Mark Heather, co-owner of the Purty Kitchen, speaks to Robert McHugh about running one of the most exciting live music venues in Dublin.
It is hard to believe that it has been almost three years since Hospitality Ireland last sat down with Mark Heather, co-owner of the Purty Kitchen, who had just taken over the historic venue with his business partner, James Burgess.
At that time, Heather told Emily Hourican about his ambitious plans to stay true to the near 300-year history of the establishment while bringing the pub into the twenty-first century.
The restaurant and bar is located in Dún Laoghaire’s oldest surviving premises and Heather wanted to use the property to redefine the space that exists between a gastropub and a quality casual-dining restaurant.
When I caught up with Heather on a cold Tuesday in February, I was glad to see that the hospitality veteran has managed to live up to these grand plans.
After a firm handshake we go inside. I notice the rich dark woods and warm ambient lighting that were introduced to complement the existing hardwood floors. The artwork adorning the walls aims to reinforce the history of the old port town of Dún Laoghaire.
The Courtyard
The Dublin man gave me a tour of the new al fresco dining space, the Courtyard, which is suitable for year-round outdoor dining. He explained that the decision was not just about optics but had a solid economic basis.
"We saw how the business had grown on a on Friday and Saturday night. We had hit our capacity, we were full from 5.30pm until 9.30pm for dinners, and without the outside space, we were not going be able to grow any further on those nights. Without being able to add that capacity, which was 45 covers, added on top of the 70 that we could do inside, how were we going to grow?
"We opened it in October 2023 and designed the space not to be an outdoor space for the summer months in Ireland but to be an outdoor dining space year round. That was transformative in terms of, adding 60-70% to our overall dining capacity.
Our Friday and Saturday business grew exponentially on the back of that. As you go into the summer, we had previously struggled with really good weather because there was no outdoor space.
Not only could we not maximise Friday and Saturday nights, but if Friday and Saturday night were blistering sunshine at 7.30pm or 8.00pm, people chose elsewhere because they could dine outside. So we were able to cater for both of those markets."
The Loft
However, it is the Loft upstairs that seems to be the main change in the venue in the past three years. The new owners wanted upstairs to be bigger and to have broader utility than it had.
"We wanted to be able to do a multitude of different events, not just music," said Heather. "The size of the space was restricting capacity. The ceiling height was a big problem. I knew from when I worked at Purty Kitchen years ago, that sound leakage was also a massive issue with neighbours.
"The first job was to figure out how to push the outer walls back as far as they would go while moving storage to somewhere else. We needed to get as much ceiling height as possible and we wanted to get the insulation just right."
Similar to the introduction of the Courtyard, Heather says the refurbishment and extension of the Loft was based on a sound business strategy. The new owners noticed that if 200 new customers were coming in for a gig upstairs when the doors do not open until 8.30pm, they would arrive for 7.30pm and take over the downstairs bar while they waited for the doors to open upstairs.
Heather noticed that if other local regular customers walked in, they would not be able to sit anywhere. "So the regulars would go off," said Heather. "If they came back an hour and five minutes later, downstairs was empty, but upstairs was full. The same 200 people were attending both floors! It was taking 100 people out of the mix downstairs, and over time, people just stopped coming because they thought they could never get a seat."
Eighteen months ago, the new owners decided to open upstairs earlier and make the space better. The Purty Kitchen doesn't need security for the events, but an employee was placed on the front door to chaperone guests for dining or for events upstairs.
"We start the gigs a little bit earlier but we have that sweet spot where we'll get 250 people to come for the gig, but we'll get 60 or 70 of them to go for dinner at 5.30pm before the gig, and then come upstairs at 7.30pm," said Heather.
"It means that on a Friday or Saturday, our early sitting gets really busy and then feeds into upstairs but we have loads of capacity then for people to come in later on Friday and Saturday night.
"Instead of having the same 200 people use two floors, we can have 200 people upstairs and then we still have space for 115, 120 people to come in after for a bite to eat downstairs.
