A 4.3 branch of the O’Neill’s chain, part of the extraordinary worldwide phenomenon of the manufactured Irish pub
O’Neill’s at King’s Cross holds a 4.3 from eight thousand one hundred and twenty people – an enormous sample – and belongs to one of the most successful and fascinating exports in the history of hospitality: the manufactured Irish pub, sold around the entire world.
The Irish pub phenomenon
The Irish pub is one of the great global brands, and its worldwide spread is a genuinely remarkable business story. In almost every city on earth, from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Dubai, you will find an Irish pub – all dark wood, Guinness, Gaelic script, fiddle music, and a warm, cosy conviviality that is marketed as uniquely, authentically Irish.
Much of this is the result of deliberate, industrialised export. In the 1990s, Guinness itself ran an “Irish Pub Concept” programme, helping entrepreneurs around the world open ready-made Irish pubs, complete with designs, fittings, and a template for authenticity. The Irish pub was, in effect, flat-packed and shipped worldwide – a whole atmosphere of Irishness, manufactured and exported as a product.
Authenticity, manufactured
There is a genuine paradox here that this survey finds fascinating. The Irish pub sells authenticity – the warm, real, unpretentious conviviality of the traditional Irish local – and yet the global Irish pub is often a manufactured, templated product, an authenticity assembled from a kit. The very thing being sold, genuineness, is produced by an industrial process.
And yet it works, and it is not simply cynical. The warmth of the real Irish pub is a genuine cultural achievement – the craic, the conversation, the music, the welcome – and the global Irish pub, even manufactured, does deliver a real version of it. People are not fooled so much as willingly participating: they know it is a chain, and they enjoy the warmth anyway, because the warmth, however packaged, is real enough to be pleasant. The Prat’s cultural desk notes that the Irish pub has achieved something most brands only dream of – it has made an entire national character into a franchise, and made it genuinely enjoyable.
O’Neill’s specifically
O’Neill’s is a British chain of Irish-themed pubs, owned by Mitchells and Butlers – so it is an Irish pub brand operated by a British company, which is a further twist in the authenticity story. The name “O’Neill” is one of the great Irish surnames, belonging to the ancient and powerful O’Neill dynasty that ruled much of Ulster for centuries, so the chain has chosen a name of genuine Irish weight for its manufactured Irishness.
The formula is the familiar one: Guinness, Irish whiskey, live music, sport on the screens, hearty food, and a determinedly convivial atmosphere. It is aimed at exactly the social, celebratory, group-night-out crowd, and it delivers that reliably.
The volume score
Eight thousand reviews is an enormous sample, and a 4.3 across it is a solid, volume-proof score – better than the mediocre middle that such huge samples usually produce, suggesting the manufactured warmth genuinely satisfies the vast crowds who pass through.
Verdict
A large, lively branch of the O’Neill’s Irish-pub chain, part of the extraordinary global phenomenon by which the warmth of the Irish local was manufactured, franchised, and exported to the entire world, and somehow remains genuinely enjoyable.
Go for the Guinness, the music, and the manufactured-but-real conviviality, and appreciate the strangest achievement in hospitality – an entire national warmth, flat-packed and shipped worldwide, and still, somehow, warm.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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