Joe Jovanovich is a funny dude. Six days before St. Patrick’s Day, the co-owner/operator of The Pat Connolly Tavern called together his full staff and a 20-person-strong, day-of support crew, all of us gathered upstairs at the 75-year-old Dogtown landmark to discuss the logistical puzzle that is St. Pat’s. With a dose of humor and a couple of boxes of doughnuts, Jovanovich made the experience a downright pleasant one, even for those of us who’d closed our own bars just a few hours earlier.
Running down a big worksheet of instructions within the one-hour promised, Jovanovich started out by reminding that we weren’t to be drunk at the event. That’s the role of attendees, not workers. From that introductory Golden Rule, everything proceeded, with his wife, Lindsay Jovanovich, and mom, Teresa Connolly, adding a few tips, as well. As set-ups for a big event go, it was crisp, direct, efficient.
“Well, we had a few prior years to practice,” Jovanovich (pictured at right) says now, a few days after the event’s conclusion. “Because we are a full service restaurant seven days a week, including 9 am breakfast opens on the weekend, we don't have a lot of flexibility when we can schedule meetings. I guess it's safe to say we have ‘high expectations’ of people. We're not iron-fisted or tough guys, by any means. I'm a true believer that ‘soft power’ always wins. So we don't do the whole yell, get angry, demean people thing. We try to calmly say ‘look, I'm serious about being the best bar in St. Louis, and if you share that goal, here's what we need from you.’ It doesn't always work... we go through a lot of staff... but the ones who've stuck with us are pretty awesome despite their flaws. The same is true for myself, I hope.
“Anyhow, as for keeping the meeting facilitation fun, my ‘secret’ is my background career as a non-profit manager,” he adds. “I've done lots of youth programming and community organizing, hosting focus groups, etc. People always joke ‘I bet being a social worker really helps you as a bartender.’ Yeah, I guess. I mean I think being an empathetic, caring person helps you in any trade. But being a social worker certainly helps me as a manager and a business person, because (without sounding too cheesy) everything we do tries to center around ‘how will this make people feel,’ ‘how will this impact the community,’ ‘how can we be really intentional in planning this get people where we need them to be?’”
On Friday morning, the streets of Dogtown were already starting to buzz at 8 am, as my partner Amy VanDonsel and I hustled up that long hill named Tamm Avenue, from our parking spot on Manchester to Oakland. There, Pat Connolly’s sat at the very, very beginning of this year’s parade route. Making it to our Tamm satellite bar at roughly 8:10 am, we were just about on-time, though the inside bar had already been staffed and humming since the 6 am first call. Picking up our staff shirts for the day, we hustled outside and began prepping the bar that we’d staff from the beginning of the sales day (at 9 am) to roughly 6 pm, when street sales would shut down by rule.
As it turned out, our station - also staffed by a frequent Pat Connolly guest bartender named Kate S., a friend to all in Dogtown - wound up shutting down during the 4 o’clock hour, instead. By then, we’d sold out of Bud Light, Bud Select and Bud, only to be restocked by other satellite bars; we then got sold-out of all of those, all over again, as well as being bought out of Guinness. Pretty much everything else was running low, too. And, to be honest, by 4 pm, the good people attending the street festival portion of St. Pat’s were already good-and-lubed, so sending them around the corner for another drink was probably a better way to go than serving them another round at our humble, little corner of the world.
Our station, as noted, was just a few yards from the parade start, which, Jovanovich, a media-smart sort, admitted was intentional. It gave us an front row seat to the proceedings, with the parade extending way past the hour mark, running a good, 90-minutes or more from start to finish. Though the kickoff was 11:30 am, folks had already begun drinking much earlier than that, with a lot of a Guinness and Jameson orders early; this transitioned into more of the Bud family of beers run later; along the way, too, a few sales of the main local beer available on-site, a trio of cans from Urban Chestnut.
