The Pubs of Cork: ‘The most stressful part of running a pub - putting up prices’

It’s a long way from writing code to pulling pints, but these days Brian Chan is doing both!

It’s just over a year since he moved back from Dublin to take over his family’s historic music pub, Shanley’s Bar, in the heart of Clonakilty.

The business has been in Shanley hands for more than a century, ever since 1904 when Brian’s great-great-grandad Patrick Shanley bought it for £100 on his retirement from the Royal Irish Constabulary.

A software developer for a U.S tech firm, Brian, at the age of 29, became the fifth generation of his family to run Shanley’s, when he and his fiancée, businesswoman Kym O’Connor, officially took over the reins from Brian’s grandmother Phil on March 1 last year.

“I now have two full-time jobs,” says the eldest of the family’s 11 grandchildren.

Brian lived in Shanley’s as a small child while his parents were preparing a new home for their young family. Like all the grandchildren, he helped out in the pub as he grew up.

“I started working here at the age of 10, doing the bottles, taking out the empties, and filling the shelves.

“I played my first gig here 21 years ago for Shanley’s 100th anniversary,” he says, recalling that the late former MEP, Brian Crowley, had given him a fiver for his debut performance.

Brian adores his granny, who, along with his late grandfather Mossie, was, he says, “the life and soul” of Shanley’s for some 45 years.

“I am very close to my gran. She was known as ‘Mammy eile’!

“I learned everything I know about being a publican from her.”

And Phil Shanley certainly knew the business. She and Brian’s grandfather Mossie, who played piano, had run the pub since 1979, when they had taken it over from Patrick Shanley’s son Maurice and his wife Delia (known in the town as Granny Shanley).

“It’s a seven-day-a-week business,” Brian observes.

From hiring, training, and paying staff to stocking the bar, managing orders, keeping the books, and organising the performances of the many musicians who regularly play at the pub, there are certainly lots of balls to juggle.

The pub’s legendary Thursday night acoustic session and the Saturday night music session, featuring musicians from West Cork and further afield, run all year round.

There’s a weekly Friday night singer/songwriter session throughout the summer, while Brian’s uncle Bill Shanley, the well-known musician (who learned how to play the guitar from none other than Noel Redding - bass player for Jimi Hendrix, who lived nearby), has lately been reviving the pub’s old tradition of Sunday morning music sessions.

“Music was always a huge thing for Shanley’s,” says Brian, who recalls how his grandad Mossie played the piano every night in the bar.

“We still have a sign out on the front saying ‘Music Nightly’, which is there from the time grandad was playing.”

Brian and Kym have introduced some less traditional, but successful initiatives like the weekly ‘Sweet Sunday’, which runs every Sunday morning throughout the summer.

Customers enjoy coffee or tea along with cakes baked by old friends Cianan and Petra, who run the Menu Cakery in the village of Halfway.

Kym, a crochet fan, started a Wednesday Sip and Stitch night and has also piloted a popular Paint and Sip Night.

“It’s about adapting to the times,” explains Brian. “Not everyone wants to sit at the bar and have a pint.”

It’s a busy place, but luckily, Kym ran her own business for some 12 years before moving to West Cork, so she’s a dab hand at the paperwork.

“It was an easy transition to the business side of things for me – but on the other hand, I don’t drink and I didn’t know how to pull pints,” laughs the 31-year-old, who sold her Co Meath dance school in December, 2024, before moving to a new life in Clonakilty in February, 2025.

The single biggest challenge in the pub business today, observes Brian, is the cost of everything.

“The margins are very fine,” he says, adding that while the couple struggle to keep prices as reasonable as possible, costs are constantly increasing.

“I’m only one year in and I’ve already had to implement two price hikes on the drinks.

“It is the most stressful thing for me, having to put up prices,” he admits.

The joy in it all for Brian, however, is the people, the music, and the craic.

“The people and the music brought me here and they are what keeps me here,” he says, waving to the legendary ‘story pillar’ covered in photographs of those who have performed in the bar over the years - Phil Lynott, Noel Redding, Mary Black, Steve Martin, Niamh Kavanagh, and Ray Davies, for example.

Nearby is the performance space or ‘Music Room’ with its beautiful hand-carved wooden arch, crafted by musician Matty Gordon, an old family friend and master carpenter.

For locals John Collins and wife Noreen, the live music at Shanley’s is a big attraction.

John, who says he’s been coming to Shanley’s since the 1980s, always attends the Thursday night acoustic sessions and the live music on a Saturday evening.

The pub is “a nursery” for young musicians in Clonakilty, says Jerry Lehane, now in his late sixties and a Shanley’s regular for nearly five decades.

Many talented local youngsters start out in Shanley’s on the guitar, the drums or keyboard, and go on to bigger things, he reports, adding that the atmosphere in the pub on a Thursday night, for example, is something to witness.

“Last Thursday, I counted 14 musicians playing! Incredible!” said Jerry.

“Shanley’s is a great gathering place and it’s lovely to see this continuing with the young generation. Long may it last!”