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VOICES

'The hype dies down after you open, and you're faced with the realities of paying the bills'

After leaving his job to open a café, Barry Lennon was forced back to accountancy to make ends meet.

WHEN I WAS growing up, my mum and aunt owned a pub together, so I was surrounded by that entrepreneurial spirit from a young age.

It was there from day one for me, and it has always been something I wanted to achieve for myself – not necessarily for monetary gain, just for the satisfaction of creating a business from scratch.

The idea for Sip & Slurp café came from my former business partner Tiernan – it was really his brainchild. While he was travelling in Australia, Tiernan worked in a few places that were predominantly soup-based, and he thought of bringing the idea to Ireland.

That’s where the original plan to be a café with a big selection of soups came from. It changed from that premise of course, and by the time we opened we were focused on a wider offering of food and specialty coffee.

We started scoping out the idea in 2011 and kept our eye out for premises to open up in. It was a good time to be looking since there were so many empty spaces due to the recession, but it wasn’t without its challenges.

At one stage we thought we had found a premises, but when we went into negotiations we felt that we were paying over the odds for the lot, which meant the deal fell through.

In the end, it pretty much took us a year, until August 2012, to find a suitable place. We were opening on a shoestring budget and an awful lot of the places required a huge amount of work.

It just wasn’t an option for us to spend a lot of money on a refurbishment. We needed a place that had the layout already in place, had a counter and would allow us to get in and get opened as quickly as possible.

842335_orig Sip & Slurp Sip & Slurp

Starting off

It was a hectic two to three months before we opened. When we set up, I was still working at accountancy firm Mazars and would go in after work to paint and help fix up the shop.

We managed to rope in plenty of family and friends to help out too. We had a lot of people doing us huge favours, from electricians to carpenters.

Tiernan was also working in another job at the time, so basically every waking hour we were working.

At that time, I had no qualms about going for it because we were just so excited about the café opening, and that kept us energised even though we were exhausted.

After a few months of being open, however, the excitement can die down because you’re then faced with the realities of being a business owner – paying bills and paying wages, having a lot more responsibility.

For us, during the first few weeks, before people got to know us, sales were low but we knew that would be the case so we pushed on.

But we were also having difficulty with our marketing, which we haven’t been strong on for the guts of five years. We’ve acknowledged how big a mistake that was. Looking back now, we wish we invested more time and money in that side of things.

That has a knock-on effect for your sales, which obviously also has an effect on your ability to pay the bills. But we’ve always managed, and that’s because Tiernan would have taken a hit and maybe not drawn a wage for a while so that we could pay for other things.

To date, I haven’t either really taken a wage either, or received any of my investment back from the business.

Leaving my job

In 2013, I left my role in Mazars to go full-time in the business. I’ve always wanted to own my own business and felt that, when I became a fully-qualified accountant, I would give entrepreneurship a good go.

I did a bit of everything in the business, from management work to making food and helping out behind the counter when it was busy.

I always had a backup plan though. I had some business clients of my own who needed accounting work, which would give me an income while I worked on Sip & Slurp.

53969_373512652737681_240501028_o Sip & Slurp Sip & Slurp

But after two or three months of working in the café, it became clear the business wasn’t going to sustain both myself and Tiernan. So I developed my accounting work on the side into a full business to sustain me, and it’s now my main focus at the moment.

I still have a very heavy involvement with Sip & Slurp and do step in when we’re short on staff, but my work is mainly at management level.

Highs and lows

Seeing repeat customers coming in all the time is one of the most satisfying things as a café owner – it’s just nice to know people are a fan of your business.

Getting recognition in the media is a nice plus as well, because it’s rewarding to read something positive about your business – and then the knock-on effect is you get a little spike in customers.

But there were tough times. Some big neighbouring businesses like Hostelworld and Rabobank moved out of offices nearby, and that took a lot of loyal customers away from us.

Immediately your confidence is dented and you think, “How are we going to replace those customers?” So that was difficult because it stressed us out even though it shouldn’t have.

When those sort of things happen, you just have to get on with it, be positive and make a better effort to get more people in the door.

In saying that, more businesses have moved in since. There’s now an Amazon office around the corner and a truckload of new offices are being built around us, with a new hotel across the road.

So the future is bright, it’s just until people move in you’re left a bit on edge.

18955034_1374726719282931_3927187725641019958_o Sip & Slurp Sip & Slurp

Saying goodbye

I don’t have any regrets from setting up the business, but there are things I would change.

The business didn’t exactly succeed at the start, and we recognise why that was. When we started, I think myself and Tiernan almost had too much involvement in the day-to-day work and were too busy working in the business and not on it.

It was mostly my savings at the start that bankrolled the business, but over time Tiernan did put in a lot of his own savings and, more importantly, put in the hours that matter.

Over the five years, he didn’t get paid for some of it, so we balanced out what we invested in the business.

We’ve put it all into the business, but this year Tiernan decided to leave the business and I bought up his share. He has moved to Australia for a few months with his partner, Nerissa, who was also our former barista, to recharge the batteries and plot his next move.

It has been tough to lose Tiernan and Nerissa since they know the business inside out, but now my partner and wife-to-be, Lucy, has joined the business and put some of her savings into it.

Lucy has always been massively supportive of me and the business, and now she is taking a big part in helping me out with it. She is playing an especially big role on the marketing side – she’s much better at it than I ever could be.

The plan now is to do a rebrand, refurbish the whole shop and start a brunch offering on the weekend. Maybe by autumn or winter, we can make that plan a reality and start to really grow the business.

Barry Lennon is the co-founder of Sip & Slurp. This article was written in conversation with Killian Woods as part of a series on unlikely entrepreneurs.

If you want to share your opinion, advice or story, email opinion@fora.ie.

Written by Barry Lennon and posted on Fora.ie