The parade, for someone who’s never gone before, was as some folks predicted, with a big-time, micro-community focus. There’re a lot of big, Irish families that roll down the block with a modified trucks, throwing beads and candies. There’re popular entities from the neighborhood, like the parents from nearby St. James School. And, in an area that’s (let’s be honest) a bit more conservative than other parts of town, the biggest applause came for groups of first responders, as well as a Vietnam Vet’s float, which drew a lusty “USA! USA!” chant. All through the experience, beads were flung into the crowd, many of them landing in our faces or liquor station. No one lost an eye and no bottles dropped, so all went well.
As the parade ended, the on-site band, a cover group called Feel Good Inc. provided the party-ready soundtrack, playing a catalog of hits from the last 15-years, while barbacks and the members of the Jovanovich/Connolly family stocked coolers and kept cash drawers tidy, respectively.
Just as he’d shown a good sense of humor a week prior, Joe Jovanovich seemed in good spirits as the day progressed, even as everyone in attendance wanted a second of his time.
“To a certain extent, you just kind of have to let loose and adapt to the chaos” he says. “This is our third year, and really this year was all about perfecting the plan we tested last year. The first year was nothing compared to this. It wasn’t nearly as busy that Tuesday; we were brand new and did little promotion, and we had fewer bars, no band in the tent, etc. For the most part, things went according to plan; mainly because we spent countless hours planning. We learned last year the importance of overstaffing each bar, and having plenty of security, so that we can quickly respond to problems without opening up more gaps. The two bigs things that caught me off guard: 1) the amount of food people ate. We ran out of both hot dogs and hamburgers. We made it through most of the day, thankfully, but our grill could never keep up with demand; 2) we sold so much damn beer. We sent a lot back last year. This year we sold literally every single damn can of Bud Light we had. Over 100 cases. Insane. I never would have guessed.”
The day’s one that’s not necessarily meant to be fun, at least not on the management/ownership level. It is meant to help boost the annual till, during a stretch of the year that can be tough in the bar business.
Escape hatch: Jovanovich on the roof at his family's landmark tavern
”Yes, you've got to go big,” Jovanovich says, when asked if it’s an all-out type of need to score. “Our first year, in part because we were new at it, my philosophy was ‘keep it simple, try to enjoy yourself.’ But nah. Double-down and go nuts. My thought is every extra few percentage points in sales we can boost/cushion my bottom line for slow months, mistakes I make, etc. So I have to go all out on one day so I can stress less on other days. I don't worry about having fun that day, because the other 364 days will be more fun if St. Pat's is a hit. So I kind of become a spastic despot that day, work for nearly 48 hours straight, obsess, freak out a bit, don't drink a drop of booze all day. To be honest, the day-of isn't very fun at all for me. I kind of dread it for the week leading up to it. But by evening time on St. Pat's, when I realize we've had a success and I can start to calm down, it hits me all at once how amazing of an event we host, what a unique neighborhood experience this is, and what an awesome community Dogtown is. Then I smile, get some sleep, etc.”
The workers, it must be said, did okay. At least at our station, where we pulled in about $500 in tips, with a 10% skim for the non-tipped workers, including the kitchen staff, who were very obviously busting their ass for hours. The customers, of course, were a varied bunch, some of them delightful, a few of them less than that, most of them behaved and respectful and vertical and understanding of the fact that they were paying a little extra to take part in Dogtown’s biggest celebration.
As someone who’s now worked Soulard Mardi Gras and LouFest as a guest worker, as a volunteer bartender for my one/only Fair St. Louis, and as a regular staffer for The Royale’s Derby Day, Friday’s stint at Pat Connolly was a good introduction to the St. Patrick’s Day tradition in Dogtown. Without a drop of Irish blood in my veins or a particular taste for Irish whiskey, it’s likely the only way that’d draw me to Dogtown again, which could always happen, I suppose. Just attending Joe’s pep talk would be amusing enough.
Next up: Cinco de Mayo on Cherokee? Who’s hiring?
Thomas Crone co-owns and bartends at the Tick Tock Tavern, where celebrations are scarce.
