In a proper Irish pub, the bar ought to be no more than 10 steps from the front entrance. It should be large and ornately carved, made of solid, heavily lacquered hardwood that will withstand years of propping up beer-sipping patrons. The pub should be dimly lit with old-fashioned light fixtures, the walls covered with vintage family photos and prints, and shelves lined with whisky bottles, well-worn books and jugs—in all, hundreds of pieces of bric-a-brac. Genuine Irish servers (the heavier the accent, the better) should be pouring the Guinness.
And then there are the snugs. Here at the Kilkenny in Calgary, these glassed-in booths are everywhere, set back from the bar and tucked around corners. Back in Ireland, the snug was the only place a priest could sneak a pint, or a man could have a drink with his mistress. In Cowtown, even on a Saturday afternoon, the snugs are jammed—not with priests or sneaky spouses, but with students and families. Franco Falcone, the man who designed and built the Kilkenny in 2000—just one of the 50 "authentic" Irish pubs he has created in the past nine years—sits at the bar, nursing a Guinness. "This is what you do," Falcone says. "You build snugs."
If it seems a tad formulaic, it is. Falcone—a carpenter who grew up in British Columbia, the son of Italian immigrants—has taken the notion of the cozy Irish pub and turned it into a science. His company, Prairie Pacific Pubs Ltd., creates four or five pubs each year out of a shop in Calgary—from the bar and lights to the sign that will hang over the door. Falcone's workers even scour antique shops and estate sales for just the right knick-knacks. Then they seal each piece in a crate and ship it to its destination for assembly. "We call it pub-in-a-box," says Falcone. Prairie Pacific's handiwork has made its way into towns across Alberta and B.C., to Florida, California, even Kansas. Falcone's most recent project was a $40,000 (U.S.) mini-pub for Madison Square Garden. (The place will be called Francis O'Falcon's. "I put my Irish name on the plan to see if they'd go for it," says Falcone, "and they did.") Next up, he's building several pubs bound for U.S. naval bases worldwide, including Japan. A client in California has ordered an Irish pub with a Caribbean twist. "I'm trying to talk them out of it," says Falcone—he's partial to the classic look.
Inside Prairie Pacific's 7,500-square-foot building, a fine layer of sawdust blankets every surface, including Falcone's desk, which is littered with plans for the Navy pubs. The smell of fresh-cut wood wafts from the shop, where the company's nine employees are putting the finishing touches on the Madison Square Garden job. Sheets of plywood line the walls, and a gleaming 13-metre-long bar sits in the middle of the room, waiting to be sent to New York. Same goes for the whisky-barrel tables and stools, and the gold-lettered Francis O'Falcon's sign that hangs on one wall. He's just waiting for his cheque to arrive; then he'll ship it out.
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Falcone and two partners started Prairie Pacific in 1998. He'd left Kimberly, B.C., at 18. His father was a carpenter and cabinetmaker, and Falcone—a former junior hockey player who spent much of his time in the penalty box—took a job with PCL in Calgary to apprentice in the same trade. During the economic downturn of the 1980s, however, his job disappeared, and he spent the next few years doing home renos. Eventually he hooked up with Doug Milton, and they started building retail stores together. A few years later, they worked on an Irish pub in Banff. "I thought I could do better," says Falcone. "I knew what they'd paid for it, and what I could have done with the same amount of money." John Marshall was a sub-contractor on the job—he specialized in supplying bric-a-brac to places like the Spaghetti Factory and the Keg. The three of them realized that Irish pubs presented a potentially lucrative niche, with little competition. In a sort of geographic truce, they called their new company Prairie Pacific, since Marshall lived in B.C., and Falcone and Milton in Calgary.
Early on, the partners realized that the key to expanding into the U.S. was to hook up with Diageo-Guinness USA, maker of the quintessentially Irish stout. Guinness is a minor brand in North America. But by the brewer's reckoning, "authentically Irish-themed pubs" pour 33 times more Guinness than regular ones. So in 1992, Guinness created a European division dedicated to promoting "the Irish pub concept"; it expanded to the U.S. four years later. Since then, says Sean Fadden, the company's Boston-based pub-development manager, his division has helped open 400 Irish pubs across the States. "Guinness is all about selling the beer," says Fadden, "and increasing any point of distribution."
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