Pints on wheels: ‘People are delighted. It’s like being Santa’
With pubs not due to open until August 10, a number of locals have started up delivery services. Eoin Butler decided to treat himself
Alarge black Nissan Navara pick-up pulls up on the street outside my house. Two men in surgical masks jump out and pop open the boot to reveal a keg of Guinness and a tap. On a sunny day, half a dozen socially distanced spectators gather around the open tailgate to gawp at a masked man pouring a delicious serving of Guinness into a pint glass for me.
Pints, kegs, pint glasses, barmen, random bystanders standing around with their mouths open… It’s all a bit of a blast from the past, if I’m being honest.
Seventy-five days have now passed since Ireland’s pubs were ordered to shut down on March 15. And it is another 75 days until they are due to reopen on August 10. That’s a hell of a long time for any Irishman to go without enjoying a freshly poured pint of stout.
Step in, brothers David-Owen and Ed Mahon of Mother Reilly’s pub in Rathmines. Their mobile delivery service charges €5.50 for a pint. (“Slightly cheaper than most of our competitors,” David-Owen notes).
My friend Patrick orders a bottle of nonalcoholic beer. The Mahons aren’t quite sure what the going price is there. To be fair, Patrick may be the first person in history to order non-alcoholic beer from a mobile beer delivery service.
The minimum order is four drinks, unless you’re ordering food as well. The delivery fee is €3. The deposit on the glasses is €3 per glass. Plastic glasses are free.
“For people stuck in their houses, getting pints delivered is obviously a treat,” says David-Owen. “In our case, the pint is actually pulled at your door. It’s fresh. There’s no transporting it.
“Two months ago, if you’d told us we’d be doing this, we’d have thought you were mad. But now it’s a luxury for people. It’s something that reminds them of normality.”
Not that you’d describe what’s happening here as entirely normal. When the pint is poured, David-Owen passes the glass over to me. The photographer, whose camera has been clacking away in the background throughout, now instructs me to recline across the tailgate while I sip from it, then to hold aloft the freshly poured pint like a sport’s trophy.
“Big smile,” he instructs me. “Nice and happy… Eyes back to me… Turn your head towards me a fraction more… Lift your chin up…”
Curtains in neighbouring sitting rooms are beginning to twitch. I’m not loving the attention. There is a creamy Guinness moustache forming on my top lip, but I’ve been instructed not to remove it. I’m currently feeling like the world’s least glamorous glamour model. I tell David-Owen and his brother, Ed, that their truck should have its own theme music, like an ice-cream van. Then they’d really draw a crowd. They laugh.
“We’ve heard that one before,” David-Owen says. “But it’s important not to draw a crowd. We deliver to an address and not a street or a public place. All payments have to be made over the phone in advance.”
Until recently, confusion existed over whether mobile beer delivery services such as this one were even legal. One pub in Donegal had pints wrapped in cling film, ready for delivery, confiscated by the gardaí. Another pub in Dublin thought it needed to serve pints with lids on top in order to comply with liquor licensing laws.
Finally, after taking legal advice, the gardaí confirmed last weekend that it is lawful for pubs to deliver drinks and takeaway beverages within a 5km radius of their premises. This clarification came as good news for DavidOwen and his brother.
“We only started operating this service last week,” says David-Owen. “We don’t make a fortune from it. It’s mostly just about getting out and seeing your regular customers.”
The brothers say the service is proving most popular with people in their 30s and 40s. But adults of all ages have placed orders.
“We’ve had a great response,” says DavidOwen. “People are delighted to see us. It’s like being Santa Claus.”
Legally, the orders may have to be paid for on the pub premises by telephone or internet order. But that hasn’t stopped them coming in from around the world. The brothers mention an American couple, boyfriend and girlfriend, who are quarantining on the Rathmines Road. Their parents in New York ordered them a round of drinks for delivery online.
“The Australian order was the best one so far, I think,” says Ed. “We had a girl, she’s from Dublin originally, but she’s living in Australia. She sent a round of drinks to her former housemates. It’s just a nice way to connect.”
“We get all sorts,” says David-Owen. “This week, we had a woman who works as an ICU nurse. She put in an order for her to drop off some pints to… her father.”
I thought he was going to say to the hospital. The brothers laugh.
“No, she wanted it delivered to her father because she hadn’t been able to see him for so long. So stuff like that is very positive. People
‘We had a girl, she’s from Dublin originally, but she’s living in Australia. She sent a round of drinks to her former housemates. It’s just a nice way to connect’
buy drinks for other people, for friends or family members they haven’t seen. It seems like a really nice thing to do.”
If Patrick and I enjoy our drinks so much that we want another round, how quickly could the brothers be back? Generally, they say, customers order their pints well in advance, which lets the barmen plan how things will go and where they can be at any given time.
But depending on how busy they are, they could try and get back to the house quickly enough if a second round was in order.
Following on from the success of their beer delivery service, the brothers are anxious to get their take-out food delivery service fully back up and running too.
“We’re trying to get the chefs back working,” says David-Owen.
He recalls that week in March when the world changed, perhaps forever. “It was quite tough. Initially, we were trying to figure out a way to keep working that was safe for ourselves and for our customers.
“Everyone was a little bit scared. The weekend before Paddy’s Day, we decided to nip it in the bud and close. We thought it was only going to be a couple of weeks, but now here we are, coming into June. At the time, the Government followed the advice they were given and fair play to them.
“It just had to be done, I suppose. But it’s going to be a whole new landscape for us going forward.”
Proposals for the reopening of pubs include strict protocols for staff and customers, including confining the number of people at a table to six, no more than four people per 10 square-metres and compulsory handwashing every 30 minutes.
That, I suggest, seems to require a level of cooperation one would not normally expect with people enjoying a few drinks at the end of a long week’s work. But Ed is positive about the future.
“Before we went into lockdown, we had to put measures in place that were quite strict and difficult to police,” he recalls. “But, in general, people behaved very responsibly. I hope the same would be the case going forward.”
Technically, the brothers are either supposed to return and collect the glass or take an equivalent pint glass from my house. But when they learn I haven’t any pint glasses, they tell me I can keep it, on the house.
Patrick and I retreat to the back garden where we sip our beers in the sunshine. Ordering pints on wheels is a fun treat; it’s a great way to help out local businesses who may be struggling during lockdown and it may even get the neighbours talking.
But if one or two beers (alcoholic or nonalcoholic) is not enough, you might be best off sticking with the off-licence for your next big session.