Crafty Jason brewing up a storm in pub world

Date Published: {J}

The first business Jason O’Connell ever ran was making coleslaw and delivering it to bars around town on his bike from an ‘office’ in the Jes secondary school.

It was a modest start for the 41-year-old entrepreneur who is currently co-owner of three trendy bars in Galway and another in Dublin, with one more set to open in early January. All have a focus on microbrewed beers with one of them being one of only two microbrewery bars in the country.

Commerce teacher in the Jes, Pat Bracken had set up mini companies with students, drawing up business plans and bringing students to Shannon to see how small enterprises operated.

As part of the initiative, Jason rented an office in the school and ran Celtic Coleslaw. Another summer he ran the famous kiosk on the Prom, selling ice creams and beach paraphernalia.

That experience gave him a realistic taste of the ups and downs of running your own business. The first day the tills rang up £90. The very next day the fridges had to be refilled three times and he clocked up £1,000 in sales.

“It was a hot day and I thought this is the life, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. But then it rained for the rest of the summer,” he smiles wryly.

The experience led him to doing a Fás business course after which he opened a clothes shop on Abbeygate Street called Jeans Junction in 1991. But Galway wasn’t quite ready for yellow, red or even green jeans. The shop folded after two years and he decided to move to

Bristol where the hospitality industry beckoned.

The son of Bohermore native John O’Connell, who is well known in rallying circles, Jason moved with his three sisters back to the Claddagh from Derby in the UK when he was 10 years old.

“Very early on I wanted to work for myself. I was always driven by goals. I wanted to work in food, but never qualified as a chef. I started working for the Hilton group and it was my form of college. It was very structured. I started off as restaurant manager and became deputy GM (general manager) of the Hilton in Bath.”

At the time there was a real revolution happening in the British pub trade with customers demanding more than a ham and cheese sandwich with their pint of ale.

But it wasn’t just the concept of gastro pubs that was whetting the public appetite. In the 1970s, only eight microbreweries were operating in the UK. Following a campaign by a group called CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), some 800 now exist.

“In the 60s and 70s the mainstream beer companies changed their recipes to produce golden, cold and gassy beers. Life expectancy for a keg went to a year from six weeks.”

After six years he returned to Ireland, going to work for the Jurys Doyle Group in Dublin. There again he worked his way up to deputy general manager over four years. When they approached him about opening up a new Jurys in the UK it was time to make a life decision.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.