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For a Dublin Bar, The Glass Is Half Full Even in Lockdown

For a Dublin Bar, The Pint Glass Is Half Full Even in Lockdown

(Bloomberg) -- In early March, The Big Romance in Dublin was gearing up for the most profitable period of the Irish drinking season. With about 10,000 euros ($10,800) worth of beer in stock, it stood ready for the pint-wielding revelers who flood the city for the St. Patrick’s festival. Then the lockdown hit.

As the coronavirus swept across Ireland, the bar, which moved into the slowly-gentrifying district about 1 1/2 years ago, was forced to close its doors. Wedged into a narrow space with a curved bar and DJ turntables in the back, social distancing had already proved a futile exercise and was dropped after a day.

For a Dublin Bar, The Glass Is Half Full Even in Lockdown

The virus has forced The Big Romance to reinvent itself if the bar wants to survive. Now there’s a website supercharged by social-media, where customers can order drink; and a virtual tab that can be loaded up for happier days and that’s matched by the proprietor -- a potentially lucrative proposition once the bar comes back, but a potential write-off should the doors remain closed for good; and drivers who deliver two-pint “growler” bottles across the city.

“The take up has been very, very strong -- we almost struggled to meet demand at first,” said Steve Manning, 39, one of the bar’s founders. “You have to adapt. I think we have cornered the market in every growler in Ireland.”

The struggles facing The Big Romance are emblematic of the wider challenges thrown up for the small companies which form the backbone Europe’s economy, accounting for more than a third of all jobs across the region. Like most business owners, Manning was caught off guard by the crisis. He has no idea when or how the bar might reopen, or whether customers will have cash to spend when the lockdown ends.

For a Dublin Bar, The Glass Is Half Full Even in Lockdown

Dial a Can

The nation’s 7,000 bars have been shuttered for the last five weeks, meaning pubs like The Big Romance and fellow Northsider Graingers Hanlons Corner have had to innovate to survive. Where the Big Romance delivers growlers, Graingers sells ready-poured pints of Guinness. The pub also has a liquor store attached, and ran a ‘dial -a-can’ service even before the lockdown that delivered slabs of beer.

Now Grainger offers pints of Guinness by truck to locals. The bar charges 20 euros for four units, the minimum order, with customers paying another 3 euros for delivery of the stout, which arrives in a glass with a plastic seal on top. Also on the menu: Sunday roasts, Irish rib beef and corn beef.

“We’ve had calls from New York, Washington, London, asking us to deliver pints to family back home,” said bar manager Mark Grainger. “People are drinking more at home anyway.”

Based loosely on Japan’s “listening bars,” The Big Romance mixed music with craft beer after opening on Dublin’s north side in November 2018. Before the virus hit, business was “healthy,” employing half a dozen people and beating Manning’s early hopes, he said. When social distancing came into force, the proprietor tried out the concept in his space, to little avail.

Social Distancing

“It just doesn’t work,” said Manning. “A lot of people who work in bars tend to live with their parents, so there was a risk. It proved impossible.”

Another issue that proved problematic was its large stock of craft beer. Unlike wine, draught beer deteriorates quickly - it has to be consumed within three months.

Manning and his crew piped their lagers and pale ales directly from the keg to two-pint bottles called growlers, revamped the bar’s website, spread the word on Twitter and Instagram and waited.

Orders poured in. They’ve hired three mask-wearing drivers, who work a eight-hour shift delivering to doorsteps across Dublin every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The growlers sell for anywhere between 7.50 euros and 21.50 euros, and customers get 4 euros back when they return the bottles, which helps drive repeat business.

“If anything, we’ve created jobs,” said Manning.“There hasn’t been any let up.”

One bonus of shifting online is that The Big Romance has attracted a crowd that normally wouldn’t’ have made it through the door. Whereas as the typical visitor would be in their 30s, the age of customers has crept up noticeably, Manning said.

“We might have been on their radar, but they just never got to us,” he said. “Now they are at home, they’ve got time on their hands, want a couple of beers and want to try something different.”

Despite all the new flourishes, Manning says he’s frustrated by the lack of any firm indication about when they may be able to reopen. This week, Irish Health Minister Simon Harris hinted that bars might be shut until 2021, a blow to the 50,000 people working in the sector and prompting industry lobbyists to speculate many of the nation’s pubs will never reopen. Manning said he was getting condolence texts from friends.

In all, Ireland’s SMEs, which employ over 1 million people, may need as much as 2.4 billion euros in liquidity to cope with the fallout from the virus, the nation’s central bank said this week.

But, for now, Manning is determined to remain optimistic.

“It’s glass half full at the moment,” he said.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.