|
 Eastside enterprise: Since founding Gastown’s Irish Heather Restaurant in 1997, Sean Heather has assembled a string of successful eateries catering to a broad range of tastes and clientele
By Glen Korstrom Sean Heather slouches on a stool at a long table in his Salt Tasting Room and evaluates the buzz in his innovative eatery. It’s Friday afternoon around 5 p.m. and clusters of customers are sipping wine or drinking beer while nibbling pricey cheese and meat. The cool brick room is alive with conversations. “We’ve only got 16 people in here, but it still has an atmosphere,” he said. “There’s nothing worse than going into a restaurant that has no atmosphere.” Heather has seven establishments; each occupies a distinctive niche, so if one were to fail, the others would likely continue to thrive. Since his Irish Heather Restaurant was launched near the Gassy Jack statue in Gastown in 1997, Heather has opened: •the Shebeen Whisky House in 2000; •Salty Tongue Café in 2003; •Salt Tasting Room in 2006 and its renovated cellar in 2007; •Fetch coffee kiosk in 2009; •Judas Goat Taverna in 2010; and •Everything Café in 2010. All are relatively small. “When I open places up, I don’t want heavy overhead,” Heather said. “I don’t like heavy risk. I don’t like big rooms or big payrolls. When you open up a 28-seat room, your payroll is tiny, the room gets filled very quickly. There could be 10 people in there, and it feels lively. People want a buzz.” Heather knows the restaurant industry eats new ventures alive. He believes that most restaurant failures result from proprietors paying too little attention to managing costs. High labour and rent costs, he said, end up snuffing out their dreams. Another key to Heather’s success is that most of his businesses are a short walk from each other, which makes it easier for him to keep a closer eye on all their operations. Outside his business cluster near the corner of Carrall and Water streets and down Blood Alley, Heather recently launched two other Downtown Eastside businesses. In December, he opened Fetch in an office building at 425 Carrall Street. Originally, sales at the coffee kiosk were limited to the hundreds of people who work in the building because inside access is restricted. Recently, he has started using his side window to sell high-end hot dogs to hungry passersby. Heather said most hot dog vendors sell for $5 a product that costs them $1. His wieners contain “no lips and ass,” he said. Rather, they’re made from 100% muscle tissue. So, they cost him $2.20, but he’s selling them for the same $5 price that his competition does at nearby corner hot dog carts. Heather also teamed up with real estate mogul Bob Rennie a few months ago to open the Everything Café at 75 East Pender Street. What’s next? Heather is considering opening a butcher shop that doubles as a steakhouse. Toronto-born, Heather grew up in Ireland and moved back to Canada in 1991, when the Irish economy was so depressed that he couldn’t get a job. He was 24 years old and eager to see the world – particularly San Francisco because he was fascinated by what he had heard about that city’s movement toward fine-dining restaurants using local ingredients. Vancouver was supposed to be a pit stop, but he had a Canadian passport and no money. Desperate to pay his bills, he took on the graveyard shift at Benny’s Bagels and worked his way up to be its general manager. Once he was comfortable financially, he travelled widely. Everywhere he went, however, he sought the comfort of an Irish bar. “In Budapest, there’s a fabulous Irish bar. In Paris. In Prague. Even in Cairo, there’s a fantastic Irish bar. But in Vancouver there was nothing,” he said, recalling his thoughts in the mid-1990s. The decades-old Blarney Stone did not count, he said, because it was Australian-owned. He envisaged creating a place that not only had Irish food and drink but also had an authentic Irish atmosphere. A skill set that included cooking, bartending and managing helped him get plum shifts at Culinary Capers Catering. He was able to pick the nights he would work. During the day he mapped out the Irish Heather’s business plan. The neighbourhood was seedier than he imagined, and he had to chase drug dealers from outside his door. But inside, he was able to create a homespun family atmosphere, partly because there was always a Heather working. His sister, Roisin, and his wife, Erin, whom he first met when she was a customer, also worked at the venture. Two years later, when Heather was finally able to pay himself more than what he describes as a “pittance” of a wage, he decided it was time to use cash flow to finance a new business. Across a small corridor at the back of the Irish Heather, he opened the original Shebeen Whisky Bar – a venture that was profitable from Day 1. After customers started asking him if they could buy cheese or meat for dinner parties, he opened the Salty Tongue deli. Originally, that venture struggled but it became successful when it started offering sandwiches as well as cut meat. Heather’s most pivotal business decision came two years ago when his landlord at the Irish Heather, Shebeen and Salty Tongue told him that the building had to be seismically upgraded and that he could either move or close for what would have turned out to be seven months. He chose to move across the street and was closed for less than a week. For that new location, he did something that he’d never done before: borrow money. Heather lavishly renovated his new 4,000 square feet and more efficiently squeezed in his three businesses, which had previously occupied 5,000 square feet. “Now I have 1,000 square feet less, which means less rent,” he said. “But, I can maximize sales because I have more seats. I was more clever about the design.” That efficiency comes because the Salty Tongue sandwich shop closes at night and its back room doubles as overflow seating for the Irish Heather. That gives Heather 200 seats combined in those three businesses instead of the 142 seats that he had originally. “Sean is one of those geniuses when it comes to operating very small spaces,” said DIG360 owner and retail consultant David Ian Gray. Gray lives in Gastown and has watched Heather’s businesses evolve. “He’s a really innovative guy and an early adopter of social media. He has a long table dinner series where $15 gets you a pint and a gourmet pub meal. You have to sit down at 6:30 p.m. on a giant long table with a lot of other people. He’s promoted that on Twitter.” •
Mission: To increase the diversity of eating options in Vancouver Assets: Frugality and an eye for how to create value Yield: Seven eateries, all serving distinct niches
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
This article from Business in Vancouver June 29-July 5, 2010; issue 1079 |
