WILDGEESE: EMIGRANT BUSINESS LEADERS ON OPPORTUNITIES ABROAD: Daniel McLaughlin, Recruitment manager, Russia, HotelStaff.com
WHEN I lived in Moscow, I would often hear of another Daniel McLaughlin, an unrelated Irishman who was forever being linked with the latest club, restaurant or casino to appear in the city’s glamorous and sometimes dangerous club-land.
By the turn of the millennium, McLaughlin was already a veteran of a Moscow scene in which few foreigners lasted more than a couple of years before fleeing the organisational chaos, financial mayhem, rampant corruption and growing mafia power that characterised 1990s Russia.
Many of those who experienced Moscow in the decade after the Soviet collapse were seduced by its manic energy, unpredictability and enormous untapped potential. But, for most, this led to shredded nerves and a ticket to somewhere less bewildering. However, 16 years after landing in this city of 10 million people, McLaughlin is still here.
The 51-year-old north Dubliner is now recruitment and training manager in Russia for HotelStaff.com, a firm he hopes will dramatically improve the quality of service in Russia’s hospitality industry.
A call from an old school friend who was then working for Aer Rianta at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport was to prove fateful for McLaughlin. “Within six months, I realised the potential of the city. I took over at a nightclub that was still under construction, called Utopia, and things really took off. Everyone was looking for a consultant on how to open this or that, and the offers on the table were amazing,” he recalled.
Utopia became a landmark venue on Moscow’s Pushkin Square, and something of an emblem for the gaudy, money-mad new Russia rising from the Soviet Union rubble.
“People had to pay $1,000 just to get a table there, and would just ask for the most expensive bottle behind the bar. It didn’t matter what it was. They were wild times. You would wake up every day and wonder if you were going to live through it,” McLaughlin said. “You couldn’t just pick up the phone and order anything. If you couldn’t find it here, you had to create it or import it, or find it in London or Dublin or wherever . . . I didn’t speak Russian then, but had great local assistants and developed a huge network of contacts.”
When McLaughlin opened a casino at Utopia, he began to brush shoulders with the darker characters of the new Moscow, where “unconventional” methods were often required. “Casinos lure loads of people, especially shady ones. You get drug dealers, gun dealers, all the mafia types . . . I was working and meeting with lots of dodgy characters but there was nothing that a large brown envelope couldn’t sort out. It was the wild east back then, but, if you paid off the right people, you wouldn’t have problems.”
McLaughlin gained a reputation as an ace start-up man in a city whose new elite demanded a constant stream of fresh venues at which to spend their cash. After a decade of bars, clubs, restaurants and casinos, McLaughlin launched his own high-end eatery in southern Moscow. It was all going well until the building’s owners announced a huge rent-hike and “requested” control of the restaurant.
Recognising the kind of Russian businessmen who do not take kindly to refusal, McLaughlin and his business partner swallowed a substantial loss and walked away.
A year-long sojourn working for a casino supplies firm in Spain followed, before the call came to return to Russia as food and beverage manager for Holiday Inn. After 2½ years, McLaughlin moved on again, and helped open eight Moscow branches and a production centre for the Le Pain Quotidien chain of Belgian cafes.
Following another casino adventure in the provincial town of Lipetsk, McLaughlin joined HotelStaff.com, recruiting and training people for the hospitality industry in Moscow and London.
“In my time in Russia, standards of service have improved but only while you work hard to maintain them. Otherwise they slip very quickly. Service is not in the Russian genes, and it is a huge stepping stone for them to realise they will make more money and get more return custom if they give good service.”
But the man who started as a trainee at Winstons department store before rising to general manager of catering at the National Concert Hall and opening restaurants in Dublin and Belfast still sees huge potential. “Anyone with a sense of adventure and a willingness to work damn hard will make money in Moscow,” he said. “But Russia is not a place for losers. If you don’t take what you want, someone else will grab it.”
