Publicans need to provide greater value for money to rebuild trade

THERE is a huge onus on publicans to raise the bar in terms of the value for money and service they offer punters claimed the outgoing president of the Vintners Federation of Ireland, Val Hanley this week.

The former mayor of Galway who owns Murty Rabbits on Foster Street in Galway, acknowledged that the last two years for publicans have been very challenging but is concerned that the next two will be as tough or even tougher.
Mr Hanley was attending the annual general meeting of the VFI in Glór, Ennis on Tuesday. Mr Hanley outlined some of the challenges facing pubs in recent years.
“Drink driving legislation is seriously affecting the trade. In particular it is causing serious problems for pubs in rural Ireland. Members of the VFI feel that the reduction from 80mg to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood or urine, is hitting pubs a lot.
“In rural areas particularly it means that a lot of people who used to come to the pub on a Friday or Saturday night for two drinks, simply do not come anymore, because they can’t even have two drinks without being over the limit,” he said.
“We are calling for a review of the basis of the decision to change the legislation. The minister determined that by reducing the drink-driving limit to 50mg that a significant number of road accidents and even fatalities would be prevented.
“We feel that this analysis is flawed, because there is no evidence that there is any increase in road accidents involving those consuming two instead of one alcohol drink. We are calling on the Minister for Transport to carry out a review of this over the next 18 months, to analyse road accidents and look at what levels of alcohol, if any, were involved.
“If this review finds that there are significant amount of road accidents involving levels of alcohol below the 80mg level, then we will accept that we have no cause to ask for the legislation to be changed. We want to see the statistics, the facts and figures, before we accept that such a low level is necessary,” Mr Hanley commented.
“Our contention is that there are people who drink too much and get into their cars to drive and we do not condone that in any way but that most people do not over-drink if they are going to drive,” he continued.
“We have found that most people are very careful in relation to drink driving and this is because they respect their own and other people’s safety. We try to be vigilant about people leaving the pub to drive if they have been drinking and many publicans still take people’s car keys from them or even ring a taxi to bring people home. Of course that isn’t always possible in rural areas, but it certainly does happen in pubs in urban areas.”
Another issue is that due to the financial pressures people are experiencing, fewer people are going out to the pub.
“Supermarkets are selling alcohol at far cheaper rates than previously, which effectively is social engineering which gets people to stay at home. I feel that it is not a great environment for alcohol consumption, especially if there are children in the house,” he said.
He said that, in general, publicans are working very hard to provide entertainment for punters with music, live acts and a greater provision of televised sports events and concerts or events like festivals, for example.
“There is an onus on publicans now to raise their game and many have done that. We have to look closely at the value for money we offer customers. We are seeing more and more pubs running special offers. We have to offer a service to them that will still make it attractive for them to come to the pub,” Mr Hanley said.
He believes that in the future publicans will need to be more hands-on and really work in their pubs again.
Referring to the fact that many foreign nationals have returned to their own countries due to the recession Mr Hanley said that more pubs now have more Irish staff again now.
“I don’t mean this to be in any way racist but part of the charm of Irish pubs for tourists especially is the Irish staff. Foreign tourists really don’t want to come to a pub or restaurant in Ireland and meet other nationalities serving them. They want the Irish charm and Irish friendliness. There is a swing back by publicans now to having more Irish staff in their pubs, which is a good thing.”
He said that, as vintners, they are also acutely aware of how much people are changing their drinking habits.
“This is because it is being forced on them by drink driving laws, because of the smoking ban and because they have less disposable income.
“A lot of people who smoke do not want to have to go outside the bar every time they want to smoke. In the bad weather at the end of last year and early this year, people who smoke more than anyone else did not come to the pub because they especially did not want to stand outside in the freezing cold or torrential rain.
“Some pubs have enclosed smoking areas, but by their nature they tend to be external to the main pub, which means they are almost impossible to heat. In other cases, pubs do not have smoking areas, so people must smoke outside on the street, which they will not do when the weather is bad.
“I’m not calling for the smoking ban to be reviewed because, at the end of the day it has been a good thing for people, but I’m simply making the point that coupled with other factors, it is contributing to a reduction in people coming to the pub,” he said.
Mr Hanley also decided to promote the Ennis to Limerick rail link, which he used to come to Ennis for the conference.
“I made a conscious decision to travel to Ennis by Galway for the VFI conference. It is fantastic that this rail link is now available to people travelling between Limerick and Galway and I am certainly advising people to use it.
“I would definitely travel by train to Ennis or Limerick again from Galway. It is very handy. It means that people can come to places along the way and meet someone for lunch and have a drink. For people overnighting too it is a great service because they can relax on the train and really get the benefit of their breakaway.
“There was a pensioner sitting beside me on the train and he goes to Limerick twice a week now from Galway, because he has free travel and he was saying that it’s new for him because he never really spent time in Limerick before. He also is going to stop off some times in Ennis to get to know the town more. I think it’s a great boost for Ennis in particular,” he said.