Cork City's first 'superpub', Mahon's Red Cove Inn, for sale for €1.4m
The Red Cove Inn, Mahon, Cork, is on the market with agents Savills with a guide price of €1.4m Picture Dan Linehan
The Red Cove Inn, arguably Cork’s first superpub, opened by the brother of former Olympic boxer Kieran Joyce in 1989, is on the market for €1.4m.
The Mahon pub, chief sponsors of Ringmahon Rangers, the local soccer club that produced Liverpool FC and Republic of Ireland second-choice ‘keeper Caoimhin Kelleher, has been owned by publican Ray O’Mahony for 23 years.
He has made the pub a mainstay of the local community, hosting functions, card-playing, darts and pool tournaments, while converting overhead space into a beauty salon, where botox fillers are delivered once a fortnight, and also a taekwondo school, which is transformed into a pool hall at weekends.
Mr O’Mahony, who is now retiring, bought the pub for IR£1.3m (€1.65m) in 2000 from Don O’Sullivan and John Collins, who subsequently took over the Munster Arms Hotel in Bandon. The duo had run the pub for three years, having bought it from Karl Joyce, taxi-driver-turned publican, whose family was well-known in the coal business and in boxing circles.
The late Mr Joyce, who started his business career with Joyce's Cabs, once owned five pubs in Cork City, including three in Blackpool – Dick Turpin’s, Karl’s Bar and Joyce’s Tavern – as well as the Briar View Tavern on Blarney Street and the Red Cove. He put them all up for sale in the 1990s and returned to being a taxi-driver. At the time Mahon was a nascent city suburb which has developed exponentially since.
Mr O’Mahony said turnover at the pub is €1m per annum “running at a 51%-52% profit margin”.
The two overhead commercial units are generating about €18,000 pa.
Mr O’Mahony said the pub, at 1 Avenue de Rennes, “is extremely sports orientated” and that as well as screening "all the big games", they regularly host visiting soccer teams in the large lounge. Food for the visitors is cooked in a HSE-approved onsite commercial kitchen.
“The lounge has also accommodated birthday parties, funerals (there’s a cemetery nearby) and even a wedding. As it has a stage, it is also used as a live music venue," he said.
The bar, where half of a coxed eight (rowing boat) is displayed above the counter (rescued from a field near Cork Boat Club), has lots of TV screens, a pool table and a darts area, but the main pool room is upstairs at weekends, where the Cork Pool Association play tournaments. Visiting teams play there too.
The room is set up as a taekwondo studio from Monday-Thursday and easily converted into a pool hall at weekends.
“Leonard [Coughlan, Taekwondo instructor] has a good business established here, children are dropped off from all over the city,” Mr O’Mahony said. There’s a WC/shower/changing room upstairs too.
Both taekwondo studio and the beauty salon (The Beauty Empire) have their own entrances and stairways. The beauty salon includes two hairdressing stations, a make-up area and treatment rooms, including one used for delivering botox fillers every fortnight. There’s a kitchen area and toilets also.
“Everything was done with full planning permission,” said Mr O’Mahony.
The inn is being sold with tenants in situ.
The premises, which, has a ground floor footprint of 5,000 sq ft and seating for up to 200 people, also comes with a beer garden, an off-licence hatch inside the main entrance, and an adjoining carpark, with parking for 22 cars.
There’s also an office/spirits store with a 16-screen security camera system. There are grills on the windows too – Mr O’Mahony said there has “never been a break-in in 23 years”.
Mr O’Mahony said the premises is ideally situated, with a number of food takeaways and a bookies’ nearby.
Savills Micheál Walsh and Isobel O’Regan are handling the sale. Mr Walsh said as the Red Cove Inn is the only pub in the area "it has built up a substantial turnover and will be an attractive business opportunity for those interested in the licensed trade".
Isobel O’Regan/Michéal Walsh, Savills + 353 21 427137 or email info@savills.ie
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