BY STEVEN JACKSON Business reporter jacksons@jamaicaobserver.com
RESILIENT St Ann businessman Keith Foote recently reopened The Little Pub in Ocho Rios which suffered from the 1990s financial sector meltdown and a fire in 2002.
Foote is mum on the size of the investment. However, the reopening of the pub in a new venue — Island Village complex in Ocho Rios — has revived his dream of operating his own business and healed the scars of the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) era.
The famous bar and restaurant, which opened last month, will seek to attract locals and cruise ship passengers.
“We have been searching for a suitable venue and one was not found until recently,” said Keith Foote’s relative, Brett Foote, who is the marketing manager.
After the fire, the Little Pub was closed and a plaza was built in its place on Main Street. Keith Foote continues to own the pub, but it is being managed by the Foote family.
“The Little Pub is taken over by the new generation of the Foote family. So it aims to be better than before but not taking away from the history,” said Brett Foote about the modern yet ‘reggae-roots’ motif.
The pub occupies two contiguous shops in Island Village, which stretches from the central stage to the pond. It’s a space that can accommodate 1,000 persons, Foote estimated.
“We don’t just focus on the tourists only. We plan to hold parties, weddings, corporate receptions and [cater] to general passersbys in Ocho Rios,” he said.
The Little Pub will also cater to the entire family rather than adults only, thus avoiding direct competition with Margaritaville, which also sits in the Island Village complex.
“Margaritaville doesn’t have Karaoke night or jazz and blues or Sunday brunches. Margaritaville is seen as a club, but the Little Pub is broader. The teenagers can come, the mothers and fathers can come,” he said.
Over the past 12 years Keith Foote managed the shops at the Little Pub Plaza. But it was always “a passion” of his to reopen a bar. In 2011, Keith Foote told the Commission of Enquiry into the financial sector meltdown that he borrowed $5 million from National Commercial Bank to effect repairs to Little Pub after Hurricane Gilbert damaged the property extensively in 1988.
He indicated that spiralling interest rates in the 1990s pushed that $5-million loan to $33 million, eventually leading to the loss of his home in 2002.
Foote was one of many aggrieved entreprenVeurs who testified at the enquiry. In June 2002, an earlymorning fire destroyed the Little Pub, and spread to an adjoining 20-bedroom hotel and the studios and offices of Reggae Sun Television.
At the time, Keith Foote reportedly broke down in tears as the fire coincided with news of the violent death of his son in New York, USA on the same weekend.
Foote, now in his mid-60s, operated the business for more than three decades, with the venue earning a sterling reputation for staging some of Ocho Rios’ most glittering and entertaining cabaret shows.
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Ochi’s Little
Pub reopens
