“Our pub is a lot more authentic,” Brown said, when asked to compare his pub with other traditional Irish pubs. “Everything you see in here is from Ireland. Our menu is entirely authentic. The Guinness we serve is just like the stuff they serve in Dublin, of high quality and highly authentic.”

The pub features traditional Irish specialties, such as fish and chips, bangers and mash (sausage and mashed potatoes), corned beef and cabbage, boxty (thin potato pancakes with your choice of filling) and Guinness steak and mushroom pie, but also offers standard American fare like steak, chicken, seafood and burgers.

Brown contracted with Irish Pub business consultant Donal Ballance of Ballance Hospitality Solutions.

Date: February 4th, 2013

Venue: Phoenix Park Hotel, Washington D.C.
Time: 09:00-18:00

Who: Pub Owners/Operators and Leading Industry Professionals

Kick start your 2013 with this hard hitting seminar that focuses on:
• Profitability
• Reducing Overheads
• Grass Roots Marketing
• Delivering an unforgettable St. Patrick’s Day for your Patron’s
Reserve your space Here

Keep an eye out for futher updates over the next 14 days

We are delighted to announce we have signed agreements with the following Sponsors, Speakers and Vendors:

Sponsors:
Ol Irish Design & Build
PEL Under Counter Bottle Crusher
More to Follow.

Speakers:
Donal Ballance Ballance Hospitality
Jack C. Jones Benvinco D.C.
Andrea Howard Social Media Maxima
More to follow

Vendors:
International Spirits and Wines
Ballymaloe Foods
Media 703
Benvico
Irish Pubs Global
Ol Irish Design and Build
PEL Under Counter Bottle Crusher
More to Follow

In business for just over a year now, Grace O’Malley’s Irish Pub in Ruidoso is New Mexico’s top purveyor of Guinness beers. Sales figures from Admiral Beverage, the exclusive Guinness distributor in New Mexico, prove the heady statistic.

“Of the 215 people selling Guinness they’re number one,” said Kevin Lente, the craft brand manager for Admiral, said that is despite there being a number of long-established Irish pubs around the state.

“There’s some great ones in the state. In Albuquerque you’ve got five of them that are good. Two Fools Tavern is a great one in downtown Albuquerque but still size and just sheer mass and just great location and just a great atmosphere, nobody can beat Grace O’Malley’s. It’s unbelievable. I’ve probably been to 200 Irish pubs in my life and I’d put it in my top three.”

He said there is some surprise that a community the size of Ruidoso has had such a Dublin-like taking for Guinness.“If you look at the demographics of Ruidoso, you know you get a lot of Texans and you don’t think Texans would be big Guinness fans. But one of the things about Guinness is a lot of people that aren’t just some college kids are starting to drink it and they’re realizing it’s not a real heavy beer. It’s low calorie beer and it’s low alcohol beer. So a lot of people are discovering it these days. So that’s why I think a place like Ruidoso, it kind of fits. You go there on vacation, you want to get away. And you go to this great little Irish pub, a great big Irish pub, and it transforms you to a different land.”

So far in 2012, Grace O’Malley’s has gone through 228 kegs of Guinness.

“Which is humongous,” Lente said. “The next person is at 193 kegs for the year.”

“I think 95 percent of all the beer sold in there is pretty much Guinness draft. I do really well with Smithwick’s and Harp also but let’s face it, when you go to an Irish pub you’re drinking Guinness.”

