Step north over the Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin and you can be sipping spirits in an African spice island or lowering pints in downtown Moscow. The invasion of the themed super-pubs has received an enthusiastic welcome from all but the most unadventurous socialisers.
Zanzibar, a pub created on a budget of more than £3 million by the successful O'Dwyer brothers boasts an exotic North African theme, while the Russian themed Pravda is the brainchild of the Thomas Read Group. Both are buzzing and on busy nights boast infuriatingly long queues outside to prove it.
The Zanzibar was opened last June and can accommodate up to 1,200 people. It was conceived by Liam and Des O'Dwyer, the brothers responsible for Cafe en Seine, Major Toms and Bad Bobs. The interior of their first northside outlet includes giant urns and real palm trees. The clientele are trendy twenty-somethings with a penchant for something slightly more exciting than the traditional Irish pub.
Liam O'Dwyer, according to one industry source, is something of a vision manager. "He sets trends that others follow," he said. The success of another team of pub developers in Dublin, brothers Hugh and Declan O'Regan and Martin Conroy, who make up the Thomas Read Group, would not have been easily predicted given their previous modes of employment. Before entering the pub business, Declan worked in a building society, Hugh in a bank job and Martin was a telephone operator for Telecom Eireann.
While Pravda is a sprawling hostelry decorated with colourful communist style murals, the Thomas Read Group have generally favoured smaller outlets influenced to some degree by the cafe-bars of the continent. Other units include the Harbourmaster, the Dawson Lounge and the Bailey. Their latest project, the Life bar, opposite the VHI building on Lower Abbey Street, has a distinctly aquatic theme, with a huge tank of goldfish at the centre of the bar.
The imaginative businesspeople behind what are probably more accurately described as drinking emporiums than as pubs are keen to keep a low profile. One developer said that he was looking at other sites and did not want to jeopardise his future plans by speaking to the press.
Another said he would prefer if his name was not "out there in the public domain".
Louis Fitzgerald, owner of a string of pubs including Kehoes in Dublin and The Quays Bar in Galway, is a recognised veteran of pub development but the list of innovative pub developers continues to grow. McDaids owner Paul Keaveney is also at the helm of the recently opened Odeon Bar located at the site of the old Harcourt Street train station. The Odeon is an impressively spacious establishment where office workers mix with clubbers on their way to the nearby nightclub, the POD. Perhaps the pioneers in developing chains of trendy Dublin pubs was Jay Bourke who, with his business partner, developed the Front Lounge, the Globe and Ri-Ra, in addition to a number of restaurants in the city over the past five years. The Bodega Bar in Cork was added to their empire early this year.
According to Frank Fell, chief executive of the Licensed Vintners Association, the arrival of the themed super-pub on the Dublin scene is welcome. "It would be a phenomenon that is happening in most of the larger cities throughout Europe and they mark a considerable departure from the traditional idea of an Irish pub," he says.
The location on Dublin's northside of Pravda and Zanzibar is also positive, he says. Meanwhile, Harry Crosbie's "mini-Point Depot", called Vicar Street, is about to open in Thomas Street, an area not traditionally known for its trendy music venues.
"It is good to see some of the prosperity that is being experienced is being spread to other parts of the city," Frank Fell says.
While some are concerned about the crowd control issues posed by such large volume of customers in pubs, Declan Martin, economic director of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, says the designing of premises to accommodate more people was inevitable. Given the increase in business generally and the rise in population and number of visitors, it makes pretty basic business sense to think big, he says. Such places bring variety to the pub scene and their design conscious interiors make a welcome change from "the formica tables and the leatherette seats of the past", he adds.
Dublin is booming, says Tony Leach, operations director for Break for the Border Ireland. The group is also involved in Cafe en Seine and The Gaiety Theatre. "Anyone who is not doing well in the pub business is doing something seriously wrong," he says.
As exit surveys conducted by tourist bodies continue to show that the people and pubs are the most popular elements of an Irish holiday, as the sector has become even more customer orientated. Turnover for the drinks industry was £570 million last year, 64 per cent of which was spent in pubs. "You want to keep up with the trends and give them the best and the newest," Tony Leach says. One problem is finding staff for these vast watering holes, he adds. "Irish people no longer want to work in this business anymore, around 40 per cent of staff are foreigners." Some industry sources say that, while traditional pubs will always be able to function, the themed pub has a narrowly defined life-cycle of around 5 to 7 years. He suggested that the likelihood of having to revamp the theme of a pub in the relatively near future will have been included by developers in the costing of a project.
"They are going for a certain segment of the market, young people who are a very mobile and fickle and will go wherever the trends are," said a source. "The degree of obsolescence has to be costed in." For now, however, the cities bright young things are flocking to the unique drinking environments to be found in Zanzibar, Pravda, Odeon and Life. Only time and trends will tell if they are still doing so in ten years time.
