Wild Geese: Niall Hanley, Raleigh Beer Garden, North Carolina

When Niall Hanley left Claremorris, Co Mayo, for Boston 20 years ago, setting a Guinness World Record was the last thing on his mind.

Armed with a degree in horticulture, he had started a landscaping business at home but decided to leave at age 24 when it did not take off as planned.

“The economy wasn’t the Celtic Tiger it became,” he says. “I left right before the boom. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know.”

A strong argument can be made that it was a good thing. Hanley has built a hospitality empire in the booming city of Raleigh, North Carolina. His most recent venture is a beer garden with 366 beers on tap.

While he is awaiting official word from Guinness, he is "quietly confident" the Raleigh Beer Garden will break the world record for the largest selection of draft beers.

“When we started out, we weren’t going to go as crazy as we did. There are so many places popping up, we decided to go big,” Hanley says. “It’s beer and it’s a garden. I know beer and I know gardens, so I thought, ‘Let’s give it a shot’.”

Hanley designed the 8,500sq ft (790sq m) structure himself, as he has done with all of his establishments.

“I work here in Raleigh with a local architect, New City Design, who are great and who understand my madness. The design and décor are up to me. I love it and I’d like to think I’m half decent at it,” he says.

Although Hanley does not use his horticultural background – which he attributes to his mother’s “immaculate” vegetable garden growing up – on a daily basis, he did decide to make a 40ft (12m) native pecan tree the centrepiece of the bar.

"I got the inspiration from a dear buddy of mine, Tommy Smith of McSwiggans pub in Galway. It was my stomping ground many years ago. It's a great pub. I love the place. It was always in the back of my head that I wanted to do something like it."

Keeping things local

The pecan tree is in line with his goal of keeping things local. The tables are made from pecan trees from the site that had to be knocked for construction.

Of the 366 craft beers on tap, 144 of them are from North Carolina and at that, he says, he has only “scratched the surface” of the state’s blossoming brewing industry.

He says the state is “one of the hottest craft beer places in the country, if not the world at this stage” and “the amount of money beer tourism is bringing to North Carolina is huge”, with new breweries opening all the time. He has noticed the trend for the past five or six years and does not expect it to slow down.

Hanley opened his first pub with a few other Irish expats in Raleigh after starting out in Boston working as a bouncer. When the opportunity arose, he decided to “head south, young man” to the college town.

He opened his first solo venture, an Irish pub called the Hibernian, in 2000.

“It went from there. We opened two more of them, all in different areas of the Raleigh market,” he says, adding that he also opened a large nightclub called Solas.

Restaurant Hospitality Magazine just dubbed the Banh Mi sandwich from Hanley's neighbourhood restaurant, The Station, one of the best sandwiches in America.

Hanley says that downtown Raleigh has become a mixture of government buildings, offices, retail spaces, bars and restaurants in recent years, and the revitalisation has been good for business.

“It’s a big college town, but it’s also huge for tech. We’re seeing a lot of major tech companies moving in – video game companies, companies like Citrix. The city of Raleigh has done a great job with the urban renewal of the downtown area. It’s building vibrancy,” Hanley says.

“A big trend is that major companies want offices located in downtown areas, not in industrial estates. Millennials want to pop out and go for a pint after work. That development model works really well. Raleigh is coming into its own.”

While Hanley is firmly settled in North Carolina, he would like to get back to Ireland more often, but he is often tied up with “project after project”.

“I have 15 gorgeous nephews and nieces, all grown up now. I’m a grand uncle. I’ll be home in Ireland and it takes about a day to revert to Mayo stopping and starting,” he says, of temporarily losing his American twang.

“If you were to tell me I’d still be in the States 20 years ago, I’d say you’re nuts,” he says. He has no plans to move back to Ireland permanently, but he is looking into franchising The Hibernian and the Raleigh Beer Garden.

“I have friends there and friends here. It would be nice to spend more time there. Maybe we’ll open a beer garden in Dublin as well.”