•  Do be meticulous about checking deliveries – if you know that what you’ve paid for actually reached your kitchen, it makes your employees uniquely accountable for any losses or shrinkage.
• Do calculate the center-plate cost of each item on your menu and express it as a percentage of its selling price. Then apply a typical week’s sales mix to find out your approximate theoretical food cost – this allows you to see whether you have an issue with pricing, discounting, menu mix or ingredient cost and to make changes accordingly. Understanding where the issues are make for constructive discussion and planning.
•  Do carry out monthly or periodic inventory to coincide with the bookkeeping cycle. Compare the numbers that are produced by your bookkeeper and your kitchen management with the theoretical food cost and investigate the ‘gap’. While it’s relatively easy to manage the absolute food cost number, it’s much more difficult to control the ‘gap’, but it’s the size of the ‘gap’ that determines whether management is being effective.
• Do keep a simple record of food wastage – over-production, mistakes etc. – as part of identifying the ‘gap’, have the kitchen team work to reducing the value of this each week.
• Do create a culture of using up any and every bit of food in the kitchen – freezer inventory, over-production, close to use-by etc. If you offer bar appetizers or an appetizer happy hour, keep the menu flexible and inexpensive. It is better to get some revenue for this food than to throw it out or let it burn in a freezer until its thrown out.

DON’T:

•  Don’t demand an instant food cost reduction from your kitchen management. You run the risk that they will immediately look to portion size, ingredient cost or price increase to resolve the problem – all three of which will directly and negatively affect your guest.
• Don’t expect instant results from trying to improve food cost. It’s a planned journey with a route map and milestones that tell you how well you are doing.
• Don’t implement lots of paperwork for your kitchen management or you will end up in a bureaucratic mess. Understand what the issues are (see the do’s!) and take practical, operational actions to resolve them.
• Don’t use as your guide any food cost number other than the one generated by your bookkeeper/accounting package each month or period. Have your periodic management-generated kitchen inventory used only to provide opening and closing inventory valuations and have those counts independently validated.
• Don’t allow discussions with your kitchen management to focus on any one issue as a way of resolving food cost challenges. Truly, managing food cost is about understanding five components – plate cost, menu pricing, menu mix, waste management and portion consistency – an about managing each of them efficiently.

2. Ask your existing employees to complete an online evaluation of new employees (www.surveymonkey.com is free and anonymous) one week after they commence a job with you. Evaluating the results will provide you
with a 360 degree view on their longer-term suitability for your pub and your existing employees will greatly appreciate that they are being consulted in the process.

3. Don’t allow an employee’s attitude to fester. The second you catch poor behaviour…no matter how inconvenient the timing…call it and remove that employee immediately from contact with guests until you are sure they can be trusted again as an ambassador for your business.

1. Consumers Seek a Twist on the Familiar: Shell-shocked consumers are in no mood to take risks, but novel flavors still tingle their taste buds. Look for comfort foods with a twist (gourmet, ethnic, artisan, wood-fired) as well as innovation in familiar formats (sandwiches, wraps, pizza, pasta) rather than breakout items taken from less-familiar global cuisines.

2. Commodities Costs Drive Rustic Fare Made In-House: Commodity costs are rising, labor costs hold steady and diners demand rustic fare, the simple preparations of fresh ingredients. Result: operators will curtail purchases of value-added items in favor of cheaper cuts, beans, grains and produce that require more back-of-house prep to transform into honest, homestyle food.

3. The Next Steps in Local Sourcing: The rising use of seasonal and local items suits the less-is-more culinary trend. To facilitate flexible purchasing, growers, manufacturers, distributors and operators continue to work toward a more transparent, safe and efficient supply chain, streamlining workflow, recording every step and reducing waste.

4. Social Networking Influence Accelerates: Consumers increasingly trust friends and peers more than professional marketers. They’re taking control of social media to share their restaurant experiences and opinions with the public (via review sites such as OpenTable), with their own circles (via Facebook and Foursquare) or both (via Twitter). This helps some restaurants rocket to popularity and leaves others quiet.

5. Customers Want More Information: Consumers want transparency—looking for disclosure of everything from calories and allergens on menus to labor and local-sourcing practices. A small but growing number are serious about nutrition, labeling, sustainability and community involvement, and they are using such knowledge to make purchasing decisions.

6. Operators Try to Resist Discounting: The foodservice industry will continue to operate in a take-share environment, but discounting is cutting to the bone. To counter daily deals and other forms of discounting, operators turn to creative, sometimes in-the-moment, methods to reward their best customers, such as a free dessert out of the blue.