"That was probably the hardest thing to get right, making sure that the area for gigs didn't take over. The Loft has a finishing kitchen so food is served upstairs for events so that we don't have to rely on traffic up and down the stairs. There is no flow of customers between the two floors once the event starts upstairs, unless they want to go outside and then come back."
Heather says making the Loft stand alone has allowed it to be its own product without interfering with more regular clientele downstairs. "The project took about five months because there was quite a bit of structural work to be done," said Heather. "Quite a bit of infrastructure had to move. We wanted a slightly quieter experience at the back of the room and a louder experience towards the front of the room, towards the stage.
"The flexibility that the refurbishment has given is great. We probably do 50 music gigs a year, with 25 to 30 comedy gigs a year. We sometimes do Pilates events on Saturday mornings."
Dylan Moran
I ask Heather about how the booking acts have reacted to the refurbishment of the Loft.
"A lot of our artists that play once want to come back. We don't have amazing green room facilities for them. They are in our storeroom but we look after them. We don't just throw them up sandwiches or platters.
"We send a member of staff up who takes orders from the bands and the comics. We cook for them in the kitchen and treat them like paying guests. They don't have to worry about getting a rider in for sandwiches somewhere else or pizza.
"When people come in, we look after them. Whether it's staff, customers or suppliers. The last coffee I made on Friday was for our coalman who delivers the charcoal for the oven. He said, 'Do you mind if I wash my hands because I'm covered in coal and I want to pop out for a coffee.' I said, 'You can wash your hands here and I'll make you a coffee.'
"It's about taking care of people. The band and the suppliers are the same. You treat them well and hope that comes back to you.
"Dylan Moran has been in Hollywood movies and has performed in venues significantly bigger than ours. He has done three gigs here in the last 18 months. It's a nice size room. He likes coming in. He gets fed and looked after. We make sure he's not bothered. The last time he was here, he did a 15 minute reel about how funny the spelling of Dún Laoghaire is. How he got 200 people from Dún Laoghaire to laugh about that for 15 minutes is beyond me but he's brilliant."
'Stopping To Say Hello'
I ask Heather what his typical customer at the Purty Kitchen looks like.
"You have people that might come here purely for the live music or the comedy upstairs then you might have more regular customers downstairs.
"Upstairs is very act driven. If you have Dylan Moran playing, I might recognise 20 people as customers from downstairs who are going to the gig, and the 180 other people are people who follow Dylan Moran, which is great because it introduces 180 new people who might try the food downstairs as well.
"It is the same with music. We feature bands like Mac Fleetwood, a Fleetwood Mac tribute band, who, even if they played every second week would sell out. We have probably seen 50 or 60 people go to that gig and who would be now regular customers downstairs after having a meal beforehand.
"Whereas, downstairs the customers would be far more recognisable every night. On a Friday or Saturday night, if I'm in a hurry to leave, I'll sneak out the back door! Walking through the room might take me an hour because I'll be stopping and saying hello to people. That's lovely, unless you're in a hurry, picking up the kids or something!"
"They were outstanding for us in January. Every Christmas, we give gifts to our regular customers as well, something like a bottle of wine, just to say thank for your support during the year. It always pays a nice dividend because they always come back in January.
"One customer came in on the Friday evening of Storm Éowyn. The waitress said, 'We weren't expecting to see you in here tonight.'
"The customer said, 'The best way to make sure you are here in February is to make sure we dine with you in January.'
"The customers show the support back for the welcome that we give them. On a Saturday, we do 250 covers, between 50-60 for lunch and then more or less 200 in the evening time. About 40-50 of those are regulars."
Plans For 2025
I ask Heather what he and the team want to achieve for 2025.
"We want to increase our gigs upstairs to about 140-150 a year, which would be about 50% up on last year," said Heather. "This is looking like it's achievable.
"We also want to increase business downstairs. In January, we were up 20% compared to January 2024."
Corporate social responsibility is also at the top of the agenda for the Purty Kitchen in 2025.
"Our more holistic objectives include writing our sustainability statement," said Heather. "We have a lot of measures of what we want to do to improve our environmental impact.
