Blazing Salads, Dillingers, Assassination Custard and Brasserie Sixty Six in Dublin, Church Lane and Sage in County Cork, and Barnacles in Galway.
These are just some of the most recent additions to the list of more than 600 restaurants that have been forced to close in Ireland in the last year in what is being seen as a growing crisis for the country’s high street and tourist offering.
A pioneering veggie and vegan spot, Blazing Salads had been open for 37 years, surviving multiple economic downturns as well as the pandemic, only to shut up shop, blaming a combination of inflation, a rise in VAT and customers working from home.
The Restaurant Association of Ireland (RAI) says an average of two restaurants, cafes or other food-led businesses are closing every day in a blow to the country’s independent hospitality industry. On Tuesday, the owners of restaurants, cafes and pubs marched in protest to the Irish parliament in frustration.
In Cork, the foodie capital of Ireland, the chef and founder of the renowned Ballymaloe cookery school, Darina Allen, is enraged. “I’m 76 years of age. I’ve never in my life gone out on the streets to protest before, but I got up at 6am to get the train from Cork. I was determined to support the cause,” she said.
“People are really furious around the country. They just feel abandoned, unappreciated. All they want is to earn a relatively decent living so they can pay their staff, reinvest a bit in their businesses and educate their kids. I mean, this is not second house in the Caribbean type stuff. This is just day to day survival.”
“It’s not just whingeing, it’s desperation. All restaurants want is fair support, appreciation for what they are doing for Ireland Inc,” she added.
A 50% hike in the VAT rate, up from 9% to 13.5%, has left food businesses battling to survive, says RAI. The rate was dropped to 9% during the pandemic, but restaurants say it is too early to reimpose the higher rate given the rise in energy bills, increased food costs, suppressed consumer demand due to the cost of living crisis and working from home.
One man filmed at the protest last week said he had been in the business since 1982 and he had “never seen it so bad”.
They were confident the government would respond to their campaign to reverse the VAT rise, given the healthy state of the country’s finances, pointing out that back in the 1980s doldrums VAT was just 6%. But when the finance minister, Jack Chambers, unveiled his budget on 2 October there was a €4,000 energy bill support, but no movement on VAT.
Coming so quickly after a European court judgment awarding the Irish exchequer a surprise €14bn in back tax from Apple, the lack of budget empathy is a bitter pill to swallow, says Allen.
“This country is doing brilliantly. We are told we are riding on the crest of a wave, but I can tell you it doesn’t feel like that at parish level.”
Others are alarmed by the impact the restaurant crisis is having on main street Ireland and wonder if independent outlets will be replaced by chains that can shoulder higher costs, such as Pret a Manger or Carluccio’s, which are both already in Ireland.
Barry Murphy, who runs Murfs, a small fish and chip takeaway and diner in Durrow in County Laois, says “vape shops and charity shops” are already popping up in the places of cafes in small towns.
Stephen Buckley, whose family have five steakhouses and a butchers, FX Buckley, a mainstay of Dublin since 1930, is equally concerned about cities being hollowed out. “People don’t come to Ireland for the weather. They come for the culture, and restaurants and coffee shops in any town are part of it. If restaurants collapse, the culture collapses and people stop coming into the city.”
Buckley says businesses like his can ride the downturns because they have the scale of the “back office” that other small operators do not.
Murphy says the VAT hike last August left him with €25,000 extra to pay out, with no clemency for those struggling with the little to no profit scenario they now operate in. “You get a demand every quarter and if they don’t get what they ask for you risk getting a sheriff knocking on your door who will literally empty your premises,” he said.
“Even if you ignore the VAT, this is extremely hard, you are going from month to month,” he said.
Allen accuses the government of failing to see the wider picture. “Irish food has changed from the land of corned beef and cabbage over the last 30 years” with fresh, high-quality dairy and meat produce a huge selling point for tourists.
“People feel a lack of appreciation. They feel the government doesn’t really understand or appreciate how important this sector is, and what the sector does for Irish people, for visitors, for Ireland Inc,” she said.
With just two tables and seating for seven, Assassination Custard, just doors away from the Department of Foreign Affairs in Kevin Street, was one of Dublin’s quirkiest offerings, with rave reviews and queues out the door at lunchtime. Co-owner Gwen McGrath said it was not VAT that forced them out of business but the sheer difficulty of operating a food business.
“Feeding people is just a small per cent of it. The rest is all the stuff you have to do in the background, accounts, health and safety, as well as managing people’s expectations,” said McGrath.