7. Brands Expand Through Flexible Formats: Format flexibility is required as restaurants cater to new around-the-clock dayparts, switch gears from fast-casual by day to full-service at night, or transform their kitchens into catering commissaries during slow times. This flexibility is also evidenced in streamlined, high-efficiency smaller-footprint units and brand extensions.

But few St. Patrick’s Day revelers have a clue about St. Patrick, the historical figure, according to the author of St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography.

“The modern celebration of St. Patrick’s Day really has almost nothing to do with the real man,” said classics professor Philip Freeman of Luther College in Iowa. 

Who Was the Man Behind St. Patrick’s Day?

For starters, the real St. Patrick wasn’t even Irish. He was born in Britainaround A.D. 390 to an aristocratic Christian family with a townhouse, a country villa, and plenty of slaves.

What’s more, Patrick professed no interest in Christianity as a young boy, Freeman noted.

At 16, Patrick’s world turned: He was kidnapped and sent overseas to tend sheep as a slave in the chilly, mountainous countryside of Ireland for seven years.

“It was just horrible for him,” Freeman said. “But he got a religious conversion while he was there and became a very deeply believing Christian.”

St. Patrick’s Disembodied Voices

According to folklore, a voice came to Patrick in his dreams, telling him to escape. He found passage on a pirate ship back to Britain, where he was reunited with his family.

The voice then told him to go back to Ireland.

“He gets ordained as a priest from a bishop, and goes back and spends the rest of his life trying to convert the Irish to Christianity,” Freeman said.

Patrick’s work in Ireland was tough—he was constantly beaten by thugs, harassed by the Irish royalty, and admonished by his British superiors. After he died on March 17, 461, Patrick was largely forgotten.

But slowly, mythology grew around Patrick, and centuries later he was honored as the patron saint of Ireland, Freeman noted.

St. Patrick’s Day Shamrock Shortage

According to St. Patrick’s Day lore, Patrick used the three leaves of a shamrock to explain the Christian holy trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Today, St. Patrick’s Day revelers wear a shamrock out of tradition. But people in Ireland hoping to wear an authentic shamrock are running low on luck.

Trifolium dubium, the wild-growing, three-leaf clover that some botanists consider the official shamrock, is an annual plant that germinates in the spring. Recently, Ireland has had two harsh winters, affecting the plant’s growth.

“The growing season this year is at least as delayed as it was last year, and therefore there is the potential for shortage of home-grown material,”John Parnell, a botanist at Trinity College Dublin, said in an email.

“We have had frost and snow showers in parts of Ireland within the past week,” he added.

Other experts pin the shortage of the traditional plant as much on modern farming methods and loss of traditional hay meadows.

“The cold winters we are having here lately are just another nail in the coffin,” Carsten Krieger, a landscape and nature photographer whose books include The Wildflowers of Ireland, said via email.

To make up for the shortfall, many sellers are resorting to other three-leaf clovers, such as the perennials Trifolium repens and Medicago lupulina. According to the Irish Times, these plants are “bogus shamrocks.”

Trinity College’s Parnell agreed that Trifolium dubium is the most commonly used shamrock today, which lends credence to the claims of authenticity.

However, he added, the custom of wearing a shamrock dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries, and “I know of no evidence to say what people then used. I think the argument on authenticity is purely academic—basically I’d guess they used anything cloverlike then.”

What’s more, botanists say there’s nothing uniquely Irish about shamrocks. Most clover species can be found throughout Europe.

No Snakes in Ireland

Another St. Patrick myth is the claim that he banished snakes from Ireland. It’s true no snakes exist on the island today, Freeman said—but they never did.

Ireland, after all, is surrounded by icy ocean waters—much too cold to allow snakes to migrate from Britain or anywhere else.

