We asked readers in the hospitality industry to share their thoughts on the challenges they have been facing recently as owners of small businesses.
Their responses cover a huge range of issues, from VAT increases and Covid closures to rising labour costs, with several respondents saying they suffered sleepless nights due to the manifold uncertainties in the sector.
‘I feel everyone else is being looked after and paid but I’m working twice the hours for half the pay’
Áine McDonough, McDonough’s Coffee House & Bar, Bettystown, Co Meath
Trading as a public house since around 1896, I am the fourth generation to run the family business. Pre-Covid, my father operated a seven-days-a-week pub opening for the usual trading hours. As a result of Covid closures and continued costs associated with maintaining the building, I set up a takeaway coffee business to pay some bills. Post-Covid we now operate both a coffee shop (by day) and bar (by night).
Customers’ habits have changed and we now operate six days per week, only opening the bar Thursday to Sunday for limited hours to save on staff and utility costs. We find now customers come out to drink early and go home early. I expect that habits have changed since Covid but also the cost of taxis and the increase in the price of the pint haven’t helped. Our business is maybe 50/50 now coffee and pints.
Over the last four years I feel like I’ve had very little time off trying to build back the business to a point of viability. I employ more staff now that we operate our coffee shop than we did pre-Covid, but between our thatch building insurance increasing enormously since Brexit along with an increase in our utilities, there is very little left to cover the new sick pay, pension contributions and increased employer PRSI.
Don’t get me wrong: I want to look after my staff but I feel like I’m neglecting my mental and physical health trying to maintain our listed building, look after my staff and provide a hub and service to our local community. I feel everyone else is being looked after and paid but I’m working twice the hours for half the pay. This year’s budget did nothing to support me or my family but has appeared to have put the final nail in the coffin for small family businesses and other SMEs.
My son will be the fifth generation should he decide to take over. But he has said he sees how many hours I put into the business and doesn’t want this life for himself.
‘This will be the first year in 58 we’ve never managed to turn a profit’
Felim Meade, Graham O’Sullivan Restaurants Ltd, Co Dublin
I run a family restaurant business which is 58-years-old. I won’t make 60 years! This will be the first year in 58 we’ve never managed to turn a profit. The core Government-imposed policies in the last 12 months have added huge additional costs to my business. I cannot grow my business to account for these costs. It’s just not possible to make ends meet since September 2024.
Businesses don’t want inefficient, sluggish, piecemeal grants – we don’t want grants at all. We’d prefer to be able to plan, reinvest and grow without any interference from the Government. Food inflation rocketed, then along came the Government lumping more cost on to an impossible situation. VAT increases and extra wage and associated labour costs, plus more added in Budget 2025, have not only wiped out profits, but wiped out retained profits. We are on our knees and the Government seems totally ignorant of what’s happening, or at least oblivious. We were already staggering but now it’s impossible to trade our way out of this.
Surely someone in the Department of Finance must stop and scratch their head and say “hmm, maybe we got this one wrong” when they see the daily closures.
‘You keep opening the door knowing that one day it will all be worth it’
Chloé Bolger, The Purple Door Café, Leenane, Co Galway
Since the budget came out I have felt so let down and deflated and I’m struggling to shake off that feeling. I opened my small cafe in the middle of Covid when there were so many challenges around: we went from businesses opening again as normal to another shutdown and lockdown 10 weeks later, to takeaway only, to indoor dining with many restrictions, back to normal, to Brexit, to the start of inflation ... You learn. You adapt. You adjust. You keep trying. You keep opening the door knowing that one day it will all be worth it. All those sacrifices in your family life, all those sleepless night wondering what you are doing and how you are going to do it, to those wake ups after a couple of hours of sleep fearing and checking your phone in case the day might greet you with being short-staffed, a delayed delivery, equipment failing your team. Some days feel impossible but through each and every one of them you keep believing it will all be worth it, one day.
But today, I really don’t know if that day will ever come.
I cannot afford a pension despite being in my 40s; how am I supposed to start paying one for my staff? Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of it but my only option to find that money is to increase our prices which I don’t feel comfortable with.
But still, tomorrow, I will show up and open the door of my little cafe because I want to keep believing that one day it will all be worth it.
[ Una Mullally: Four ideas to save Ireland’s pubs, restaurants and cafesOpens in new window ]
‘We are giving it one more year to see if things will improve or change’
Kenneth Murphy, The Garden Kitchen Café, Co Waterford
We opened a cafe next to a garden centre four years ago. Then two years ago, we got the opportunity to open a second cafe in Ardmore, Co Waterford. Since we opened, all costs have increased. We do not pay ourselves (we are a husband and wife owner and are both chefs). We are giving it one more year to see if things will improve or change but if not we will be forced to close. We hire between 15-20 staff, where possible from the local area, and use as much product from the local area as we can. The cafe in Ardmore is part of the local community as it’s the only place open seven days a week in the village.
‘I cannot just let it go without a fight’
Will Monaghan, Hidden, One Society, Gardiner Street and Smithfield, Dublin
Ours is a funny story really. After stabilising the business in 2023, the riots almost put us under but we got through to the summer season which runs from April until the end of August. Sadly, we knew in January that once our off season hit this year our time would be limited. September saw us doing January figures which is frightening. July was 15 per cent down on last year so every cent must be managed but even with this One Society cannot survive much longer.
What to do ... Try, push, struggle on and wait for the almost certain closure in January 2025 or make the hard choice to risk even more to survive. With some deep soul searching and research on options out there, I decided to open Hidden by One Society in Smithfield, a similar offering to One Society. It means extending myself personally with everything I have in the hope that the risk pays off and that my business and dreams can survive. So much is tied up in One Society, still I cannot just let it go without a fight.
How can the overall economy and employment be doing so well and yet an industry our size be in peril without meaningful action by the Government? If Hidden doesn’t take off fast the entire business could go under next year.
But the Government has to act. No more costs can be absorbed or passed on to the customers. How can they not see this and help us all? Either way for me, this gamble has to pay off. We just need people to come and come fast.
‘Sometimes you wonder if we are working just to pay staff wages’
Donal Cawley, Merry Ploughboy Pub, Rathfarnham, Dublin
The Merry Ploughboy Pub is owned and run by a group of traditional Irish musicians. We all have a strong background in accountancy and finance which has probably sustained our business over the 25 years we’ve been operating in hospitality and tourism. Our product of a traditional Irish dinner and show is 50 per cent of our turnover and has a strong demand from tourists. With enormous effort we are only now getting back to 2019 levels of visitor numbers. But sometimes you wonder if we are working just to pay staff wages and hold the team together in the hope that things will improve.
Our key challenges are lack of affordable hotel space in Dublin hitting our visitor numbers (who are mainly group tours and therefore more budget-conscious), rising wage costs, general food and cost increases and the VAT increase in August 2023. Because we are not city centre-based, we’ve had to run our own shuttle bus service since 2015 every night to counter rising taxi costs and lack of public transport to our location. We probably made some good decisions in the past on how our business was structured financially but, were we only starting out now, I wouldn’t be optimistic about the prospects for a new business in hospitality or tourism.
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