form part of the mix, while the working brewery itself remains central to the experience.
The existing industrial shell offered an appropriate starting point. Rather than disguising its concrete floors and exposed structure, Fabric Studio retained much of what was there and introduced warmer, more expressive layers through spotted gum, graphic tiles, stainless steel, hand-painted signage and custom furniture.
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The approach was also driven by budget. As an owner-run venue, the project relied on simple interventions and the skills of the wider Goons community rather than highly polished, bespoke construction. Carpenter friends built the timber elements, while sprayed drainage mesh was repurposed to create the bar gantry façade. Affordable tiles were mixed across different colours to form graphic patterns and even the beer taps were fabricated by a friend who happened to be a plumber.
“As an owner-run hospitality venue, creating a venue with soul in a cost-efficient way was important,” says Fitzpatrick. “The existing concrete floor became a key part of the material palette, with layers of texture and personality added through simple, resourceful interventions that could largely be achieved by the owners and their network of mates on site.”
That hands-on process gives Goons much of its character. The owners painted parts of the venue themselves, sourced furniture and worked alongside the design team throughout construction. It is deliberately removed from the polished language that has come to define many contemporary breweries, instead drawing from a more eclectic set of references: early 1990s Australian graphic design, the classic Australian pub, New York diner booths and the colour and energy of Latino street food culture.
At the entrance, the bodega brings those influences together most clearly. Unexpected within the industrial surrounds of Berkeley Vale, it doubles as a merchandise store and DJ booth, with hand-painted signage by El Oso Negro helping establish a strong presence from the street.
“The bodega at the entry is a favourite,” says Fitzpatrick. “It’s the last thing you would expect in the industrial backstreet of Berkeley Vale, but it works as a part-time merch store, part-time DJ booth. The hand-painted signage by El Oso Negro makes the shop.”
This sense of arrival was particularly important given the brewery’s tucked-away location. Colour, signage and activity provide a beacon from the street before drawing visitors deeper into the working brewery.
Custom furniture by Walk the Plank Collective introduces another layer of warmth, particularly the ruched upholstery wrapping the booth seating. Its softness sits against the harder concrete, stainless steel and utilitarian elements of the brewery without erasing their industrial character. Smaller details follow the same resourceful logic, including a basin assembled from inexpensive tiles.
For Fitzpatrick, these moments capture the project at its best. “It’s a unique detail that really sums up the hands-on character of the project.”
Behind the looseness is a practical plan shaped around the operational demands of brewing. Furniture is designed to be readily moved because, once a week, forklifts need access to the brewery tanks. Rather than treating those requirements as something to conceal, the design accommodates the working life of the building as part of its identity.
Fabric Studio also approached the project as a masterplan rather than a completely resolved fit-out. The owners can continue adding to the venue progressively, with each intervention fitting within a broader framework. That ongoing evolution feels appropriate for a place already shaped so heavily by the people who own, make and gather within it.
Goons Brewing ultimately achieves hospitality interior as a framework for community. Things can be moved, added and changed as the venue develops, while the brewery remains the backdrop for locals, musicians, artists, food trucks and whoever else happens to wander in. For a brand built around the promise of being ‘Not Bad’ and ‘Pretty Good’, there is little interest here in taking itself too seriously.
Fabric Studio
fabricstudio.au
Photography
Alexander McIntyre
