With St.Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I thought I would post some news about one of my favorite bars in SLO…. This is not at all surprising, and if you haven’t had a Car Bomb or a Coors n Whiskey back at McCarthy’s you just ain’t doin it right
Reported in the San Luis Obispio Tribune
Setting the bar
McCarthy’s Irish Pub in San Luis Obispo serves more Jameson whiskey
In a single room tucked away on a downtown alley, a San Luis Obispo institution sells more Jameson Irish Whiskey than any other bar in the nation.
Visitors to McCarthy’s Irish Pub are greeted by a sign in the doorway — “maximum occupancy 49.”
They’re also greeted by friendly bartenders and regulars toasting with — what else — shots of Jameson.
“It is almost the house drink,” said Dan Donait, who works for Jameson distributor Young’s Market. “You have to get one when you’re there.”
That must not be the case at bigger bars in places like Boston, New York and Chicago, which can’t compete when it comes to selling the popular brand of whiskey.
In San Francisco, the pub Ireland’s 32 holds 125 people. Manager Brendan Daly said he sells one-tenth the Jameson that McCarthy’s does.
McCarthy’s goes through more than 100 bottles a month.
“Well,” Daly said, “that’s a lot of whiskey.”
And there are a lot of ways they drink it at McCarthy’s.
There’s the Irish Car Bomb, for example. It’s made of Guinness beer, Jameson and Irish cream.
And “they drink it in shots,” said Jim McGuire, a West Coast representative of the French company that imports the whiskey. He’s visited the bar for work. “There are lots of shots.”
The drink is also, McCarthy’s managing partner Bill Hales said, “in our Irish coffee.”
Despite all that, it’s not the house whiskey. A coke and whiskey at McCarthy’s comes with the cheaper well version. A shot of Jameson’s costs a dollar more.
But customers ask for it — about four liters a day, the manager says. That’s about 88 shots a night.
The bartenders have helped increase sales too. Ask for a shot, and one of them might raise an eyebrow and say “Jameson?”
Ever since the bar became the state’s top Jameson seller in November, Hales said, the night shift has been pushing it a little more.
“It is amazing that a little bar like that would be able to sell that much Irish whiskey,” Hales said. “But the bartenders really spearheaded this.”
Through increased advertising in magazines like “Maxim,” Jameson sales had jumped in the United States by 30 percent last year, McGuire said. But he’s not seen anything like McCarthy’s numbers.
ABOUT THREE MONTHS AFTER
McCarthy’s took the lead in the state, officials at importer
Pernod-Ricard announced the pub had surpassed sales at bars throughout the nation.
It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.
There is a tradition of Irish whiskey at McCarthy’s, Hales said.
Founder Joe McCarthy died recently in his 90s and “he was an Irish whiskey drinker, too,” Hales said.
Somewhere, they think, Joe must be smiling as customers order another round.
More pics of San Luis Obispo posted in the Gallery