New boss at Maxol talks business

Eoghan Murray jokes that he’s been working “eight days a week” since he took over the Maxol service station on the Dublin Road from ‘Mr Mullingar’ Millie Walsh at the end of July.

Running a service station that opens daily at 6.30am and closes at 11.30pm is an onerous undertaking in itself, but it’s just one of a number of businesses that entrepreneur Eoghan runs in the Mullingar area.

Perhaps best known for Apache Pizza, which he took over from his father Niall in 2018, Eoghan also owns Pitta Pit, located a short distance from Apache in Blackhall, and Lis Cafe, a seasonal café at Tudenham. The ambitious young businessman also has interests in Apache Pizza outlets in Longford, Tullamore, and most recently Rathfarnham in Dublin.

He reckons that he’s getting about four hours of sleep a night at the minute, but he knew what he was getting himself into when he signed the lease.

“We’ve taken on one or two new people, including a manager. I just want to set the structures up my way, so in three months’ time I’ll be back in Lanzarote for an old blast of the sunshine.

“It’s hard graft at the minute, but I knew that was what I was signing up for. With the other businesses, I open here, and when one of the staff comes in, I go down and help out in Pitta Pit to get them going.

"I then go out to the café for 10 o’clock to get them going and then get into Apache for about 12 or 1 o’clock. Then it’s the same locking up; you’re in Pitta Pit for eight o’clock, you’re out in the café at seven or eight, and then I head to Apache for a few hours. We close there at 10, and then I’m back up here [to Maxol] to lock up for 11.30pm.”

Always on the lookout for a business opportunity, Eoghan (36) says that when the chance came to take over the service station after hearing news of Millie’s imminent retirement, it was one he couldn’t turn down.

When it comes to the service station, Millie’s are big boots to fill. Confident he can build on that legacy, Eoghan says that he has been deeply heartened by the response from the wider community.

“The support we’ve had from people has been incredible, like there’s people coming in, and they’d nearly make you cry with how welcoming they are. All our neighbours off the Dublin Road, like George Stevens and Jim Burke, and from all over Mullingar, have been in to welcome us. Old Ireland is still alive somewhere. They just want to wish you well.”

This interaction with the community is something that the naturally sociable Eoghan is enjoying greatly.

“It’s something I’ve been missing in my life, I’d say, in the last couple of years. I’ve been so busy with this business or that business. You meet people in Apache, but it’s a lot faster with food, and you’re busy answering phones and everything else.

“Here, you get an interaction with every customer. It’s more community and person-oriented.”

A proud supporter and sponsor of many local groups and initiatives, Eoghan and his family moved down to Mullingar from Rathfarnham in Dublin in 2001 when he was around 12 years old.

Three years later, his father Niall and mother Clare opened Apache Pizza in Blackhall. One of the most successful Apache outlets in the country, the Blackhall-based pizzeria will celebrate its 20th anniversary in December.

Never a huge fan of school, Eoghan left as soon as he could. He spent a short time as an apprentice, and it wasn’t long before he became heavily involved in the growing family business.

“At 15, I was running the Apache in Longford that Dad had bought. I was then the manager in Longford and Carrick-on-Shannon.

“At 16, I got a moped and had to drive to Longford and Carrick-on-Shannon every day on a moped, and that was just it, a family business, you know.”

After years helping his parents build up the family business alongside his brother Arann, who now works in the anti- fraud department in one of Germany’s biggest banks, Eoghan moved to Australia in 2013.

Through friends Tommy Maxwell and Tyson Connelly, he got a job in the lucrative mining industry as a directional driller, spending six months working in northern Australia and then coming home to his young family for three months.

The heat was stifling, often reaching 50 degrees with high humidity; the work was long and hard, but the money was good.

After Niall got a prostate cancer diagnosis and then suffered a stroke in the space of a few months in 2018, Eoghan returned home for good and took over running the family business.

Unashamedly ambitious, Eoghan’s business interests have expanded significantly in recent years. He may only be finding his feet at Maxol, but Eoghan says he is already looking at his next opportunity.

“Sarah Foster always told me: you make a vision board, and you put something on it, and you head in that direction, and life will take you there.

“If you don’t want to go somewhere, you’re going to sit in a rut. A petrol station has always interested me, so it’s been on a few of my boards over the years. With Pitta Pit, something that we [Eoghan and his fiancée Lisa McEntee] talked about was trying to eat a bit healthier ourselves.

"Then we thought about bringing the Pitta Pit brand to Mullingar and helping others eat a bit healthier too.”

Eoghan says that Lisa, who he’s been with for 15 years, is his “rock and backbone”. The couple now live in Multyfarnham with Eoghan’s daughter Abbie (17) and Lisa’s son Levi (18).

Just as he was inducted into the family business at a young age, Abbie and Levi are now heavily involved. “Everyone wakes up, and it’s ‘what T-shirt do I need today?’ They’ve got their three or four T-shirts [for the different businesses]. Everyone is invested in it, whether they like it or not,” Eoghan laughed.

One of the most important things learned from his father, Eoghan says, is the importance of treating staff well.

Between Apache, Maxol, and everything else, Eoghan employs 71 local people, a insignificant figure in a town the size of Mullingar.

“I have girls and guys that come back to us from 10 years ago and remember working with me when Dad was in charge.

“Now they’re the directors of their own company. We’re only a stepping stone for them, and if we treat them well, that stepping stone does them for five or six years.

“That’s usually how long our staff would stay. Now, we have Nelda and the famous Zoltan down in Apache who are with us between 10 and 15 years, and there’s a couple of others that are six or eight years.

“Sometimes, from employing one sister, we’ve got the next three siblings in the family. If the parents are happy for their children to work for me, we’re doing something right.

“There’s not one holiday myself or Lisa has said no to in the last two years. We always try and cover it.”

The are regular reports in the national media about businesses struggling to fill vacancies due to Ireland being at full employment. Recruitment is not a problem for Eoghan though.

He recently put up a post on a recruitment website advertising for a shop assistant position in the service and was inundated with applications.

“I interviewed 90 people out of the 186 that applied. In Apache, I need to come up with an idea on how to recycle CVs, because I have that many of them.

“Friends of friends, sisters of sisters, the kids of fathers I know through business, they all want to work for us. They want to be in the environment that Apache or Pitta Pit has.

“They can see the staff nights out in the Annebrook, they can see that staff are walking out of there smiling. We work hard to create a good atmosphere. Your staff are your business. The customer is always right, but staff are always first. Without them, what good are you?

“If there is something wrong and they can’t come in, they will already have covered themselves by swapping with someone else before they’d come worrying me or Lisa about it. The little pressures they take off us, you couldn’t buy it.”

A committed family man and a non-drinker who counts walking the family dog as one of his few pastimes, Eoghan says that he will forever be grateful for the guidance and support he received from his parents, Niall and Clare, who now live in Spain. It’s his time to return the favour, he says.

“I have Mam and Dad; I want to be able to support them for the rest of their lives. They set everything up.

Dad built this from the ground up. I’m only oiling the belts in Apache, and we’ve started Pitta Pit, myself and Lisa, we’ve started Lis Cafe, and now we have Maxol, but that’s all because of what Dad had started. It all goes back to him.”