Updates are in order of oldest to newest
December 4, 2023 (directly below) December 8, 2023 December 17, 2023
December 20, 2023 December 23, 2023 December 29, 2023
Our Original Announcement - December 4, 2023
Irish Eyes aren’t smiling, but we’ve had a GREAT run!
There’s no good way to present news like this, so here goes… it comes with an extremely heavy heart to report that McGonigal’s Pub will be closing for business at the end of this month. We first opened our doors on March 9th, 2010 and our last day of operations will be December 31st, 2023.
To answer the obvious question in the most direct way, for quite some time the Pub hasn’t been generating nearly enough business to retain viability. Over the years we’ve worked hard and tried virtually everything we could to guide it in the right direction - which includes putting forth a significant amount of family money in the business to keep it going - but with our business model, location and size of the Pub it’s ended up being a losing battle to adequately support our operations and overhead. Inevitably the financial burdens of running this establishment have become so great that the business itself is no longer sustainable.
I completely understand that this is a tough one to swallow for our loyal patrons, the McGonigal family and our extended family - our fantastic, dedicated, staff. Therefore I’m keeping this message short for now and will be expanding on it over the next few weeks… there are a lot of memories to share, people to thank and some heartfelt reflection from our nearly fourteen years in the big old brick bank building at 105 S. Cook Street, right in the heart of downtown Barrington.
Thank you everyone for your patronage, and please stay tuned for more news… it’s still “business as usual” for the time being, and we definitely plan on going out in a positive fashion!
Bryan McGonigal
Owner
McGonigal’s Pub
We've received quite a bit of press regarding our closing announcement and even made the local network news... links are below. We'd like to highlight one in particular, the 12/8/23 link from an interview by Rick West of the Daily Herald:
December 8, 2023 - McGonigal's Pub owner says lack of foot traffic and video gambling in Barrington factored into closure (Daily Herald - PDF version here)
December 6, 2023 - Today in Culture (Newcity.com)
December 5, 2023 - Popular Pub in downtown Barrington announces permanent closure due to financial issues
December 5, 2023 - McGonigal's Pub in Barrington closing (ABC 7 News)
December 4, 2023 - McGonigal's Pub closing year end (Chicago Tribune)
December 4, 2023 - McGonigal's Pub to close at the end of the month (Daily Herald)
First of all, I need to put out a heartfelt THANK YOU to my remarkable, loyal staff, as they have ALL made the decision to hang with the Pub through the end of the year. Over the pat couple weeks several have secured other jobs already, so 2024 will start off well for the people who truly have been the heart and soul of this establishment. We definitely couldn’t have stayed open for regular business without them here.
This is the week where we really start winding down much of our inventory. Most of our bigger selling food items will remain on the menu through years end, but several items are no longer available and that list will get longer next week. We’ll update our Menus page accordingly (should be Monday or Tuesday). Additionally in terms of beer, wine and liquor, much of our lower selling items will not be reordered when gone but the “commodity” items will remain on as long as possible. Suffice to say we don’t plan on running out of Guinness until the bitter end!
At the moment the plan is to keep our regular daily specials unchanged, though Irish Monday has lost a few items (tomorrow is the last one anyway). Also our hours of operation will not change.
There have also been several inquiries into purchasing some Pub t-shirts, memorabilia and even some of the wall hangings and furniture! Unfortunately we are completely out of shirts and related items, and any serious inquiries for items that are part of the Pub can be discussed AFTER we close; I’ll still be available at bryan@mcgonigalspub.com and onsite cleaning up for the foreseeable future.
Another update to follow in the not-too-distant future.
As we just posted in the Pub:
On behalf of the McGonigal family we are all heartbroken about our pending business closure. The outpouring of emotion and goodwill has been overwhelming - THANK YOU EVERYONE for your years of amazing support! We plan to finish on a positive note as our final celebration is planned for the weekend of December 29th - 31st. Join us for lots of entertainment, the Pub camaraderie and help us finish up our food & drink inventory!
Our current scheduled entertainment includes Fast Eddie McAteer, Blues Demolition, Morgan Fingleton and The Rolling Blackouts. More may be added soon, including an Irish New Years Eve celebration. There will also be plenty of additional food & drink specials.
Band schedules have been posted on our Main page and Events page.
We'll continue to update this page and our main page with more info as it becomes available.
Our Menu section has been updated with the limited offerings still available. This list will (sadly) continue to shrink as we get closer to closing.
Additionally, full information (as it stands now) on our "End of an Era" New Years Eve Celebration has been posted in our Events section under **End of an Era**.
Your overwhelming support and patronage (THANK YOU) has led to an issue... we’re temporarily running out of staple items such as Guinness & Miller Lite drafts, along with several food menu items. Even though inventory is running down due to our end of year closing, our intentions are still to keep the "everyday" items stocked for service, and we've been placing good sized orders to accommodate. However, the past couple weeks - and in particular the past few days - have been insanely busy, and now with the Christmas holiday preventing additional orders from our suppliers, our hands are tied until Tuesday. We apologize for this unexpected inconvenience, but THANK YOU for your understanding.
All our final orders for commodity food and beverage items were placed earlier this week, so we are down to whatever we have left in house. Having said that, we are ready to go for our last weekend of business, and there should be plenty of “on the fly” specials we’ll be sharing in order to give our patrons great deals for assisting us in our existing inventory reduction! Our apologies if we do run out of something that you may be wanting, but yes it’s virtually guaranteed that will happen. Thank you for your help, understanding and of course your patronage.
We also thank everyone in advance for being respectful of the establishment, our staff and fellow patrons over this final weekend. Let’s keep all activities positive and fun!
There have been numerous inquiries about purchasing Pub memorabilia, much of which is still being used at the establishment. Those with legitimate interests in certain items should contact us in January at info@mcgonigalspub.com, or (if you have his info) you can contact Bryan directly. Additionally, we’ve been going through our storage areas and may have some very limited pieces of “swag” as in shirts, keychains, etc. available… what we have will be on display for purchase or giveaways at the Pub. Sorry, we won’t be mailing anything, you gotta be here to get it.
We may do one more update on this info page and will leave all additional details on our main page and Facebook page. Moving forward, the plan is to keep this ancient www.mcgonigalspub.com website intact as-is and will provide updates accordingly. What’s up for the future? Please stay in touch with us as it’s highly likely we will be resurfacing again in the region sometime in 2024. It’s hard to keep a good Irishman down!
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