Four ideas to save Ireland’s pubs, restaurants and cafés

The hospitality industry in Ireland continues to face many crises on multiple fronts. Rising wage bills, staff shortages, tightening profit margins, the impact of the housing crisis and working from home on footfall in cities, the Dublin doom-loop, insurance costs, energy bills, and the cost of produce.
The upshot is that independent spots will continue to close. In Dublin especially, generic international chains and brands will fill the empty spaces. Elsewhere in Ireland, they might not fill at all.
We are in a survival of the fittest phase of the industry, but even places with great offerings are struggling, especially if there isn’t an investor with deep pockets behind the scenes. Some places closing merely fell out of fashion and failed to adapt. Some were brilliant and still couldn’t make the numbers work. Many existing restaurants are packed and operating at full tilt, but the climbing costs and pressures means the juice is not worth the squeeze. People with good ideas who work hardand run great businesses with ingenuity and integrity deserve to make a decent living.
While lobbying has mobilised restaurateurs and cafe owners, the 9 per cent VAT campaign was not successful. Rising costs are a fundamental. But we also need new nationwide ideas that at least attempt to generate better conditions for independent restaurants to thrive.
The priority should be supporting independent cafes, restaurants, pubs and bars with hallmarks of quality, whatever the price point. We need to ensure the survival of places with community, cultural, and culinary value – in other words, the places you’ll really miss when they’re gone.
Here are four ideas for helping hospitality, that don’t just boil down to a VAT rate.
Think Culture Night, but for independent restaurants. While there are food events happening on Culture Night, a standalone celebration of the industry could inject energy and money. Expand people’s palates, encourage pro-social activities, generate new customers, and break bread nationwide. How about one day and night where everyone who can stops for a meal? From street feasts to outdoor grills, the traditional and the experimental, swing open the doors, pull up a chair, and let’s have some fun.
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For an initiative like this, it’s crucial that restaurants and cafes don’t end up overstretched or footing the bill in order to participate. At least two Government departments could help fund supports for this; tourism and culture, and enterprise. Do it in January when business is slowest. Provide free public transport nationwide. It doesn’t need to be a corny brand-fest, but something with integrity and character. Imagine how helpful it would be for independent hospitality if, using either direct funding or public vouchers, restaurants and cafes could have one of their biggest-earning days as a boost when they most need it?
Outdoor dining doesn’t work long-term unless it’s not a “second best” option. This means pedestrianising streets at scale in towns and cities to ensure commercial space does not unnecessarily encroach on public space. People need to be comfortable dining outdoors without cars whizzing by. We need wintertime awnings on certain streets to protect people from the elements, which would also enhance the atmosphere. There needs to be an effort made for a coherence of design and quality to seating and table umbrellas (without alcohol brand advertising), and restaurants and cafes should be able to avail of funding to improve their outdoor dining settings.
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“Weather” is not an excuse. The fact that it rains in Ireland isn’t unique. Given our mild summers and winters, we often have more favourable conditions when it comes to the potential for outdoor dining than cities such as Paris, Copenhagen, and New York, where outdoor dining is much better facilitated.
We need an engaging and effective nationwide campaign to encourage people to eat locally and from independent places. Every booking you make for a restaurant or a cafe is essentially a vote or an endorsement. It’s a choice. And every booking matters. We need to celebrate local growers, restaurants, cafes, and their stories. We need to foreground the importance of neighbourhood restaurants. And yes, we need to differentiate between deep-pocket chains and international brands versus small businesses in and of Ireland. The latter encompasses everything from Irish businesses that have existed for generations, to new restaurants founded by immigrants that add so much to the culinary scene.
We should celebrate quality, and promote what’s unique, has character, and holds an intangible – but obvious – worth over the generic. The customer has the power here, but I sometimes feel the customer could do with a bit of a reminder and encouragement.
The traditional Irish pub is central to our hospitality offering. The proliferation of cheesy plastic-Irish pubs in Dublin in particular right now is quite astonishing, and speaks to a general panic and last-resort impulse to get people through the doors.
While it’s obviously bizarre for Irish-themed bars to exist in Ireland, the greater irony is the majority of tourists want authentic experiences. Being promised “craic agus ceol” on a garish sign, and then blasted with Wonderwall, is mind-numbing. The traditional Irish pub matters. Ireland is the only place where such a thing genuinely exists. The State should propose the traditional Irish pub for inclusion on the Unesco list of intangible cultural heritage.