In Meeting House Square, the Temple Bar Market has withered

Early Saturday afternoon at the Temple Bar Food Market in Meeting House Square about 10 people were wandering between the seven stalls.

The stalls sold cuts of beef, cheeses and vegetables, as well as hot dogs and Bombay grilled sandwiches.

By a quarter past two, Mairead Devlin was down to her last loaf of black sesame bread at The Sourdough Sisters. Plates of pastries on the countertop had thinned to some scones, a flapjack and a cinnamon knot.

The Sisters do steady business even if the footfall isn’t huge, Devlin says. “But we’d love to see it improve.”

Since the pandemic, the Meeting House Square has been one of the more difficult markets to operate at, she says. “We’d like to see that this place has a future.”

Neighbouring the soon-to-be refurbished but still vacant Eden Restaurant, and below four tall umbrellas, which are rarely raised, the market is one the square’s main events.

But it seems to have withered.

Before the pandemic, there were 18 stalls operating here, says Maria Moynihan Lee, managing director of Milestone Inventive, the company that managed it back then.

Yes, four vendors have left the market in the past 12 months, says a spokesperson for the Temple Bar Company, which manages it now.

But seven others are waiting on casual trading licences from the council so they can open up there, they said.

The Temple Bar Company expects that by the end of the year, the number of traders in the square will be above what it was pre-pandemic, they said

Falling numbers

The market in the Meeting House Square was first set up in 1997, said Declan Cassidy of the Gourmet Grub Bakery, which has a stall there.

“It was always a place where you don’t have to worry about footfall, because you’re right smack bang in the middle of Temple Bar,” he says.

Cassidy has worked in Meeting House Square since 1998, when he started at Gallic Kitchen, a stall run by Sarah Webb, one of the market’s founders, he says.

Then, in 2014, he set up the Gourmet Grub Bakery, he says.

Beginning in 2015, the market was managed by Milestone Inventive on behalf of the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, according to its website.

In 2020, Milestone’s contract finished up, says Maria Moynihan Lee, the company’s managing director.

When Dublin City Council issued its invite to tender for the new contract in October 2019, the food market across Curved Street and the Meeting House Square had 21 stalls in operation, the notice says.

There were 18 stalls in Meeting House Square at the time of the changeover, Moynihan Lee says. “Plus a further 5 pitches were on hold due to pending construction/renovation works to a building on one side of the square.”

Then came the pandemic, and once the first lockdown had ended in the summer of 2020, there were only a handful of traders who started back, Cassidy says. “It was the grocery traders in there first, because the hot food might encourage people to hang around.”

A lot of the stalls that served full meals or hot food moved on, he says. “And that’s fair enough.”

In February 2023, Dublin City Council went to tender for the management of the Temple Bar markets, including Meeting House Square, Curved Street and The Designer Mart on Cow Street.

The contract was due to begin in April 2023, the notice says. Currently, the market is managed by the Temple Bar Company on Dublin City Council’s behalf.

A spokesperson for the Temple Bar Company said on Tuesday evening that the number of market traders has increased from eight to twelve, with seven new vendors awaiting their casual trading licences.

Two of its former vendors moved on from trading at the market to buy their own stores, they said. “A further two vendors have also graduated away from the Temple Bar Food Market to exclusively supplying their products to supermarkets.”

“This highlights the huge success the market has been in supporting evolving enterprises and helping them transition away from a market to new trading opportunities,” they said.

Drawing in a crowd

On Saturday, the four retractable umbrellas at Meeting House Square, positioned around the black-and-white chessboard tiled floor, were closed.

It wasn’t exactly an anomalous occurrence, because they have only been open roughly a dozen times since Covid, Cassidy says. “They haven’t been working, and we were told they are going to be repaired.”

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council did not respond to a query about their current status.

Without the umbrellas, business depends on good weather, says Aanchal Shukla of Dehli2Dublin, an Indian street food stall. “The rainy day is the worst day.”

They are a major factor of bringing customers into the square, Cassidy says. “It is a tourist attraction, because of their design and how they keep water out.”

The council needs to have a stronger strategy in place for its food markets, says independent councillor Mannix Flynn.

“All the emphasis has been on the Iveagh Market and the Fruit and Veg Market, but in actual fact, they haven’t really managed their own markets, the ones that are there,” he says.

There hasn’t been much attention paid to the Temple Bar Market, he says. “It’s in huge decline and you very rarely hear about [it]. You don’t see any publicity in the area.”

A spokesperson for the Temple Bar Company, which also manages the nearby Book Market on Barnardo Square and the Cows Lane Craft Market, says they have a dedicated social media strategy for their markets.

“We regularly promote them through our standalone platform, Love Temple Bar,” the spokesperson said, while its social media had a reach of 10,800 over the past 30 days.

But its advertising needs to be improved, says Shukla. “The effort has not been up to the mark.”

The Moore Street Market across the Liffey, which the Temple Bar Company also manages, has gotten better physical advertising with flags and banners, and that should be adopted to improve the Meeting House Square, she says. “They advertise a lot better than what is in Temple Bar.”

Is it worth it?

The Meeting House Square was the first location where Dehli2Dublin started serving its Bombay grilled sandwiches in June 2022.

Since then, they have expanded to Leopardstown and Merrion Square, but while they have done well elsewhere, their original spot has become the most difficult, Shukla says.

“The Meeting House Square has not been doing great, since, I would say, a good few months,” she said.

After 25 years of trading at the market, Lilliput Stores recently closed its stall, says Cassidy, of Gourmet Grub.

The loss of the Lilliput Stores’ stall left an impact on the market, Shukla says. “A lot of other traders are now thinking: is it worth it?”

A spokesperson for the Temple Bar Company says on an average Saturday, 70 percent of its vendors sell out of their products entirely.

Shukla says the Delhi2Dublin stall has had to throw out a lot of food that isn’t getting sold, she says. “It’s a loss of food and if everything goes to waste, it’s not a good sign.”