Shock as popular Ashbourne restaurant closes due to rising costs

An Ashbourne business owner who has been forced to shut the doors of their popular restaurant due to rising costs says the hospitality sector has been "forgotten about."

The Donkey Shed Restaurant at Newbarn Farm in Ashbourne closed its doors for the last time on Sunday, 20th October after 13 years in operation sending shockwaves throughout the local community.

In a social media post, the team behind The Donkey Shed Restaurant said:

"With costs rising and predicted to rise further and with no solution available other than raising prices, something has to give. We are really sorry to disappoint our customers, but the time has come to change.

"So to paraphrase a horse analogy, we have decided to shut the stable door before the donkey bolts and have made the difficult decision to close the doors on the Donkey Shed Restaurant, rethink, restructure and open again with something different.

"The adventure starts again.

"The Farm Shop will of course remain open as normal."

Speaking to Meath Chronicle this week, Saskia Lynch who runs Newbarn farm along with her brother Andrew Ruiter said:

"Since Covid our costs have just gone up and up and we can't absorb anymore costs and what was done in the budget as regards the VAT remaining at 13.5% and the minimum wage due to go up in January and other measures, we knew costs were going to continue to rise for us and the only choice we were left with was continuing to increase our prices and we felt like we were getting to the stage that we were becoming unaffordable for customers," she said.

"It's very difficult at the moment, you feel a little bit forgotten about," added Saskia.

"We are a daytime restaurant and rely very much on local customers and continued custom and we'd noticed that customers who would maybe come in every week were starting to come in less frequently, maybe once a month."

"A huge part of that I'm sure is that we had become a more expensive place to go and simply people had to make other choices.

"We are going to restructure the business model to hopefully provide a more affordable option for people who want to want to eat out during the day."

Saskia says that despite assessing all aspects of the business model, they were unable to find a way forward.

"We had tightened up everything we could, everybody was working incredibly hard but we couldn't see a way out of it and we couldn't see the business going into profit going forward," she said.

"Some members of the team have been with us for over ten years and it is devastating to part ways," added Saskia.

"As management we are incredibly proud of what we achieved. We were located on a farm and we were serving food grown on the farm and our customers enjoyed their experiences with us and you can see that from the comments underneath our social media post about closing.

"We have had families come into us from the very start and we have seen people's children grow up. We have seen people's children have children, it's been a really special experience."