Mark MaGowan - President of RAI

Mark McGowan President of the Restaurants Association of Ireland talks about industry challenges

Dubliner Mark McGowan is roughly at the half-way mark of his two-year term as President of the Restaurants Association of Ireland.

Having grown up in a family-run tourism business, he is currently running another one – the Scholars Townhouse Hotel in Drogheda. The former convent and school grounds is a boutique hotel located within a short walk of the large town centre but feeling like it’s on very much in the quiet suburban outskirts, with a large car park and an ambiance that has something of the country manor about it.

“My background would have been in family-run pubs,” Mark explains. “I was brought up, if you like in the family pub in Phibsborough and Scholars opened in 2005, so I’ve been involved in it for the last 15 years.

“I did a bit of travelling in the interim. I ran pubs in Australia – I worked at the PJ O’Brien’s in Melbourne for about 18 months. I came back home and I’ve been with Scholars hotel and restaurant ever since.”

Scholars have recently opened another pub just behind the current property. Called Peggy Moore’s Pub, it has been building up a healthy trade so far, according to Mark. There will also be back-packer accommodation upstairs in the pub in the next four months or so.

28 H&RT FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 gastro-lounge but it’s more food-orientated so it’s not really a place you’d go for a traditional music session and few pints. Peggy Moore’s will be that kind of entity.”

With seemingly a good handle on his own business, what are his thoughts on some of the challenges facing the industry as a whole? The much-feared VAT increase has been causing problems in the industry but it seems to have already claimed a far higher number of restaurants than of hotels. A cursory glance through the annals of closures in the last four months or so would suggest that very few hotels have to close their doors, while the number of restaurants shutting down has been sometimes alarming. What is the reason for this, in the opinion of the RAI president?

“I would say that it’s because they (hotels) are less labourintensive. I think that as somebody who runs a small hotel (of 16 beds), I know that my bedrooms upstairs can handle a 13.5% rate of VAT but downstairs where it all happens, it’s more labourintensive; we have to throw bodies at our service so it needs a lower VAT rate. There are more moving parts to a restaurant and that’s why, I think, it needs a lower rate.”

It doesn’t, in his opinion, have anything to do with bad business practices such as some businesses including VAT in their cash flow?

high. The VAT is part of that and I think that it’s the domino effect of multiple cost increases that has affected the higher tier in particular.”

The staff shortages in the restaurant sector represent an ongoing crisis. Where does the responsibility lie for this problem in his opinion?

“It’s down to the industry as a whole to start working together. I think that collaboration is very important in getting younger people into the industry – to make it more ‘sexy’ for want of a better word. Obviously, there are the long hours and from a socialising point of view for younger people, it can be quite difficult to persuade them to get into the sector, realising that their weekends are gone and everything else.

“I think that the advertising campaigns from Fáilte Ireland in recent times have put out a very positive image of the industry and have put a bit more passion into it. After that, the Restaurant & Hospitality Skillnets at the RAI are a good way of getting people into the industry. There are tons of courses there that can upskill our current workforce.

“In terms of getting more people into the industry, it’s a case of college courses and promoting from within our industry. As well as that, I’d like to see more female chefs. Any CVs that I have coming in, there are not many female staff. I’d like to have more of a balance.”

What about visiting schools and promoting the hospitality way of life and careers? Does the RAI pursue such a policy? “We do. We’re getting better at it. We interact through the ‘Food Dudes’ healthy-eating programme and we also have the ‘Kid Size Me’ programme where we try to promote a more healthy eating and a more balanced diet with more appropriate portion sizes for children… we don’t want to see calorie counters going on menus but we do believe that education is the answer. We want to make food education mandatory for the Junior Cert cycle and in primary schools.”

Food provenance is another issue that has become increasingly topical. More and more hotels are outsourcing food preparation in order to save time and staffing costs. But this development presents a few potential problems: first of all there is that of the source of the food itself – does it comply with the hotel’s food sourcing policy in terms of it being local and/or coming from a reliable source? Secondly, there is the more long-term question over what effect outsourcing food preparation will have on the industry – are we in danger of losing the skill set of food preparation in our restaurants? Finally, does it also mean that a trend of more local food means less exotic food and also a limited selection in terms of flavour at time when the palates of so many people in Ireland are literally travelling farther away from Ireland?

“I don’t think that it creates blandness in flavours, for a start. The way that food has developed over the last eight to ten years, we’ve suppliers and producers preparing cured meats of the like that you wouldn’t have seen produced in Ireland before and they’re always packed full of flavour. We have mushroom growers now, we have artisan honey producers…

... there’s such a range and array of produce now that I don’t think there’s any excuse for not using it “

there’s such a range and array of produce now that I don’t think there’s any excuse for not using it. Prices are very competitive as well.” "

Mark gives the example of mushrooms grown just over the border in Armagh with outstanding flavour that he gets for around €13/kilo whereas few mushrooms brought in from farther afield and at a higher price don’t compete in terms of flavour.

“That’s only one product,” he says, “and we’ve introduced that into a multitude of dishes at Scholars… I don’t think that there’s any problem with food becoming more bland – we’re actually blessed with the produce that we have.”

He further points out that with continuing climate change, we in Ireland are more likely to have an advantage over the rest of Europe, with our wetter climate.”

The RAI President is looking forward to the next Minister for Tourism and hopes, he says, that he or she will follow the lead of Minister of State Brendan Griffin rather than that of former Minister Shane Ross.