“The amount of passionfruit martinis we sell is eye-watering these days,” says Marie Mellett, owner of Mellett’s Emporium.
“On some Saturdays we’d almost sell as many of them as we do pints.”
Mellett is the seventh generation to manage the pub in Swinford, Co Mayo. The trade, she says, is enduring the “biggest challenge we have ever faced”.
Hence the passionfruit martinis.
“We’ve gone into cocktails in a big way,” she says. “We would have laughed at the idea 10 years ago; it would have been unheard of.”
Younger people are “drinking less” in general, Mellett says, so it is up to publicans to find ways of making their establishments more inviting. New customers are seeking “experiences”, not poor service.
“People don’t mind paying for a good experience,” she says.
“They won’t pay for dirty bathrooms or a cold pub; they’d rather go to the supermarket and buy their drink there than put up with that. We have to offer people what they can’t get in the supermarket – that’s the only way we’ll survive.”
Habits have changed, she says, and it is “harder and harder to make profit”.
“The ‘seven days of the week’ trade has died off – the smoking ban and the drink-driving did that. I think they are both fantastic but they did have an effect on the pubs,” she says.
“The man coming in on Friday afternoon and having his three or four pints and then driving home is gone. They’ve all died off.”
Mellett’s Emporium has been a fixture in the town since the late 1700s. The family notes that through the centuries it has doubled as a place to buy groceries, arrange a funeral or book a boat to the United States.
As it stands, Mellett is determined to stick to the pub’s business model: just drinks, no food.
“It is my intention to keep it as a proper pub until the day I die,” she says.
The pub has survived what has been described as a torrid 20 years for the industry. According to a report carried out for Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (Digi) by the economist Anthony Foley, published last week, more than 2,200 pubs have closed in Ireland since 2005 – about a quarter of the then total.
The closures have been almost exclusively outside of Co Dublin. In the capital, only 1 per cent of the total number of pubs that existed in 2005 have since closed their doors.
As Mellett’s has sought to cling to its roots while winning over a new generation of customers, it is among hundreds of pubs in small rural towns and villages attempting to chart a viable way forward.
About 45km south of Swinford on the N17 in Co Galway, Sheridan’s Bar and Restaurant has been forced to move with the times.
Cathal Sheridan of Sheridan’s Bar and Restaurant in Milltown, Co Galway, now offers punters food and a golf simulator. Photograph: Andrew Downes/xposure
“I was losing a lot of my customers and they weren’t being replaced; they were dying,” says owner Cathal Sheridan, who inherited the Milltown business from his father and grandfather.
“Drink was starting to be sold by the supermarket multiples; they were beginning to put in big off-licences and people were beginning to drink at home.”
Sheridan says the decision was made to go “full-bore” into offering food.
With “15,000 cars” passing the establishment each day, he ventured that a proper kitchen and restaurant offering would ensure the business survived.
The pub trade had changed, he says. When his grandfather owned the pub he was also a draper and a butcher. “He did everything – the pub was only a 10th of it.”
His father turned the premises into a “singing lounge”, but by the early 2000s it was apparent that just serving drinks at the side of the N17 was no longer going to cut it.
The latest innovation in Sheridan’s, which he says his daughter brought to his attention while on a J1 trip to the US, is a golf simulator. It has brought in “another type of clientele” and proved particularly popular during the wet days of last winter.
“When I came back from the United States in 1990 there were eight pubs left in my little village,” he says.
“We are now one of two; all the other pubs are gone. I can see that replicated in every other village around here – they are left with one light on.”
[ Publicans want fees for late-night trading halved in Budget 2026Opens in new window ]
Sheridan describes a coming “cliff-edge” for hundreds of pubs, with older generations of proprietors unlikely to pass the businesses on to their children or a new owner.
“Kids are seeing their parents spending hours and hours keeping the pub open and not making money out of it.”
In Clonmel, Co Tipperary – where Foley’s report found a 32 per cent decline since 2005 – this story is the same.
Richie Gleeson runs Gleeson’s pub there.
“A lot of publicans are close to my age [51] – and are second generation,” he says. “We are still rearing our children and putting them through college and so on. But the vast majority I talk to – their children won’t be taking on the business.”
As he picks up the phone, Gleeson is poring over his financial accounts before getting ready to open his doors. Another long day and night beckons.
“It isn’t an exciting prospect any more,” he says. “The hours we put in morning, noon and night. It’s non-stop, 24/7. Why would you want your children to take that on?”
He describes his days as being a constant battle to keep people coming through the door. Like Marie Mellett in Swinford, he has focused on making every night an experience.
“DJ nights, bands, games of cards, live sport – anything that would create an atmosphere,” he says. It is no longer the case that a publican can afford to simply serve pints and hope the punters keep coming through the doors.
[ Arresting the decline of the rural pubOpens in new window ]
Clonmel has seen its fair share of pub closures, says Gleeson, but numbers have “plateaued” to an extent recently. However, he too expects a number of places will soon reach a crucial point which will determine whether they carry on or close for good.
Gleeson’s parents opened the bar in 1984 and he knows “nothing else”.
He says one of his daughters may end up taking on the job when he retires, but he would also accept a scenario where the business either changes or closes.
“I do have an emotional attachment to it, but I try to be a realist about it too.”
Gleeson, like many other rural publicans who have endured change imposed by smoking and drink-driving bans, says the rising cost of doing business is the latest challenge.
They say the increase in the minimum wage has pushed wages up across the board along with pension auto-enrolment and PRSI. The pint itself has also been subject to frequent price increases from suppliers.
Vintners Federation of Ireland president Michael O’Donovan says a tax credit would be a big help for rural pubs. Photograph: Conor McCabe Photography
Vintners Federation of Ireland (VFI) president Michael O’Donovan runs The Castle Inn in Cork city.
The VFI, which predominantly represents rural pubs, is seeking a tax credit from the Government in the upcoming budget.
Digi, the industry group that commissioned the recent industry report, is instead appealing for a reduction in excise – something Taoiseach Micheál Martin has not ruled out.
O’Donovan and his colleagues argue that their measure would be more targeted and would enhance the viability of smaller, rural businesses.
“A tax credit would be a major help for rural pubs, which are disproportionately closing at a much higher rate than urban pubs,” he says.
“Nobody disagrees with our staff being paid well – it is very important that they are, we need them. But business also has to survive. We’ve seen disproportionate increases and sometimes the business can’t absorb those increases,” he says.
Back in Swinford, Marie Mellett says her business will hang in there, grateful for occasional chinks of light that help her pub.
“The one saving grace for us in Mayo has been Mayo winning the All-Ireland,” she says with a chortle. “It has been very good for us; hopefully they can win it every year.”