Town Clock
It’s almost the first good news that Moville has had in a long time in terms of businesses opening and closing. The Town Clock, which has seen so many great nights and so many good meals, is to open up again. It looks like the deal is done – signed, sealed and delivered.
It is likely that it will open again within the next few weeks. It is going to be doing food as it did before. It will be nice to have another restaurant open in the town. It won’t hurt those that are already open as the Town Clock brings people to the town. In its heyday it was estimated that around 80% of its diners were from outside town.
This will be good for all the other businesses in the town, shops, pubs, stores as well as restaurants. They will all benefit from the people who the Town Clock will bring in.
Music
It will also have a mixture of DJs and bands. Whether it will try for that late night licence again I would say would be unlikely but they may. The big problem that the Town Clock had in its latter days with the late licence was that the price went up from €210 to €410. Also they used to be able to sell alcohol till 2:30am but that got changed to 2am.
Whoever, put in those changes effectively cut the arms and legs off the Town Clock because, as we all know, people didn’t really come up there till about one o’clock after being in the other pubs of the town, so it was a lot of drinks to sell in an hour if they were to get back their costs.
Costs
If you tot up €100 for a DJ, €320 for 4 bouncers, €410 for the late licence and then business rates of €1,700 a month I’m told, staff wages and heating and lighting you can see that the increase in the late licence fee and the loss of the half hour drinking time made in infeasible.
My guess would be that it would operate like a normal pub with DJs some nights and bands other nights. It always got lot of parties did the Town Clock, especially amongst the younger people of the town and I would expect that to be the case again.
Good News
Whatever it does, it is good news for the town, both people and businesses and gives a glimmer of hope of a brighter future. All those extra people employed by the Town Clock whether in cooking, waiting at tables, serving behind the bar or playing music or DJing will have more money in their pockets and will spend some of it about the town.
The circulation of money economic theory says that each Euro brought into a town will circulate an average of 6 times. Someone who works behind the bar may spend it in getting their hair done or cut and the hairdresser might spend it on a meal and the restaurant or bar owner might spend it on a local tradesman etc., etc., etc.
So, it’s not just what is spent in there as a lot of that money will be spent again and again in the town doing good for a lot of people and businesses.
Now, if we could only get one of the hotels to open again….