Motherwell general manager Louise Parvin is a true trade hero

By Dave Hunter

Anyone outside of the trade that wanted to know why community pubs are such an important part of Scottish life should have a chat to Louise Parvin. 

The manager of Motherwell pub Merlins, Louise was named winner of SLTN’s Hospitality Hero Award at the 2024 SLTN Awards. 

To say she and the pub are at the heart of their local community would be an understatement. 

A trade veteran of 20 years, Louise doesn’t just have a great relationship with her regular customers; she looks after them. 

Whether it’s taking them shopping, feeding them or giving them somewhere to go on Christmas Day, the hard-working manageress cares deeply for the Merlins customers

Whether it’s taking them shopping, feeding them or giving them somewhere to go on Christmas Day, the hard-working manageress cares deeply for the Merlins customers – and the older customers in particular –to an extent that could bring a tear to a glass eye. 

“They’re my family,” she told SLTN last month. “My best pals in the world.”

She credits her mum, who ran the local snooker club in Wishaw when Louise was growing up, with instilling that attitude towards her customers. 

But one suspects it’s Louise herself that deserves the credit. 

Working initially in Motherwell bar and club Mega Bar, Louise would attempt to leave the trade after her first ten-year stint in search of more regular hours. It didn’t take. 

“I tried to get into sales and it was terrible,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. [The trade] was all I’d ever known. I thought ‘this is terrible’.”

In the end, the sabbatical lasted a whole six weeks. Louise just wasn’t going to be happy working nine to five.

Fortunately, operator Joe Keenan was looking for someone to run his East Kilbride venues, Exchange Bar and Downtown nightclub. 

It was at Exchange that Louise really got her first taste of working with older regular customers, making soup for them on her days off so that she knew the ones without family would have something to eat. 

After seven years in East Kilbride she got word that Eden Group owners Michelle and John Armstrong were planning to revitalise the former Motherwell Point venue and open it as Merlins. Louise – who had been a frequent visitor to Centre Point in her Mega Bar days – jumped at the chance to come back to the town and take the helm. 

The newly refurbished venue opened its doors in late 2019. The first year, said Louise, was tough, with the venue and the team working to carve out a space in the local community. 

But, bit by bit, the pub won over the local crowd. And it’s not hard to see why. 

There are regular quiz and karaoke nights and live music, with regulars not charged for entry as a thanks for their loyal custom (“They don’t need to come here. They don’t need to be in here all year.”)

On matchdays Louise orders hundreds of pounds-worth of pizza, which is shared out free of charge at half-time. 

Every year there’s a charity staff versus regulars football match and regulars are even invited to Eden Group staff away-days. 

Each day Louise will have breakfast with her regulars, with them taking turns to foot the bill. 

It’s a fun way to start the working day but also, says Louise, ensures that she knows the older customers who live alone have had something to eat that day.  

In fact, it’s not unusual for her to take some of them back to the family home and cook them dinner after her shift. 

It’s one of Louise’s characteristic traits: she’s always thinking about the old regulars. Even when she’s not in the pub.

“There’s not one day I won’t check in,” she says. 

“Michelle will say ‘switch off!’ I can’t switch off. I’ll be saying ‘who’s taking [this customer] home? Why’s he not been in?’

“Before the SLTN Awards one of the customers hadn’t been in in three weeks. I was a nutcase. I was up there banging on his door. Banging on the neighbours’ doors…”

“Before the SLTN Awards one of the customers hadn’t been in in three weeks. I was a nutcase. I was up there banging on his door. Banging on the neighbours’ doors. He’d been staying at his mum’s, but you should have seen the state of everyone in here.”

Christmas Day was one of the best examples of this. 

In December 2023, Louise decided to open the pub for a few hours in the afternoon so that regulars with nowhere to go could have some company. 

In 2024, she took things a step further, deciding to cook a full Christmas dinner for anyone that wanted it. 

It was no easy feat, considering the Merlins kitchen wasn’t functional. 

The original plan – to buy in all the food, pre-cooked, didn’t work out when the delivery fell through. And so Louise set to work buying enough turkeys and trimmings for 30 people and preparing it all herself, using her own kitchen and that of her parents to put everything together. 

“I actually still don’t know how I pulled it off, because my husband said to me ‘the only time you’ve ever cooked Christmas dinner it was for eight people and you had a full mental breakdown!’” Said Louise. 

“So Christmas Eve, getting in from here, putting the kids’ presents out, I got to sleep at five in the morning and was up at quarter to eight putting turkeys in the oven. I made dinner for over 30 people in here without a hitch.”

It was a monumental effort, but Louise – as always – was determined not to let her customers down. 

“You watch people that don’t have anyone, and you realise you don’t know how lucky you are,” she said. “I thought that at Christmas. What would they have done that day? Sat in the house? And we were just like a big dysfunctional family in here. Everybody pulling crackers with each other. I’ll never get over that I did it. I don’t care what I do now; I did that on Christmas Day, I fed them all, and I didn’t have a breakdown.”