UK chain to serve up a pub double

Fresh on the heels of opening its first pub, The Three Tun Tavern in Blackrock this week, pub operator JD Wetherspoon has purchased a second site, disused pub The Forty Foot in Dun Laoghaire.
This brings to three the number of sites Wetherspoon has secured in Ireland, two in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown and one in Cork.
The Forty Foot in Marine Road has remained empty for over a year now and Wetherspoon’s regional manager for Ireland, Alistair Broome, said: “We are delighted to have purchased the former pub in Dun Laoghaire. We are looking forward to redeveloping the site and creating new jobs in the area.”
A Wetherspoon spokesperson told The Gazette the company does not reveal how much the site was bought for but was confident of future investment along similar lines to the €2.38m invested in The Three Tun Tavern in Blackrock.
“With Blackrock we invested nearly €2.5m and I would expect we would put in a similar amount because Wetherspoon invest heavily in sites.”
In terms of an opening date, he said: “At the moment we still needs a few planning details sorted, so I’m loath to say when it will open. We just don’t know. But with the success of the opening in Blackrock, our wish would be to open sooner rather than later.
“It’s been absolutely marvellous [in Blackrock] and has been very busy indeed and people seem to like it. I think they like the style of it and what we offer. It was a disused pub for a long time and now it’s being well received by locals who have read about it.”
Wetherspoon has adopted a no-Guinness policy in the new Blackrock pub and The Gazette asked why they made this decision in a country where drinkers prefer Guinness.
“We sell Guinness in all our pubs in England and Wales but the price [in Ireland] was too high so we decided that we didn’t want to sell it to our customers at a price higher than we normally would have, so we walked away from it.”
The Three Tun Tavern, which is now open on the site of the former Tonic Bar, in Temple Road, Carysfort Avenue, created 60 local jobs, offers instead, a range of beers such as Tom Crean’s Irish Lager from Dingle Brewery, Franciscan Well Rebel Red and craft beers.
The Three Tun Tavern is managed by John Hartigan and was christened in memory of an inn which stood on the same site in the 18th century.
At the heart of the Blackrock pub is a curvaceous oak bar designed to reflect the essence of a tun, a large beer cask or barrel, and has a reading room with vintage books dedicated to Blackrock’s most famous author, James Joyce.