The Irish Pub: The summer job that became a career

We always hear about the shiny, new food companies. The Spot is a series about the Philadelphia area's more established establishments and the people behind them.

In 1972, when Richard "Dick" Burke and his wife, Cathy, bought the building at St. James Place and the Boardwalk, Atlantic City was in decline. But the Burkes had a strong concept in mind, so they took a risk and went all in on the oceanfront site, rebranding the former Feeley's Irish Pub and Inn into a spot they called simply "the Irish Pub." It became a favorite stop for visiting politicians, celebs and sports stars - Joe DiMaggio was famously a regular.

In 1975, a Rutgers student named Mark O'Connor got a summer job at the pub, and continued to work there throughout college. When he graduated, Dick Burke asked if he'd like to move to Philadelphia and help open an urban outpost - as 50 percent partner. O'Connor accepted with relish.

Burke had discovered a building for sale near 12th and Walnut, right across from the Forrest Theatre. Along with O'Connor, he made the purchase and they set about gutting the former millinery shop and transforming it into a full-service restaurant. On Dec. 19, 1980, the Irish Pub Philadelphia opened.

Three years later, O'Connor and the Burkes decided to branch out with another city location. They bought the former Da Vinci restaurant on Walnut near 20th and created a west-of-Broad duplicate of their Gaelic-themed taproom.

O'Connor, 58, now oversees all operations at the two Philly locales, and is usually at one or the other every day of the week. One December morning, after completing one of his customary morning rows on the Schuylkill, he slid into a high-backed booth at the 12th Street location and recounted highlights from his 35 years as a publican.

O'Connor has to handle customers who are shocked that there's no Guinness on tap (he says he stopped serving it because of what he viewed as unfair business tactics), and how Phillies great Pat Burrell considered the pub a second home. Then there was the time he invited Joe Biden to the bar but ended up hosting Sarah Palin instead. He also discussed his proudest accomplishment: helping to start the Irish Pub Tour de Shore, an annual charity bike ride that to date has raised more than $5 million for local causes.

How did you end up working at the Irish Pub Atlantic City?

I grew up in Margate - both my parents were Philadelphians, but they moved to the shore when I was a baby - and my dad was a salesman for a beer distributor. One day when he called on the Irish Pub, the Burkes mentioned to him they were looking to hire summer staff. I needed a summer job. I was 18.

How did you become a partner?

I was in the right place at the right time. The Burkes had always wanted to come to Philadelphia, and Dick's theory was that it was better for people who were running the operation to have skin in the game, instead of just being hired managers. He said to me, "How much money do you have?", then took every bit of it, and made me a partner. I was 23 years old. Very lucky.

Why 12th and Walnut?

Dick found the location. Center City wasn't very nice, back then. But he loved this building - loved its proximity to Jefferson Hospital, and to the Forrest Theatre. Annie was playing there, and there were lines outside every day. So we bought it, gutted it ourselves, and built out the interior.

Does it still look the same?

We redid parts in the early '90s; that's when we put in all the wood booths. But the bar is the same as when we opened. It's funny; it was built by an Italian carpenter in South Philly, but people have all these myths about it. "This was brought over from Ireland, right?" Sure.

Were you busy from the start?

From the very first minute. We were a little overwhelmed. I had no idea what I was getting myself into - thank God, because I probably wouldn't have done it if I'd known. There was a lot of anticipation for our opening, because there wasn't much around here. Moriarty's was there. [Doc] Watson's was popular. But not a lot else. So people were sort of waiting for it. They'd keep peeking in during construction, asking, "When are you going to open?"

Why a second pub in Rittenhouse?

We had several young people working for us, both here and in Atlantic City, who had lots of initiative and wanted to do more. So Dick and Cathy felt like if we had the human resources, we might as well use them. We were just starting to look for a location when I happened to be walking up at that end of town and saw them putting the "For Sale" sign on what was Da Vinci's Italian restaurant. I remember going right to the pay phone on the corner and calling Dick. He said, "Tell them to take the sign down!" A few days later, he came up and we made the deal. We opened there in 1983.

That neighborhood didn't have many dining options at the time either, right?

It did not. Dick was always a believer in Philadelphia, always believed it would come back, but at the time, there wasn't much else close to us.

You know, when restaurant people tell you, "Oh no, there's not too many restaurants. I love competition," I have to say I think they're being somewhat disingenuous. If there were only two restaurants in Center City, one west of Broad and one east of Broad, I'd want them both to be called the Irish Pub. That's how I look at it. Synergy's fine on a Friday and Saturday night, when everybody's out, but on a Monday night, synergy doesn't work very well.

Is your clientele different at 12th vs. 20th Street?

When there's a show at the theaters, it's an older demographic here. If not, it's very similar. At lunch, it's midlevel corporate types, and at night it skews younger. On 12th Street, it's night students and nurses from Jeff; at 20th Street, we get some grad students from Wharton, and maybe some med students. That's where we spend our time marketing.

What kind of marketing and advertising do you do?

