'On the day I signed the lease, the news that night said the recession had started'
Matt Hall reflects on 70-hour weeks during the downturn and building pubs from scratch.
THERE ARE TWO experiences people have in the hospitality trade. It either chews you up and spits you out or you love it.
The latter applies to me. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t in the trade and I have loved every minute of it.
My first experience in the industry was working in the Boyne Valley Hotel as a teenager. I loved the atmosphere from the restaurants to the nightclubs and everything in between.
There was a great sense of camaraderie between the staff and I took an instant like to the industry.
So I signed up to the Northern Ireland Hotel and Catering College for a two-year course where I went on to stay for five years. It’s a great part of the world, right up beside the coast in Portrush.
Yet again, I loaded up on experience from different part-time pub or hotel jobs at the weekends. Then I came back down to Dublin and finished a degree in Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) for two years.
People jokingly told me I could have been a doctor having spent seven years in college, but they hadn’t seen my Leaving Cert results.
After that DIT course I got my biggest break through a college placement in the Burlington and really loved the hotel. I was there for only six months and at the end they offered me a job to stay on as duty manager.
I was in my early twenties and if you’re interested in hospitality, there wasn’t another hotel you would want to be in. There was huge history to it, the challenge of the 500 bedrooms, the ballroom dinners where you could have 1,200 guests.
I spent five years going through every department and ended up as operations manager under John Clifton, a great general manager and a big believer in giving people opportunities.
That was a 70-hour-week job and I was flat to the boards. It was like a treadmill in there, if you jump on it and keep up, you’re absolutely spot on. But if you jumped on and weren’t fit for it, you would be put through the wall.
Matt Hall
Moving up
For a new challenge, I went over to Citywest Hotel with my boss John after that as deputy general manager of the hotel. Then my wife, my girlfriend at the time, was offered the general manager job at Jury’s Inn in Galway, which brought me out west.
When I moved over, an opportunity came up to lease the Spanish Arch Hotel on Quay Street, which I took on for six years.
Pretty much from the moment I signed for the Spanish Arch Hotel, the downturn began. On the day I signed the lease, the news that night said, “The recession has started”.
To many it meant a decline in existing business and mounting debts; to me it was an opportunity. I was unburdened by boom-time debts and hadn’t experienced the Celtic Tiger on a personal level because this was my first business.
I found the great thing about being my own boss was there were no excuses. If we wanted to make changes, whether it be product or premises, we did it.
The property was owned by a receiver and after the six years they offered me a chance to stay on a short-term lease, but I wasn’t interested. I wanted to start another project out in Westport instead, purchasing McBride’s Bar, gutting it and doubling the capacity of it.
But I never moved to Westport, opting to stay in Galway, because I had three kids who at that time were aged four and two, the youngest was an infant.
Next venture
I’ve loved pubs from a very young age when I would go to GAA matches with my dad and stop off at the pub to soak up the atmosphere before a game. It was the noise, the atmosphere and the sense of people enjoying themselves.
So after we did up McBride’s, an opportunity came up in Galway with to build a new pub and I jumped at it.
I bought a licence from a closed down pub in Westmeath and after a lot of time, money and paperwork opened up John Keogh’s – a gastropub based in west end of Galway.
There are lots of pubs in Galway. Being a new pub with lots of competition I wanted to approach it from a different angle, so I focused on the gastro part of it.
My experience of Galway told me there was a market for high-quality food in a pub atmosphere, and I didn’t take my focus off that idea. I knew that if I have a half-arsed approach to it, that the only gastro thing about the pub would be the name outside it.
I have been very lucky to have two exceptionally creative and committed chefs. Pat McEllin to start with and currently Joe Flaherty for the past year.
Albeit John Keogh’s is a new pub, everything in it is all sourced from old pubs around Ireland.
When you walk in, there are mirrors and antiques on the wall that go back as far as 1907, so it has that rich, dark atmosphere that I love about pubs.
Lessons learned
I cut my teeth in the recession, I didn’t have any money and everything was funded out of the business – there were no third-parties.
There is no sense in me over borrowing and I’m happy to create businesses that are slow builds. There was initial spend to get the pubs off the ground of course, but then they need to feed themselves.
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The great thing about getting into business when you’re young, broke and energetic is that you tend not to get bogged down in the what-you-can’t-do.
You seize every opportunity and naivety has a great way of blocking out the whole “what if it doesn’t work” voice going off in your head.
I’d change nothing since the first day I got into business. Sure you make mistakes but don’t dwell on them.
But I have learned not to put myself in the same situation as in the Spanish Arch where I was doing 80 hours a week and seven days flat-out.
Again I loved the work and wouldn’t be where I am if I didn’t put those hours in, but with John Keogh’s I’ve learned to give myself a cut-off of 40 hours a week.
I knew my role in John Keogh’s wouldn’t be in the day-to-day operations; I was thinking about the bigger picture. So I’ve kept a bit of a distance which means I’m available to plan six and 12 months ahead.
My near future
The main focus is still John Keogh’s and driving it on. We’ve had great success in the two years since opening, making a place with no customers into a busy bar and winning some great regional and national awards for our product and customer service.
There are many new opportunities out there, however having been recession-trained, my focus is to grow from within and everything else will fall into place.
If we get that properly ticking over, we might look at something else. But as I said, I like to build these things slowly and do it right.
I remember saying to myself when we finished the John Keogh’s build, “Jaysus, so now how do we actually get people to come in here?” The work was really only beginning then.
The great thing that keeps me going in this work is seeing customers coming back to us. They might only be in Galway for two nights and they walk in on a reference, then they’re back the next night.
That’s the best bit for me. Job done.
Matt Hall is the owner of John Keogh’s – The Lock Keeper in Galway. This article was written in conversation with Killian Woods as part of a series on business mistakes and what can be learned from them.