Since snakes often represent evil in literature, “when Patrick drives the snakes out of Ireland, it is symbolically saying he drove the old, evil, pagan ways out of Ireland [and] brought in a new age,” Freeman said.

The snake myth, the shamrock story, and other tales were likely spread by well-meaning monks centuries after St. Patrick’s death, Freeman said.

(Related: “Snakeless in Ireland: Blame Ice Age, Not St. Patrick.”)

St. Patrick’s Day: Made in America?

Until the 1970s, St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland was a minor religious holiday. A priest would acknowledge the feast day, and families would celebrate with a big meal, but that was about it.

“St. Patrick’s Day was basically invented in America by Irish-Americans,” Freeman said.

Irish-American history expert Timothy Meagher said Irish charitable organizations originally celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with banquets in places such as Boston, Massachusetts; Savannah, Georgia; and Charleston, South Carolina.

Eighteenth-century Irish soldiers fighting with the British in the U.S. Revolutionary War held the first St. Patrick’s Day parades. Some soldiers, for example, marched through New York City in 1762 to reconnect with their Irish roots.

Other parades followed in the years and decades after, including well-known celebrations in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago, primarily in flourishing Irish immigrant communities.

“It becomes a way to honor the saint but also to confirm ethnic identity and to create bonds of solidarity,” said Meagher, of Catholic University in Washington, D.C..

Dyeing the River Green for St. Patrick’s Day

Sometime in the 19th century, as St. Patrick’s Day parades were flourishing, wearing the color green became a show of commitment to Ireland, Meagher said.

In 1962 the show of solidarity took a spectacular turn in Chicago when the city decided to dye a portion of the Chicago River green.

The tradition started when parade organizer Steve Bailey, head of a plumbers’ union, noticed how a dye used to trace possible sources of river pollution had stained a colleague’s overalls a brilliant green, according togreenchicagoriver.com.

Why not use the dye to turn the whole river green on St. Patrick’s Day, Bailey thought. So began the tradition.

The environmental impact of the dye is minimal compared with pollution such as bacteria from sewage-treatment plants, said Margaret Frisbie, the executive director of the advocacy group Friends of the Chicago River.

Rather than advising against the dye, her group focuses on turning the Chicago River into a welcoming habitat full of fish, herons, turtles, and beavers. If the river becomes a wildlife haven, the thinking goes, Chicagoans won’t want to dye their river green.

“Our hope is that, as the river continues to improve, ultimately people can get excited about celebrating St. Patrick’s Day different ways,” she said.

Pint of Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day

On any given day 5.5 million pints of Guinness, the famous Irish stout brand, are consumed around the world.

But on St. Patrick’s Day, that number more than doubles to 13 million pints, said Beth Davies Ryan, global corporate-relations director of Guinness.

“Historically speaking, a lot of Irish immigrants came to the United States and brought with them lots of customs and traditions, one of them being Guinness,” she said.

Today, the U.S. tradition of St. Patrick’s Day parades, packed pubs, and green silliness has invaded Ireland with full force, said Freeman, the classics professor.

The country, he noted, figured out that the popularity of St. Patrick’s Day was a good way to boost spring tourism. (Get National Geographic Travelermagazine’s list of the best hotels in Ireland.)

“Like anybody else,” he said, “they can take advantage of a good opportunity.”

This will be the third year of the tourism agencys “greening” initiative which sees famous landmarks lit up in green in honour of Ireland’s patron saint.

Some 32 cities are involved in this year’s campaign. The London Eye; the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai; Table Mountain in South Africa; the Empire State Building in New York; the Sky Tower in Auckland; and the TV tower in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz are among the attractions which will go green.

The fountains at the White House will go green as will five skyscrapers in Stockholm. Tourism Ireland’s new “Jump into Ireland” advertising campaign will also be shown on the famous Fox screen on Times Square on March 17th.

Tourism Ireland’s chief executive Niall Gibbons said the initiative garnered very valuable publicity for Ireland while costing very little to organise. The publicity value in Britain alone was worth more than €2 million last year with coverage in newspapers such as the Telegraph and the Guardian .

