From humble beginnings as a small grocery shop, Nolan's is now one of Clontarf's best-loved supermarkets. Rose Doyle reports
Paddy Nolan is a man of courtesy and conviviality, as well-known in Clontarf as the supermarket he set up on Vernon Avenue in 1960. Man and boy he's served his corner of Dublin well, lived a long lifetime on intimate terms with the shopping and eating habits of the people of East Wall/ Clontarf and, these days, the loyal customers who travel to Nolans from Glasnevin, Sutton, Marino, Malahide. "We wouldn't be doing business but for them," Paddy Nolan says.
The good news is that Nolans is secure, thriving, and has not been sold. A recent rumour to the contrary, sweeping through the city and abroad, caused dismay among customers and wry amusement in Paddy Nolan. "A woman rang me from France to know was it true," he says, "and another rang from England. A lot of people were upset but there's no truth in it at all. Mind you, at the prices I heard the place was going for I'd have put the red carpet down Vernon Avenue for the buyers."
He laughs, not meaning a word of it. Nolans is not for sale. It's safe in the hands of Richard Nolan, first-born of Paddy and Una and, Paddy says, "in command for the last 20 years or so and the reason it's so successful today".
Supermarkets don't often achieve institutional status but Nolans got there years ago. In the coffee shop part of the Nolan complex, its founder tells the story quickly; the bones of it anyway. The flesh on those bones he fills in with the help of the acute memory of Una, his wife of 51 years.
Paddy Nolan is quietly desolate as he recalls the "terrible poverty" of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, discreetly protective of his customers' privacy and, always, filled with a devilish sense of fun that allows him to take life, its vicissitudes and joys, in his stride.
It all began with his father, Richard Nolan, a Wexford man who owned a couple of small grocery shops in the early decades of the 1900s. "One was in Talbot Street and the other on West Road, East Wall. My mother's name was Catherine, there were 12 of us children and, when an old uncle of my father's left him a farm in Wexford, five of us - including me - went down to live there. My father left the shops to his sister, Elizabeth, who never married. A manager let the one in Talbot Street go down the river but Elizabeth kept the East Wall one going. When I was 13 I was sent back up to help her."
And so his apprenticeship began. "She was great, very strict. The Nolans were a strict family. My father was the only Nolan who'd a soft side to him. You did what you were told and that was it - it doesn't happen that way today!"
In time he bought a shop on Church Road, East Wall and, later still, a small grocers and hardware on Vernon Avenue. "Then the bigger Maddens on Vernon Avenue came for sale and I bought that too. That's where we are today. I closed and knocked down the smaller shop, along with four derelict houses I'd bought. I kept on expanding,until the place was as you see it now. I must confess that for an independent I was very lucky!"
Luck may have something to do with it, but Una, the wife he married in 1954 and who joins us from another table, had a great deal more to do with it. "She was as much involved as I was," Paddy says. "I couldn't have done it without her." Una smiles. "Hard work, long hours, giving people what they want and improving the business were what made a go of it," she says.
"People had nothing in the 1930s and 1940s," Paddy says. "It was dreadful, like a third world country. If you had £3 a week you were a millionaire. A lb. of butter was 1/-, 20 blue Players and a box of matches also a 1/- and a pint bottle of milk only 2d. You got 10d profit on a crate of 20 bottles, which came in from the diaries in Finglas every day.
"I opened at 7am and stayed open until midnight most days. On Sundays I opened from 8am to noon; I had to open for the papers and milk. There were great characters in East Wall and great families came out of the area."
Paddy and Una Nolan met, in 1951 through his cousin, in the West Road shop. Una's memories more accurately recalling events she takes up the story. A Sligowoman, she worked at the time in Cliffords of Talbot Street, selling jewellery.
"On our first date he brought me to see cabinets in Castleknock," she grins. "After that we met under McDowells clock on O'Connell Street. We were married in the Pro-Cathedral and had the wedding breakfast in the Clarence Hotel. There were 90 guests, it cost £2 a head and I paid for it myself."
They had three children. Richard is MD of today's grocery business, Paul looks after the hardware shop and daughter Lisa, Una says, "is a Mammy!" They have eight grandchildren, securing the Nolan business for another generation, at least.
The Nolan business, in 1954, consisted of the shops on Church Road, West Road and the small Vernon Avenue shop. The family lived over the West Road shop for nine years, sold it for £3,150 and moved to Malahide in 1963. By then they had consolidated and begun work on what would become today's supermarket and shopping enclave off Vernon Avenue.
"When we got this place we stuck with it," Paddy Nolan explains. "I knocked down the small shop along with four other houses and developed a bit of waste ground which is where the car-park, this coffee shop and the other shops along here are now. We're 45 years on this spot - 50 years altogether in Clontarf.
"There's a lot of history attaching to this place. Michael Collins slept on these premises when he was on the run - we found his secret bedroom when we started to demolish."
Nolans, in the 1950s, had a staff of 20. There are 125 full and part-time employees in today's business. Nolans run the supermarket, hardware, coffee shop, newsagents and off-licence; the dry cleaners, opticians and hairdressers are all rented out.
"I never wanted to join the multiples," Paddy explains. "We always wanted to run our own business. It was hard work being a grocer in the early days. Everything came in in bulk and had to be cut and weighed, even the butter.
"The big buys in those days were bread, butter, sugar, tea, milk, flake meal, jam, potatoes and cabbage. The selection of stuff available now is unbelievable and we're not constrained in our selection in the way the mangers of the multiples would be."
Una says the "grocery scene" began to change about 25 years ago, "around the time Richard came on board. Buying and selling and marketing all became very competitive."
Paddy Nolan attributes the rise and rise of Nolans to the role played by his son, MD Richard Nolan, who is on the executive of RGDATA and studied marketing and sales. "He's the reason we're so successful today, plus the work and loyalty of senior staff down the years," he says.
Manager Dermot Kelly is crucial to the business too, he says, and so are the non-nationals on the staff. "We couldn't carry on without them. We have them from all quarters, all very nicely mannered and nice to the customers."
He doesn't want the world to know his age, will say only that he's past his "sell by date". He's amazed at "how the country's come on since I was a boy, in spite of whatever government was in. The only thing wrong is the binge drinking - and that's down to too much money."
