Nathan Toleman-Beyond Hospitality

Nathan Toleman is one of the entrepreneurs who helped reshape Melbourne’s modern hospitality landscape, building venues that became destinations in their own right and influencing the way a generation thought about cafés, restaurants and hospitality.

Nathan’s career began in hotels, where he developed an early fascination with the relationship between service, design, atmosphere and human connection.

That fascination eventually took him into Melbourne’s rapidly evolving café culture.

From Liar Liar and Three Bags Full to Top Paddock, The Kettle Black and Higher Ground, Nathan built a succession of venues known not simply for food and coffee, but for the complete experience around them.

In 2011 he founded The Mulberry Group, expanding that philosophy across restaurants, bars, cafés, coffee roasting and hospitality concepts throughout Melbourne.

But success also changed the question.

Rather than asking only how to build another successful venue, Nathan began asking what hospitality could contribute beyond the dining room.

That thinking led to Common Ground Project, a regenerative farm and social enterprise supporting food relief, education and employment pathways for people facing disadvantage.

Through its venues and guests, The Mulberry Group has contributed more than $1 million toward the farm and its programs.

Nathan’s journey has also included the less glamorous realities of entrepreneurship: concepts that miss the mark, difficult commercial decisions, changing consumer behaviour and the willingness to admit when something needs to change.

In The 8th Voice, Nathan explores entrepreneurship, hospitality, leadership, failure and purpose, and what happens when success stops being measured simply by how many venues you can open.

It is a conversation about creating places people want to be in, building businesses that endure, and ultimately asking a bigger question:

Can hospitality be a force for good?