Just what you don’t expect

Alan Carmichael realised a long-cherished dream when his name went up recently over Ballymoney’s newest bar and bistro offering – but Alan is no stranger to the perils and opportunities of running a business…

No-one could accuse Alan Carmichael of failing to spot a business opportunity.

The 43-year-old Ballymoney man is currently busy with his newest project – a thriving bar and bistro in the centre of the mid-Antrim market town – but Alan has spent much of his working life as owner/manager of a remarkably diverse selection of profitable businesses outside the licensed trade.

He might be best known locally as the owner of Carmichael Logistics, which has operated from a base in nearby Ballymena since 1999, providing storage and haulage services. Formerly, Alan was much more deeply involved in haulage through his company ACT International, which he sold on in 2009.

In 2011, he opened a large children’s play centre at Pennybridge in Ballymena called the Fun Factory and for the last three years, he has been proprietor of Ballymoney-based estate agency, The Estate Angel.

However, although Alan opened café and restaurant in The Fun Factory in 2015, it wasn’t enough to satisfy an ambition that he’s nurtured for most of his life:

“I really wanted to open my own licensed restaurant,” he told LCN. “I’m a real foodie, I enjoy trying anything different and that’s the big reason that I’ve always wanted to be in the restaurant trade.”

He finally got the chance to follow his dream last year when Charles Kelly’s bar in Ballymoney town centre came onto the market. At that time, the premises were owned by Alan’s cousin, Jim Stevenson, although the venue has been a fixture on Church Street for decades. Jim wanted to sell and Alan jumped at the chance to realise his dream:

“When I got the place, it was just a wee front bar,” he told LCN recently. “There had been a restaurant in there years ago, but Jim had closed it down and by the time I came along, the whole business was in need of a lift.”

Alan closed the bar for a month and began investing around £100,000 in a thorough refurbishment.

“The bar probably still had its two or three regulars who were coming in at that stage, but it had become very run down over the years,” added Alan.

No structural changes were made to the building but the front bar, the kitchen and the first floor bistro area were totally revamped and the building was re-wired. The front bar opened again for business at the start of the year, while work continued elsewhere. Then, around a month ago, the bistro itself opened its doors to an expectant local audience

“I would describe the place as quirky and different,” Alan said. “It isn’t what you would expect to find in Ballymoney and people can’t believe the character in the place and what we’ve done to it. This definitely isn’t your typical bistro, it’s something totally new for Ballymoney.

“We opened the bistro to the public about a month ago, but even before that, we were serving pub grub in the bar downstairs using our new kitchen and that was a great way for us to get people in and let them taste the kind of food that they could expect when we opened the bistro.”

Food is one of Alan’s most abiding passions and he travels widely to try new venues and dishes:

“That experience is something that I’ve tried to bring out in the menu at Carmichael’s”, he went on. “I will actually tell the chefs what I want on the menu and then it’s up to them to create their own versions of those dishes.

“We offer lots of fish on the menu and things that I don’t think you would normally expect to find in a bar around the north coast area…I don’t want to be the same as everybody else. We’ll certainly offer dishes that people are familiar with, our chilli chicken is very popular for example, but there are lots of other interesting things on there two and a great range of food for vegetarians. There really is a great choice.”

Carmichael’s currently employs around 20 people, full and part-time, including head chef, Mark Robinson, who formerly worked at The Stables and the Maldron hotel in Antrim.

Alan says that business has been “well beyond expectations” so far – he believes that letting customers get a taste for the venue’s food offering in the run-up to the opening of the bistro really helped spread the word about Carmichael’s:

“We had great feedback on social media about our pub grub and everybody was very keen to see what was on the menu when the bistro opened,” he added. “We teased them with plenty of photos and when the bistro finally opened, we had a live band in to really set the scene and we had a fantastic night and now we are booked up for the next four Saturday nights.”

At the moment, Alan closes the business on Mondays and Tuesdays and the front bar opens Thursday to Saturday with the bar upstairs in the bistro available the rest of the time.

His plans for the venue include opening a slightly more traditional restaurant with an a la carte menu in the space downstairs in the very near future. With room for 55 covers, he says that area can also be used for private parties and functions.

“This is definitely not the finished product yet,” he explained. “At the moment, the food and the service are doing the talking for us. Word about the quality of the food we are putting on the plate is getting around and we are focused on making sure that continues. Consistency is important and I want to make sure that our customers are always treated in the same way.”

His priority now, he adds, is maximising the opportunity presented by the new venue:

“In the medium term, I’d like to think that this business will become really well established and talked about,” he said. “I want people to see us as different to every other place in the area and instead of heading up to the north coast for something to eat, I want them to decide to come to Carmichael’s instead.”