When the resourceful James Fegan couldn’t find work after coming to Dublin 83 years ago he set up his own company, and it is still thriving and expanding

JAMES FEGAN, arriving in Dublin from Rathfriland, Co Down, in the early 1920s found work difficult to get.

Resourceful, and by all accounts exuberant with it, he went into business for himself. The small shop he set up in Smithfield grew – hard work and caring for a business will do that – and now, 83 years later, is the lively, forward moving Fegans Food Services.

In between times the name changed from WM Fegan to Fegans Cash Carry, all to do with keeping abreast of the times that were in it.

Ensuring continuity of the family name is James Fegan’s grandson James Fegan, looking after things today and who has opened a larger, branch in Finglas.

Not that Fegans has abandoned Smithfield; they’ve kept a presence there. Nor does the third generation James have things all his way; his father Liam and brother Oliver run the business with him.

James Fegan, who went to school with actor Colin Farrell, talks of his grandfather’s love of life, of his father’s innovation and energy and his grandmother Bridie’s business acumen, and you can’t but notice he’s got these traits himself. It takes more than good luck to keep a family business going and expanding for 83 years.

“In my grandfather’s time they would have scooped tea and sugar from big bags and sold it by weight. His first wife was Winifred Mary, hence the name WM Fegan, but she died. He then married, Bridie, a Limerick lady. They named their first child William Michael Fegan and so kept the name. He’s my dad, nickname Wally, also known as Liam.”

James and Bridie Fegan had four children: William (aka Liam aka Wally), Breda, Patrick (who sadly died young) and Mary (aka Trish). They lived “over the shop” as did most families in business.

James Fegan lived: he was one of the earlier citizens to own a “motorcar” and he tried to buy an aeroplane. “Luckily,” his grandson says, “Bridie managed to stop that transaction.”

Smithfield and its surrounds was traditionally an area for wholesalers and traders.

Fegans prospered there and grew to become a supplier of all sorts of goods to independent retailers.

In the 1930s and 1940s there were enough employees to warrant a company cook and living quarters in a tall, redbrick building adjoining the business.

The cost of running a business in the early 1940s highlights the economic distance the country has travelled since then: Fegans paid £858 in wages and state insurance in 1942, the same bill was £1,035 a year later. Mrs Fegan’s salary for both years was £91; advertising cost £18 and £13 respectively; maintenance of staff cost £377 in 1942 and £346 in 1943. Fire wood for the office cost £10 in 1943.

Liam Fegan joined the business when he was 16, in 1958, when his father became ill. James Fegan died in 1959. “Bridie was heavily involved all the time,” James says. “She was a very respected businesswoman. There are great stories of her tough dealing in business. But within the family she was very easy going. We were all mad about her. As a family we all like a bit of fun; Oliver says we’re really here to entertain our customers!”

Family is important to the Fegans and, when he was still a young man in the early 1960s (he was born in 1942), Liam Fegan bought a house on Merrion Road and moved his mother and siblings from what had been the family home since 1925.

“Dad came into his own quickly,” says James. “He didn’t talk strategy, or roles or operations or procedures, he just got on with it. Granny always had to be doing something too; sweeping leaves if there wasn’t anything else. Dad gradually bought up and added other buildings in this row to the original.”

Liam was the one who moved the company from being a wholesale business to a cash and carry (CC). The difference is that CC customers serve themselves and he was one of the first in Ireland to introduce the concept.

He was also, in the early 1960s and together with other CCs, involved with setting up the National Wholesale Grocers Association (NWGA) and, as branded goods became popular, the Homestead brand.

Liam Fegan married Dutchwoman Vera Hammerstein in 1974. James is the second of their four children; the others are his sister Sacha and brothers Alex and Oliver. “We all worked in the company when we were younger,” says James. “My parents worked hard. They began supplying restaurants and this place was a mecca for Italians on Saturday mornings. All the old Italian businesses used meet here to catch up. The Chinese too: dad would go to the UK and buy everything they needed, from noodles to rice. We were a main source too for the hawkers, the place here used be full of their prams when they came in for their chocolates and, earlier on, fruit and veg.”

As the number of corner shops declined Fegans concentrated on supplying restaurants and hotels. James, who’d been off travelling, came home to join the business in 1999. What was meant to be a three-month stint has, somehow, become a life’s committment.

And now the company has moved to Finglas. “We’ve spoken about moving for the last 10 years or more,” James says. “Dad had an emotional attachment to this place, which made it difficult for him.” Their new address, E4 North City Business Park, “is everything the old place couldn’t be. A one-stop shop where we have fruit, veg, fresh meat, the lot.”