We've never done tons of advertising. We try to rely mostly on word of mouth. And we're spending most of our marketing energy on social media now - like everybody else. I don't personally do it - some of it I haven't figured out quite yet. But I have really good people, and I pay attention to what they're doing.

What about online reviews; have they changed the game for you at all?

I don't look at them. If my staff does, they don't tell me about it. I guess if there was a real serious issue, they would bring it to me, but I'm really not a fan. They're not going to change the way we do business.

Has the menu changed, over the years?

In the beginning, we tried to do a lot of authentic Irish food. What we found out very quickly was that some of those items people say they love, they don't actually eat very often. Ham and cabbage being an example. Right now the menu is headed toward healthier-type items, because that's a trend I don't think is going away. So we have the classic pub food like stew and shepherd's pie, but we also have items like salad and wraps. And if you put an avocado on anything, people think it's healthy.

How about your beer selection; has that evolved?

When we opened in 1980 we had just four taps - one of them was Michelob, which doesn't really exist anymore - and now we have 14, which are mostly local crafts. In Rittenhouse we have 20 beers on tap.

You don't pour Guinness. Why not?

I stopped serving it back in 2001. Guinness started a commercial development arm that helps people get into the pub business, and I and some other publicans in Philadelphia felt strongly that it was an unfair conflict. We asked Guinness, at the very minimum, to not come to Philly with it. Well, they did, so we stopped serving their beer. At one point, there were a substantial number of bars in Philly that refused to serve it. Almost everyone went back.

Do customers still ask for it? Do you serve a different Irish stout instead?

Yes! Customers ask for it probably every day. But instead we have O'Reilly's Stout, which is made by Sly Fox, and is a really great beer. We tell people, "Look, if you don't like it, you don't have to pay for it. But would you rather have a beer that was brewed 30 miles away 30 days ago, or 3,000 miles away three months ago?"

Sarah Palin made a news splash when she stopped at your bar during the 2008 campaign. How did that come about?

When Joe Biden was announced as the vice-presidential candidate, everyone was calling him "Lunchbox Joe" and "the third senator from Pa." And I thought, wow, we should get him to come in here, because this is middle America; that's what we're all about. So we sent a letter to his campaign. Then someone said we should send one to the Republicans also. I thought that was the throwaway, but the Biden folks never responded, and in the Palin camp it just kept going up the ladder.

It turned out to be a pretty crazy night at 20th Street. There were a lot of protesters outside. Some people still haven't forgotten Palin was here; they'll tell me, "Yeah I don't go into your place," because of that.

Other memorable nights?

When they filmed a scene for Rocky Balboa. The producers had told us that a scout was coming by, and that they were going to look at around 10 different places. I had a really great manager at 20th Street at the time, so I left them with instructions to show the person around. Well, apparently the scout was actually Stallone. My manager calls me and says, "Um, Sly Stallone's here, and he says he wants to use this place." I thought she was joking.

Do you get a lot of celebrities coming in?

Sure, but we never make a big deal. Like Pat Burrell of the Phillies; he used to come in all the time. Reporters were constantly calling me, looking for dirt on him. I remember one day, they were bashing him for on the radio for something he supposedly did here. When he came in that night, he was upset about it. I had already gone home, but when my manager called me, I drove back in and asked Burrell to come sit with me in a booth. I said, "You know how many calls I get about you? Two or three every single week. And I never, ever tell anybody anything." He's like, "Yeah. I knew that." And everything was fine.

He really loved my longtime manager Fran Causland, who's worked here 30 years. The night the Phillies won the World Series, Burrell called the pub and told Fran, "You gotta come to my party tonight." He was having the whole team at his place. So Fran and two other employees got to go to the official team party.

Are you ready for another 35 years here?

Well, I've never had another job. I have no other skills. So I think I'm stuck. But what I really love doing, and am very proud of, is our Irish Pub Tour de Shore. We just had our 28th annual ride from Rittenhouse to Atlantic City. Our first year, it was something like 20 riders and we raised $2,000. This past year, we had just under 2,200 riders, and we raised $865,000. We've raised over $5 million cumulatively.

Those are impressive figures. How do you organize it, and where does the money go?

We have our own nonprofit now, the Irish Pub Children's Foundation, and we have a full-time employee - all she does is run the Tour de Shore. She does a great job; around 80 cents of each dollar we raise goes to donations, and all of it stays local. We gave to 38 different entities this year. We do a lot for the families of fallen officers and first responders. We also support the Independent Mission Schools.

What do you do with the schools?

One program we support is a collaboration with the Philadelphia Police Department. We're just testing it now, in three schools, where uniformed officers are instructing classes. At one school, the class is making a short film about bullying with an officer who really cares about that issue - we're planning to host a premiere, with a red carpet and everything. With another class, a police officer who's really into art is doing a mural in collaboration with Mural Arts. So we're trying to get these kids to see the police officers in a different light, and vice versa. And in very small way, maybe start to change some perceptions.

The Tour de Shore is a lot of work - my wife calls it my second job - but it's really a labor of love, and this kind of thing makes it all worthwhile.

The Irish Pub

1123 Walnut St., 215-925-3311

2007 Walnut St., 215-568-5603

Hours: 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday