Pearl Diver co-owners Andrew Frost and Jenny Duncan, hailing from Christchurch, are the latest business owners to carve out a slice of Dunedin’s hospitality pie.
The bar, located in the former Gaslight Restaurant in St Andrew St, officially opened its doors on March 1.
It had already attracted "sporadic" business by word of mouth and hosted a handful of small performances.
Pearl Diver was a long time in the making, Ms Duncan said.
She first conceived of a business plan for the bar about seven years ago when she was still studying at the Dunedin campus of Te Wānanga O Aotearoa.
"We live in Dunedin and we want to go somewhere where you can just ... sit outside and mingle," she said.
"We basically made this because it’s something we wanted in the city ourselves."
Ms Duncan said Pearl Diver was first and foremost a bar and restaurant.
The bar offered a variety of pizzas made in-house and a wide selection of beers and other beverages, along with an outdoor garden area for people to enjoy them.
"We would love just to have people come after work and hang out in the courtyard," she said.
"I really love making pizzas — I just want to make more."
Ms Duncan recalled being able to attend three gigs in one night at bars in Christchurch, more or less for free, and hoped that vibrant energy would make its way back to Dunedin.
A lot of people had already contacted Pearl Diver about performing live music, but their business was just "a bar that has live music" and had not based their business model around being a live music venue.
Their focus was to make the bar a welcoming and unique place for a whole range of people, she said.
"When you come here you feel like you are getting away from it all and can just relax," Mr Frost said.
He is the man behind Spaceland, a rentable practice room and rehearsal space for musicians in the industrial precinct.
Spaceland ran into "complications" with the council when the venue attempted to host a couple of small gigs, but was found non-compliant, he said.
This failed vision for Spaceland had been channelled partly into Pearl Diver.
Pearl Diver was still flying relatively under the radar, due to roadworks in St Andrew St, but the owners hoped they would raise their profile in the coming months.
