A TOUCH OF THE IRISH

JUST FIVE YEARS AFTER RELOCATING TO NEW ZEALAND, IRISH COUPLE GARY AND KAREN MANNING ARE RUNNING AN AWARD-WINNING BUSINESS AND ARE DEEPLY INVOLVED IN THE MID- CANTERBURY COMMUNITY.

Gary and Karen Manning are running an award-winning Methven business and are deeply involved in the mid-Canterbury community.

In the heart of the picturesque mountain town of Methven in mid-Canterbury there is a little piece of Ireland alive and well. It’s called The Dubliner Irish Bar and Restaurant and it’s making quite an impact on both the town and the wider Canterbury hospitality scene.

The Dubliner opened in 2015 after Irish couple Gary and Karen Manning bought Methven’s old Post Office building, which dates back to 1914.

Gary, a builder by trade, undertook a complete restoration of the building, retaining many original features. Gary says it’s an important building in the town, and they’ve been sensitive to locals’ great interest in it.

The business has already won a number of awards, including being shortlisted as finalists in the Hospitality New Zealand National Awards for Excellence – in both the Best Neighbourhood Bar & Eatery category and the Excellence in Marketing category.

The Dubliner was also a finalist in the prestigious Champion Canterbury Awards in the Tourism/Retail/Hospitality–Small Enterprise category (one of very few pubs to make it as a finalist) and in the 2017 David Awards won the Most Community Minded category.

Gary and Karen and their three children immigrated from Ireland in May 2012 for the Christchurch rebuild. But after two months in Christchurch there wasn’t much work available, so Gary took a job with a Methven building company and relocated the family.

The couple were used to small towns, having lived in County Wicklow about 20 minutes from Dublin, and are keen skiers – so Methven’s status as a ski centre and outdoor mecca was an added attraction.

Such a big move with a family seems a brave thing to do. “We came on a five-year plan and things were bad in Ireland. The Celtic Tiger had gone away. We said something has to change and we decided we’d bite the bullet and come to New Zealand,” recalls Gary.

To test the waters in the hospitality sector they initially leased a hotel and bar for about a year. That experience meant they felt confident enough to sell their house in Ireland and succeed in their own bar and restaurant.

ONE STEP AT A TIME

The Dubliner is still a work in progress. Gary now wants to develop the sizable area outside the pub so it’s connected to the inside and considerably expands the capacity for guests.

Currently they are open from 4.30pm daily, but with the expanded outdoors area will venture into the lunch-time market, initially on Saturdays and Sundays.

The couple both work full time in the business and have a staff of about ten, but the nature of the tourism/hospitality market means that workers can be quite transient.

Gary doesn’t see the business as just another Irish pub. While it’s very Irish-themed (both sets of parents keep sending Irish memorabilia over), they really see it as a little piece of Ireland and are proud of the authentic Irish food, drink, music and craic (good times) they serve.

The couple had no previous experience in the hospitality sector and the hours initially came as a shock, but it’s getting easier now.

“We were like headless chickens for the first few months,” recalls Gary.

Before the business opened Gary and Karen set up a marketing strategy and a set of goals.

They’ve managed to better every goal by 28 percent although, he says, admittedly there were modest goals but it gave them a good footing.

Gary and Karen are also very engaged with the community and invest in sponsoring key charities and clubs. One particularly memorable sponsorship is a boxing event. Gary is a keen boxer and martial artist and over a 12-week period last year he trained a number of locals to box.

The training culminated in hugely successful black-tie fundraising event, raising $20,000 for the local rugby club. They intend to repeat the exercise this year.

Karen organised the glamorous red-carpet event and they are looking to organise other events in the future.

In the past they have also sponsored The Dubliner Mountain Thunder Motorcycle Street Race in Methven, but a tragedy last year means it won’t go ahead in 2018.

BOOM TOWN

Methven has a population of around 1500 to 1600 in summer which triples over the winter and it’s going ahead in a big way, Gary says. Local business owners are adopting a destination marketing strategy and he sees Methven as a town that’s making waves. He can also envisage it becoming a year-round destination like Hanmer Springs, thanks to a proposed hot pool complex.

Methven boasts excellent tramping, jet boating, fishing and, says Gary, is a great place to live.

As to the business roadblocks, he says they started with a $10,000 overdraft. Cashflow and a lack of capital was initially a problem.

Gary says it took a long time to trade out of that. He won’t say how much the pub and renovation has cost but it’s been a sizable investment. “The sun shone on us and business is going very well”.

As a builder he has always worked for himself and understands profit and loss. But he’s had to learn a lot of new skills.

One of the main lessons he has learned has been to surround yourself with good people. They’ve had expert advice on marketing through the services of Colm McGrath of Concilio Agency, who also doubles as their business mentor. They also took on a hospitality consultant who proved invaluable in improving systems and procedures.

As to the marketing plan, he says it’s too early to think of franchising but they are currently working on merchandise such as caps, hoodies and T-shirts, which he says will provide good free PR as well as bring in additional revenue. So what would he do differently given the chance? “It’s a blur really, we never got a chance to analyse things; we committed to it and just had to keep going. By then we were knee deep in it.”

His advice is to surround yourself with really good people and pay them well.

“And think of yourself as a big business, no matter what size your business is. Look long term and work backwards. What milestones do you need in place to take you forward to what you need to achieve?”