DOWN TO BUSINESS - Keeping it in the family

RYAN CONNOLLY

I was kind of always interested in taking over a pub. I always liked pubs. I always like old country style pubs like this one, like the Old Ground down in Ballyglass. I used to love going in there and the fire on and all that kind of craic.

I signed for Treaty United this year and I think it was my Dad that said this place is up for rent. We’ve been up here a few times because we’ve family up here.

And then he was kind of messing, and we were laughing back and over and the next thing I had another conversation, and it went on and on, and we came for a look and met the owner and next thing we were taking it. Just like that, it kind of happened out of nowhere.

I had to tell the Treaty United manager I couldn’t commit for the season, that I was after renting a pub.

It wasn’t a difficult decision to be honest with you. Because listen, the money wasn’t great. I was getting fed up anyway and I was looking for an excuse to get out of it, I suppose. We’re buzzing since we came here. We’re loving it.

Between us we do two days between Monday and Friday and then we work the weekends mostly, the two of us together. We normally need a third and fourth person in here on Saturday at nights, and sometimes Sunday evenings, depending on what’s on or if we have a big crowd in.

We’d have a conversation on Sunday or Monday morning saying: “what days are you doing? what days am I doing?” We go with it, and we try and work around me with training and stuff like that to make it handy and at the weekends with games. I'm playing the GAA with Mayo Gaels this year.

We’ve done non-stop work since we came in here. The place is going well but we spent a fortune. We’ve obviously built on a beer garden, that’s probably not finished yet. We’re in the process of finishing off a back bar because on a busy night it’s quite hard for everyone to get a drink.

Damien Moran from Swinford made a savage job of the two murals at the front of the pub and the one on the side. He’s done some inside as well.

Running a pub is nearly 24/7 between being on the phone, ordering kegs, or going to the cash and carry to get stuff, or someone calling to clean the lines. It’s basically non-stop.

There’s never ending costs in this game as well. I don’t think the government help out with much. It’s like they nearly want pubs to close down. Whereas we love it up here so we’re trying to keep the place going.

TOM CONNOLLY

IT’S mostly locals that come in here, they’re the ones we depend on and we’re serving the community here for want of a better word. During the week you have your regulars, maybe middle-aged people and you’d get an odd young one in during the week. Weekends then you’d have a wide variety of ages in, especially if there’s parties.

The two pubs work well together (An Foidin Meara is the other pub in Hollymount), we work off each other as well. And it’s great to have Corrigan’s shop just across the road and KJ’s shop just around the corner as well. We work well with the whole lot of them, so it’s a great village.

There isn’t a lot of profit in it, so you have to be doing the turnover all the time in order to keep all the bills paid. Obviously, electricity prices have gone sky high, they’ve come back a little. Oil is on the way up.

If you haven’t the place nice and clean and warm and tidy people just won’t come in. You have to spend that money whether people are coming in through the door or not.

I think the key is personalities as well. A lot of people say that we have good personalities. They enjoy coming in, we enjoy having the craic with them.

Serving good drink, I think, is number one. The first thing we did here when we came in was looking at getting a cold room, even though the drink was always good in this pub. But we still wanted to make it in a way that it wouldn’t be bad at any time.

I think that’s the way of the future, to keep the drink good for the people that are coming in. Otherwise, there’s no point in coming in.

We couldn’t say here that the rural pub is in decline. I know from our own local village in Ballyglass there used to be two pubs there and now there’s none, which is sad for the community because people now have to travel and get taxis to go for a pint. As we said already, the likes of Hollymount with the two pubs is excellent. And I think that’s the key.