Ambition still on the menu

THE FRIDAY INTERVIEW:Jay Bourke, restaurateur

JAY BOURKE feels “like Steptoe and Son”, going around warehouses, sourcing equipment. “The fryer in there has to come from somewhere,” he says, gesturing across to the steel kitchen in Eden, his Temple Bar restaurant. “I couldn’t afford it, so I bought a second-hand one, put it in the back of the car, plugged it in and it worked.

”He has been talking about Ebitda, an acronym for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation, or “fool’s gold”, as he puts it.

“I remember going into Anglo and they’re talking about this Ebitda thing and I thought, ‘What the hell is that? What does that mean?’ It means you don’t have to depreciate, you don’t have to rebuild your business every few years. Well, you do, and it’s a real-life cost, and it’s terrifying at times. That stuff in there breaks.”

As much as he finds it a drain, however, he gets a thrill out of all this; otherwise he would not keep going. There have been hiccups, legal actions (most notably, ACCBank’s pursuit of a €1 million debt), liquor licence fines and some failures. He describes the last as “a part of life” and certainly not “a mortal sin”.

The Bourke business empire currently comprises Eden, Cafe Bar Deli in Cork, four Dublin pubs, as well as a landlord-type involvement with Bellinter House in Meath. He does not see it as an empire any more, though, but as “a collection of individually run businesses that happen to have me in common”. He’s 45 now and “delighted to have a job”.

Over the years he has had to close down restaurants and pubs that did not work or went wrong in the recession, but he also sold some investments “at the top of the cycle”, including the Globe and Rí Rá, which he opened in his 20s and sold in 2006.

“We sold very well. My father [the retired banker John Bourke] always told me that you haven’t learned business until you’ve learned how to sell stuff. You don’t want to sell though, because you love them, and you built them.

“But then the pub is making 200 grand a year and you’re being offered €6 million and you think, ‘Gosh, the maths don’t support holding on to them’.”

Pubs are "hard work", he says. "It shouldn't be a 1 or a 2 per cent return; that's what you get from a government bond, not a pub. I was looking at the Financial Timesand the p/e [price/earnings] ratios on pubs are between three and five, and I thought, why should pubs in Ireland be any different than that."

Bourke studied economics at Trinity College in the 1980s, describing it as “fun”. He spent his student years frequenting the Bailey and Kehoe’s, back when “there were only three or four pubs in Dublin”, and “learned a few buzzwords”.

He clearly absorbed more than that though, as “the fundamental tenets of economics” that he first learned in the lecture halls have been on his mind lately. The prompt has been his biggest expense, the one he cannot turn into a DIY adventure: rent.

He is waiting, along with the rest of the retail and food-service industry, for the Government to legislate to ban upward-only rent review clauses on existing retail leases. The previous government refused to do so, citing advice from the then attorney general that it would be unconstitutional.

“Ultimately, the objective of economics is to provide employment; that’s the primary objective of running an economy. That’s what I learned in the Eighties . . . not to protect vested interests and property people. And if you close places down, you destroy goodwill, you destroy a culture a company might have. Someone has to start again, you know?

“Would I ever rebuild Eden again? No. I wouldn’t have the energy. I was 30 when I built this thing and it was a ridiculous thing to do; I was so ambitious for it. I hired the best architect. I look at it now and I think, ‘God, I must have been mad’, you know? I still think it’s beautiful and I’m very proud of it. But would I still have the same kind of ludicrous ambition? I’m older and I’m hopefully wiser.”

Some landlords have been “terrific”, accepting the evidence set out in financial statements that “no one is running away with super-normal profits”, and he has secured reductions on his rent of more than 50 per cent on some properties. “Some landlords are not willing to do that, and it’s very stressful.”

Last year, Bourke told The Irish Timesthat a rental dispute with the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, the landlords of Eden, was resolved, but it has now unresolved itself.

“We have an issue,” he says, pointing out the window at the excavation works taking place in the adjacent Meeting House Square, where the discovery of Viking remains during the construction of a retractable canopy prompted a full archaeological dig.

“I want to be very clear: I’m a big supporter of this,” he says of the outdoor venue development on Eden’s doorstep. But another rent review is due and he is trying to persuade the trust that the works damaged his business greatly. “And help! Basically, that’s really what we’re trying to say.”

He, too, has had to adjust to the realities of what people can and are willing to pay. He has spent much of the summer in Cork, trying to figure out what was going wrong at Cafe Bar Deli.

“We had an object lesson in business, because we were wondering why sales were declining. We tried new menus and we tried this and that and eventually we had a half-price summer sale to go with the VAT reduction and sales trebled.

“You feel kind of stupid after that,” he says, admitting to feeling guilty about his participation in “the creep” in boom-time prices.

He feels a lot more optimistic about the current Government and not just because of its promise of further rent legislation. He cites Enda Kenny’s Vatican speech a couple of times as evidence of what he sees as courage – an admirable “hang on a minute, this is our country” moment. So would he ever like to enter the political fray?

“No, no, no, no. Definitely not,” he says. “I like what I do. I really enjoy it, most of the time. It allows me to make new brands, and I really adore that. I think, in government, you have to be very patient. I saw that when I was lobbying [as chairman of the Irish Nightclub Association], the slow pace.”

He has voted for the Labour Party’s Ruairí Quinn for 20 years. “I listen to him, he’s articulate, he’s well-informed. I deeply respect him. But I’m not that kind of animal.”

He has "retired", too, from the television world, having previously featured on RTÉ's the Mentor, even though business-themed television seems even more popular now than ever. He prefers the format of his show to the likes of Dragons' Den, mind, "because it wasn't classical business. We actually went into the houses of the entrepreneur and asked what their issues were – maybe your issue as a woman is childcare, and that's an equally valid question as to what is your gross profit."

His own mentor was his father. “He’s very experienced. He knows all the foibles of entrepreneurs. So I’m very lucky to have him.” He’s in his 70s now and “still as critical as ever”.

On our departure from Eden, he shows me the Viking dig that has hurt the footfall near the restaurant and obliterated the view for those who come. “They’ve poured the foundations and they’re on the home straight, I think,” he says, upbeat, as he peers through the railings. It’s a rainy afternoon, and work on the site has been abandoned. The square looks forlorn. But the hole in the ground, he notes, was once twice as deep as it is now.

ON THE RECORD

Name: Jay Bourke

Occupation: Restaurateur and publican

Age: 45

Background and family: From Dublin – "I'm a Dalkey boy" – he studied economics in Trinity. He now lives in Rathmines. He is married to Sarah Harte, a corporate lawyer turned novelist, and has two children – a 19-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son

Something you might expect: He's a keen sailor, belonging to several sailing clubs, and owns an etchell-class sailing boat

Something that might surprise: His full name, according to the Companies Office, is Jonathan Paget Bourke