You could be in New York, Barcelona, Kazakhstan or D.C., and you can find an Irish pub.
And if there's something comforting about how similar they all are,
it's probably because a lot of these bars
— in fact, more than 2,000 of them across 53 countries —
come from one man: Mel McNally and his business, the Irish Pub Company of Dublin, Ireland.
It all started when Mel McNally was just a baby
and his parents would take him down to the local pub.
Mel pretty much grew up in pubs, but he didn't really give them that much serious thought
until he was older.
It's the 1970s, and Mel's in architecture school.
And he and his classmates had to come up with an idea for their final project.
So they decided to do something a lot of us have done.
They decided, "We should write our paper on something we already know a ton about."
"Pubs!"
And their teacher was like, "Really? Pubs?"
And they were like "Irish ... pubs?"
They hit all the famous pubs in Dublin.
And it was a kind of a scam at first, but they wind up taking it really seriously.
They brought along their sketch pads and their tape measures.
They looked at the craftsmanship and the artwork.
They felt the distressed floors.
They analyzed the mouth feel of the Guinness.
They debated the stained-glass work.
And they distilled their research into three unspoken rules that all good pubs obey.
Rule No. 1: You should be able to see the bar as soon as you walk in
and then from almost any place in the pub.
Except the toilet.
Rule No. 2: Define your style.
All good pubs belong to one or a mix of six Irish pub categories:
modern gastro, brewery, shop, country, Celtic and Victorian.
And Rule No. 3: Balance privacy with room for gathering.
You'd have these tiny little rooms called snugs to fit just a few people at a time,
give them some privacy while they're having a drink — or a bad date.
Even the long bar would usually be broken up into segments.
But then they all flow into a central area where people can mingle
and slosh beer on each other.
"In effect, these design things — they're the structure of a good night at the pub.
This is what makes Irish pubs so special."
Mel had cracked the code.
He and his friends wrote up the report, and they aced the project.
And when he graduated, Mel realized that he was now probably
the No. 1 expert in Irish pub design.
Now, Ireland already had quite enough pubs.
But over the years, he started to think that the rest of the world maybe didn't.
So Mel began to get on some planes.
Wherever some eager entrepreneur wanted to open a traditional Irish pub, Mel would go
there and show them how it's done in Dublin.
Soon, he was selling his designs
and all the parts you needed to build an Irish pub from scratch.
He'd send entire pubs around the world, ready to assemble in giant shipping containers.
It may sound kind of crazy, but the business took off.
And he came up with a really clever way to make sure that no one could just replicate
his designs cheaply in some factory.
He convinced pub owners around the world that in order to build a truly authentic pub, you
had to buy everything from Ireland — right down to the bric-a-brac.
The lights, the chairs, the curtains — the man who won't stop talking to you.
It'd all come prepackaged and ready to assemble from Mel McNally.
And in the interest of full Irish employment, he highly recommends an Irish bartender
and a real Irishman to help you get it all up and running.