BROAD RIPPLE— A Broad Ripple restaurant is getting ready to open for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. It’s the first time in five years Broad Ripple Brewpub will be open on a Monday.
St. Patrick’s Day 2020 is the day restaurants and Indiana could no longer have sit down service, the owners then decided it wasn’t profitable enough to stay open on Mondays.
Broad Ripple Brewpub used to be open seven days a week, once COVID hit there wasn’t enough staff or business for it to make sense. Billy Hannan, the owner says a lot has changed for the restaurant industry in five years. He now closes his restaurant earlier and has had to raise beer prices.
“You know everything went up in price, margins are thinner, you can’t afford to pay staff to not being doing something. So, yea we just had to make the decision that past 9 p.m., I would love it to change, I would love to change to stay open later. The more hours you have, the more chances for you to make money but if there’s literally no one coming in then you’re losing money,” said Hannan.
Hannan says finding staff still is difficult to do but not as hard as it was five years ago.
“For the first year, it was almost impossible, nobody was looking for work. I’m not one of these people who say ‘Oh they were all sitting at home.’ They weren’t, they just transitioned to something else. I think that a lot of people who are in the service industry once they didn’t have to get up and go to work every day were able to start thinking about a different path,” said Hannan.
Hannan is also Irish, so with St. Patrick Day falling on a Monday again, he felt like it was right to open and celebrate. St. Patrick’s Day was always a big day for them. Broad Ripple Brewpub will be open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. with food specials and live music.