“Our aim is to bring a smile to the world and to convey the message that Ireland continues to offer a warm welcome, fun and spontaneity, alongside fantastic scenery and cultural activities . . .”

The St Patrick’s Day celebrations are seen as the start of Ireland’s tourism season. Minister for Tourism Leo Varadkar said St Patrick’s Day provided “a unique shop window for Ireland around the world, for Irish tourism and for trade and investment”.

He said this year’s event would be used abroad to launch The Gathering 2013. This will be a year-long programme of events, festivals and fun designed to encourage people to reconnect with Ireland. It has been described as the biggest tourism initiative ever staged here and Mr Varadkar said it had the potential to attract 325,000 extra visitors.

The Central Statistics Office recorded a 7.8 per cent increase in visitor numbers here last year. Mr Gibbons said this was “a welcome return to growth” after a difficult few years. It was a record year for Australia and developing markets – they were up by 18 per cent – and Mr Gibbons said 2012 should be another strong year.

The visa waiver scheme introduced last year was already having a positive effect, he said. Tourists from certain countries, who previously required a visa to holiday in Ireland, now do not need one as long as they hold a visa to enter Britain. Some of the countries covered by the waiver include Russia, the United Arab Emirates, India and China.

Mr Gibbons said the potential for business was very strong.

“For example there are 24 tour operators in Asia now who previously only programmed the UK that are now programming the UK and Ireland because once you get your UK visa you can come to Ireland for free and it makes sense for them to add Irish itineraries on to their programmes.”

Tourism Ireland has undertaken a number of travel trade missions in recent weeks to places such as Moscow and St Petersburg, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Mumbai and Delhi.

But in other ways, Clink will be unlike almost any other restaurant in the world. The main difference? The 100-seat restaurant will be located in a prison, and it will be staffed mostly by convicts.

The new restaurant, which will soon open in the Category-B correctional facility HMP Cardiff, will be the second outpost of the Clink concept. The first opened in 2009 at HMP High Down, a prison in Sutton, England and was the subject of a documentary (“The Prison Restaurant”) on the BBC.

Both Clinks are headed by chef Al Crisci, who has been campaigning for better food in British prisons for years. The goal of Clink (which is named after the most famous prison of medieval and early modern Europe) is to provide convicts with the skills they need to find jobs once they leave prison, and thereby help cut down on recidivism.

But the people who eat at Clink aren’t doing it just out of the good of their hearts. According to an early review of the Sutton branch in the Independent, the food, service and decor are all exemplary.

Survey highlights
The results from the fourth quarter of 2011, released today, show the top factors negatively affecting restaurants sales are:

rising food costs, cited by 77% of respondents;
increasing labour costs, cited by 67% of respondents;
a weak economy, cited by 58% of respondents; and
a shortage of skilled labour, cited by 32% of respondents.
In terms of the sales outlook over the next six months:

31% of operators expect their sales to grow at a slower rate over the next six months – compared to 19% of respondents in the third quarter of 2011.
22% expect sales to grow at a faster rate – compared to 28% of respondents in the third quarter.
Despite these pressures, operators are hesitant to pass on rising costs to customers – 53% of respondents expect to hold menu prices steady over the next six months compared to 40% in Q2 of 2011. CRFA’s survey also indicates three-quarters of restaurant operators will maintain employment levels or add new staff over the next six months.

“At our core, we are a service industry that invests in people,” says Whyte. “As the fourth-largest employer in Canada and the number one source of first jobs in Canada, restaurants play a vital role in job creation in every community.”

Food and labour are the two largest expenses for restaurants, taking nearly 70 cents of every dollar in sales. Statistics Canada reports an average pre-tax profit margin for restaurants of just 4.5% of operating revenue.

Meeting with Bank of Canada
CRFA met with Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney yesterday to discuss these findings, and outline the importance of our $63-billion, 1.1-million-employee industry.