Thank you for the music!
Richard Gleeson with mother Irene, daughter Sophie and manager, Sandra Hill. Sandra has worked for the family for nearly 30 years
Two things about Gleeson’s Pub in Clonmel make it unusual by today’s standards. One is that they don’t serve food and manage to trade very well without it and the other is that there is a family member willingly volunteering to take over the business when Richard retires. This has become a rarity in a time where many children have witnessed their parents give their lives to a business and get nothing in return but stress. That’s a sad reality but Gleeson’s situation shows that there are still a cohort of family businesses going strong and the intention is to continue trading under the next generation’s stewardship. Sophie Gleeson has watched her grandparents and her father work in this business and still wants a part of the action and there is something heartwarming about that.
The Gleesons are in business for 40 years here in Clonmel and they celebrated this impressive milestone just a few weeks ago. “My parents bought the place in 1984 and it was completely different to what it is now,” explains Gleeson. “We lived in the back for a time when it was being renovated so I literally grew up in the pub.”
Sandra Hill, the manager has worked for the Gleeson’s for 30 of those years and is like a part of the family too.
How did they come to acquire the pub in the first place? “My Dad had been in finance before he took on the pub. He had been pretty involved with a sports club in Clonmel and had helped run the bar there and he was a very social person so it was a natural fit for him. My mother would have always been very well-liked and had worked in the P&T (Post and Telegraph). She has the gift of the gab. They both worked in the business full-time and myself and my brother and sister would have collected glasses and cleaned the lines and did all the necessary things as we grew up. It was something I enjoyed as a child.”
Richard knew from an early age that he wanted to run the business and he never wanted to do anything else. “I remember being in school and the career guidance teacher asking people what they wanted to do and I said I was taking over the pub. My siblings had no interest in working in the pub and found their own career paths.”
He took over the running of the pub in his mid-twenties. “My parents split and my mum took possession of the pub and she drove it on for a few more years. She was a hard worker and kept it going. She then got cancer for the second time in the late 90s and then I took over. I was eager to do it anyway at that point in time. She still came back in some capacity at a later stage,” he explains.
The sound of music
One of the toughest parts of it for Richard is managing the budget yet still providing top-class talent that his customers have come to expect
Richard was keen to put his mark on things and being a great lover of music, he steered the business in that direction and it has been a well-known music venue since.
“I was very much into music and that drove me to book bands and get more involved in the music scene. My mother would have always wanted the music turned down when she was here!” he laughs.
One of the toughest parts of it for Richard is managing the budget yet still providing top-class talent that his customers have come to expect. “Bands are looking for more money as everyone is paying musicians a higher wage at the moment which is not a bad thing but unfortunately, that has run up the price of an ordinary gig in a pub. I don’t charge a cover price so I have to manage my budget. Because we’re in business so long, and we have music all the time we have separated areas and we’re pretty big into live sport aswell. The sport brings people in too. Tomorrow night we have the rugby so we’ll have a big crowd in and when the rugby match finishes, we’ll have a guy playing guitar straight away.”
He tries to cater for all musical tastes and has some really talented musicians as regulars. “We have musicians that play all the singalongs and current pop songs but I also bring in bands that do classic rock. I have a Thin Lizzy cover band that is excellent called Dedication. We also have Big Generator and Blue Moose – both of them are fantastic and we have a local band called the Pearly Whites, who are out of this world: they are a ten-piece with brass. They’re up there with the best. They are a wedding band but they play Electric Picnic and can change it around for whatever you need.”
The clientele ranges from 18 year olds to 70 year olds and everything in between. “My own children are coming through now with their friends,” admits Richard.
The music stage is situated in the adjoining beer garden which doubles as a seating area when the gigs are on. The beer garden is a favourite with the younger crowd. “Oddly enough it’s not really about smoking,” he says of the popularity of the outdoor space. “The younger people just like the outdoor space. Even if I have music on or not, they go out there. I think it’s where some of them got to go drinking first after Covid and of course they don’t feel the cold!”
An industry rich town
Clonmel is an industry rich town with a host of pharmaceutical companies like Abbott and Boston Scientific and other big companies like Bulmers that have been in situ for many years. There are also a lot of smaller localised industries like Carolan’s Irish Cream and Glenpatrick. Richard explains how this came to be. “There was huge IDA development in the 70s and 80s which attracted a lot of big companies. We’re been very lucky as there is no unemployment in the town.”