"We want to cut out as much paper products as we can. We switched our sale operator to Toast so our credit card machines don't automatically print out customer copy receipts or merchant copies. Everything is stored in the cloud. If a customer wants a copy of a receipt we can print it for them, but we encourage our staff to offer it by email instead. The unit we have can actually email the receipt to them so that we don't have to print it out. The team has saved about two boxes a month of receipt rolls from credit card machines.
"We switched our bill presenters, which used to be a Purty Kitchen design postcard with the bill attached to it by safety pin. You would get two or three tables out of a postcard but then it was getting soiled or damaged and it was going in the bin. We sourced a small family business in the Ukraine that made us wooden bill presenters with our logo engraved onto them with little brass screws. I think we bought a hundred of them, and in the last four months we have only broken one. That cut out the postcards out altogether.
"We are closed Monday and Tuesday for now. At the end of Sunday night, we centralise from the kitchen into walk-in fridges. All of the in-kitchen refrigeration gets emptied and powered off. It stays off until Tuesday afternoon deliveries. This cuts out about 5600 hours of electricity consumption out of usage. From an environmental perspective that is very positive, but from a financial point of view, we have not been as hard with bills compared to other establishments.
"We have bottle coolers that work on timers upstairs. At the end of a Sunday night, they switch off until Friday morning. Once the refrigeration seals are in good condition, they won't lose temperature that much."
'It's Cliched Because It's True'
Unlike some other business owners in the hospitality industry, Heather is also very optimistic about how technology can make people more sociable rather than less so.
"The reason I love this industry is person to person engagement," said Heather. "I've worked in nightclubs, bars and restaurants.
"Seeing people engage and having a good time is what that floats my boat. The food and the drink is just a component to make that happen. We are taking a lot of measures to use technology to allow our staff to have more time with guests.
"You probably book your meal through your phone, and when your meal is over, you might pay by tapping your phone. So you will be using technology all the way through the process.
"My key objective is to make sure that you don't have to use technology from the minute you walk in until that point where you have to pay your bill. I want to facilitate conversation and person-to-person engagement. If I can have a table of four who don't take out their phone until the end of the meal and share nothing about the fact that they were here, that's fine, because they've probably had a better time chatting person to person over the table.
"We are looking at how can you use AI or technology to enhance a business and to facilitate people not having to use technology. We actually switched technology we used for point of sale. We now use a handheld ordering platform.
"The only reason we switched was because I actually started to time how long it took for staff travelling to an order station and then back to their table. Our average table is a three people booking. For a waiter or waitress to walk to the table to meet the guest, run through specials, take the order, move to a point of sale, bring appetizers, main courses, and drink etc, takes about four and a half minutes throughout the course of the meal.
"Two minutes of that time is spent walking to an order station or getting a credit card machine or entering information into a point of sale.
"The team switched our point of sale technology to reduce that two minutes and keep that server in the section so that they have time to engage with their tables. Not just from an upselling point of view. We want to talk to you about the wine that you have chosen, or if this is your first time at Purty Kitchen. We just want to have a conversation and build a relationship. This allows us to create a bank of information to help build a customer profile. So we use that technology to help us to tailor the experience for the next time you come in.
"I think the biggest problem that we face societally is technology replacing human-to-human engagement. That does sound cliched, but it's cliched because it's true. Nothing becomes a cliche by accident. I went out for a meal on Friday with a couple who I haven't seen in two years. We were in Pichet and it was a fantastic meal. Thirty minutes in, the waiting staff came over and said, 'We really need to take your order!'"
"We were just talking so much and there were no phones on the table. We were there for four hours and it was just talk, talk, talk. It would be such a shame if people lose that."
I ask Heather if there is any particular event that he is looking forward to at the Purty Kitchen in 2025.
He leans back in his armchair and smiles broadly. "I met the comedy booker this morning. We are looking into hosting what I think might be the first ever comedy wine tasting. We want to get a sommelier, a comedian and a drag queen, to host a wine tasting for 200 people. We want it to be informative and hilarious at the same time!"
