Town Bar and Grill survives but lean pickings for creditors

CREDITORS OF the latest high-profile casualty in the restaurant business, Town Bar and Grill, are to recoup no more than 20 per cent of the money they are owed under a rescue plan for the venue.

Town Bar’s owner, Ronan Ryan, said his restaurant would stay open after an unnamed investor agreed to put €500,000 into the business. As part of the examinership process a string of suppliers will lose most of the money due to them.

“I’m not proud of what has happened to my suppliers but I kept in contact with every one of them. I didn’t hide,” Mr Ryan told The Irish Times last night.

A string of Town’s suppliers phoned RTÉ’s Liveline yesterday to complain about unpaid debts. The Kildare Street restaurant opened five years ago and was popular with politicians and other public figures.

Faced with mounting debts, Mr Ryan said he had a stark choice: “Go into liquidation, put 70 people out of work and no-one would get anything, or get investment and pay off 20 per cent of debts”.

Meanwhile, Jay Burke, the owner of another well-known Dublin restaurant, Eden, has said he is on the verge of closing it because of the failure of the landlord, Temple Bar Cultural Trust, to review the €122,000 annual rent. A spokesman for the trust, which is owned by Dublin City Council, said rents were competitive and Eden’s rent had been agreed through arbitration.

Town’s difficulties follow the closure of other leading restaurants, including Mint and Rhodes.

Last Monday, the liquidator appointed to three restaurants and Renards nightclub owned by Robbie Fox told creditors of a €6.6 million shortfall in the businesses.

Mr Ryan said business was down in Town by 10-15 per cent since the start of the year but it still remained profitable. He attributed its problems to the knock-on effects of the liquidation of South, Bar and Grill, another of his ventures in the Beacon quarter in Sandyford which went into liquidation in January with debts of €1.35 million.

The Revenue Commissioners are owed €300,000 and various food and wine suppliers €500,000. Mr Ryan himself is owed €300,000.

A third restaurant owned by Mr Ryan, Bridge, is outside the examinership process and remains open, though he said its fate rested with the landlord, Treasury Holdings.

Mr Ryan said he had tried to trade his way out of his difficulties but "no-one could have predicted what was coming". "There are people out there owing hundreds of millions of euros and I don't see them getting a 45-minute kicking on the radio," he said about the angry calls to Liveline.