Despite such strong industry, the biggest town in Tipperary is like anywhere else and has some problems. “Most of the problems are from drugs and drug treatment centres around the areas. Cocaine is a huge issue and very hard to tackle as well. It’s a bugbear of mine,” explains Richard. “I have to make a judgement call about what is happening in my premises but if I make that judgement call, I can be brought to court for defamation. It’s not a right to refuse, it’s an obligation to refuse. We’re getting to a point where no one can make a decision on anything because everyone is afraid of getting it wrong. If I catch someone in the act of taking drugs, I can act but if I see someone moving between the toilets and suspicious activity, I can’t do anything. You’re in your premises but you can’t control what is going on,” he explains.
He tells a story of a publican friend who caught two men taking cocaine in the toilets and when he flushed the bag of cocaine down the toilet, the lad threatened to call the guards on him. “That’s what you are dealing with. That’s the world we are living in that someone wants to call the guards to report their class A drugs were flushed down the toilet. I try to talk as much sense as I can to the younger generation. Unfortunately the ones who aren’t doing it are the outliers,” he admits.
Costs keep rising
Richard says that people will lament the loss of the Irish pub when it’s gone, which could happen if costs don’t stop rising
Despite these common issues Richard is running a thriving business but is affected by price hikes just like everyone else. He says that costs just keep rising and it is having an impact. “All costs are ridiculous at the moment. Supplier costs keep rising. Those increases have an impact and make a difference. Wage costs are a big issue for most publicans and going forward it’s getting tougher. We’ve always looked after our staff and have paid them over the minimum wage but the rate at which the wages are going up is unsustainable. I’m a publican that opens seven days a week but a lot are not doing that anymore. Some people close Monday and Tuesday and some only open Thursday through Sunday. It’s just that you lose money on the other days so I see why people are doing it.”
There are massive consumer trends to show that the younger generation is not drinking as much as they used to. Richard says they socialise but it’s little and often and led by occasions. “They are into their health and fitness and focused on not drinking. Young men in particular are getting all their information from TicTok, which is saying not to drink beer but to drink clear spirits so a lot of young men drink vodka now. There are lots of lifestyle changes happening so we don’t know where it will go and I always say that people will lament the loss of the Irish pub when it’s gone.”
They have never done food and they are now thankful for this due to food costs being so high. “For years we have worked on the basis that we are a centre of town pub and there are loads of food options around so I don’t mind people bringing in food especially if they stay drinking for longer. Sometimes I order a load of pizzas and just put them out on the tables. The rhetoric was that if you didn’t have food, you wouldn’t survive but now it’s the ones doing food that are struggling,” he says.
Succession planning
The rhetoric was that if you didn’t have food, you wouldn’t survive but now it’s the ones doing food that are struggling, says Richard
An awful lot of publicans will be the last generation running their pubs because it won’t be a viable enough business to take over. The Gleeson’s succession plan, as earlier mentioned is that his eldest daughter Sophie will eventually take over. Richard has two other daughters, Alex aged 19 and Mia, aged 12 and he hopes they will also be involved within time if they so wish. “I’d like all my children to do a bit of bar work as it’s a life lesson and you are dealing with people at their best and their worst. You see all sides of everybody. It’s great and it’s hard work and you learn a hell of a lot.”
The work/life balance is a tough one to manage in the hospitality business. Richard works seven days a week and just takes Wednesday nights off, although he insists he always makes sure to take two weeks in the sun every year. So how does he feel about his eldest taking it over from a lifestyle point of view?
“I can’t direct my daughter as to whether this is viable going forward. I was trying to discourage her at the start but like any father I’m gauging it and if she really wants it that’s fine, but I want to make sure that she really wants it. When my parents had it they did really well and managed to make a really good living from it and have a comfortable if not affluent life. I would say that I’m just comfortable and we would be known to have one of the best bars in the town. I’m not trying to say I’m destitute but it isn’t what it was. There is no going off and buying property with the money returned from the business but for my parents, this was possible back in the day. I have to manage my costs carefully. I’ll work alongside my daughter for a while until she’s comfortable but I can start to pull back a little bit and that’s what I’d like to do.”
