East Village Shop Says Thanks with Irish Soda Bread Giveaway

Lines started forming early outside a jam packed shop in the East Village on Aug. 9 as owner Mary O’Halloran said thanks to the legion of fans that have made Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop one of the brightest retail success stories to emerge from the pandemic.

Mary O’Halloran was running Mary O’s Irish Pub on Avenue A when the COVID shut down hit in March 2020. To rescue her business, she started a mail order business using a family recipe from her native County Mayo, Ireland, to sell her Irish soda bread.

The business was doing nicely, with a growing base of customers across the country. NY1’s Roger Clark did the first story on the pub in January 2021. But it was not until neighborhood blog, “Humans of New York” started by Brandon Stanton, featured the business being run from the pub in an article on August 5, 2021 that the story went viral.

“ABC World News Tonight with David Muir” picked it up shortly thereafter and featured, O’Halloran, her family and Mary O’s Pub on an “America Strong” segment that runs at the end of the network’s national evening news.

Business exploded. In the month after the Humans of New York article, O’Halloran said she was bombarded with nearly $1 million in new orders. And the ABC segment caused another 10 percent jump. At that point, demand was so great that O’Halloran had to hit pause to work off the backlog. “It took me one year and ten months to make all the scones by hand.”

“Regulars from my pub helped me pack every box for shipping,” she said. Despite the long pause to new orders, the business continued to grow to the point that in November, 2024, she moved to a second shop, Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Store at 93 1/2 East 7th St.

”Opening the shop all came from really my commitment to making every single scone by hand myself for the people who bought the scones online the night of the Humans of New York story.”

So it was an easy decision for O’Halloran to mark the five-year anniversary of the original Humans article with a “share the scone love” day.

”Trying to give back something to the people of the city in honor of Brandon Stanton and Humans of New York,” said O’Halloran, who describes him as “the human who gives and cares about everyone else and never asks for anything back.”

She said the gift was “one scone for you and one to give” and each was accompanied by her blackberry jam and Irish butter. “I gifted them to people,” says O’Halloran. “It was not a giveaway. I did it because I love doing it.”

Old friends and new friends gathered on Aug. 9 to mark the anniversary of a story on a neighborhood blog that supercharged her business.

Her oldest son Patrick, who recently graduated from Trinity University in Dublin, was back in the East Village working the counter to a line that wound out the door. “My mother wanted to give back,” he told each customer on the long line. Aside from Patrick, his siblings Christopher, James, Maeve, Cara and Erinn have all pitched in helped around the pub and scone shop.

On Aug. 9 there was a parade of old friends and new friends that started when the shop opened at 7 a.m.

Stefanny Price was waiting outside while Kristen Reilly, another friend took orders and ran mini boxes of scones to customers waiting outside. “Mary’s one of my oldest friends,” said Price. “I met her right after she had her fifth child.” But when asked if she was volunteering that morning Price joked, “No, I’m selfishly standing in line for a scone.”
Inside, Chris Murphy was playing guitar and belting out Irish folk songs to the waiting customers. He bills himself as “Murphy’s Lawyer” and said his connection came when wandered into one of the Thursday night Irish folk sessions in the pub on Avenue A near E. Third Street that Caitlin Warbelow was running.

“I’m a musician but I’m sort of a jack of all trades and when Caitlin said she was looking for someone to design a web site for the Thursday night folk sessions I volunteered to help her. Then Mary asked me to help her design a web page and an Instagram site for the pub.”

Murphy said he’s seen O’Halloran close down the pub at 2 a.m. and then she’d return to the scone shop to begin baking at 5 a.m. the next morning before the shop opened for business. “I don’t know how she does it,” he said. O’Halloran sells until that days supply of baked goods are gone, she said, then heads home for several hours and then back to the pub.

O’Hallaran lives in Stuyvesant Town and her husband Christopher Gannon works on oil rigs. It’s lucrative work but he’s often away for long stretches. During COVID, he was stranded on a oil rig job on the Aleutian Islands and was not able to get back to New York for months. O'Halloran juggled the pub and caring for her kids.

Tami Ellen McLaughlin was manning a table at the front of the scone shop with friends Lori Goldberg and Shelley Ann Quilly, urging people to sign a congratulations poster that featured the Humans of New York story that was the catalyst for so much success. They were handing out sharpies.

McLaughlin recalled that when she first dropped into the pub, she asked for a menu. “‘We don’t have a menu’,” she said she was told. Then O’Halloran came back a few minutes later with a free scone. “That’s how we start.” [The pub does serve Irish themed entries such as shepherd's pie and chicken pot pie.]

But it wasn’t just old friends and neighbors who stopped by on Aug. 9. Shena Jaismal originally from San Diego was spending her last day in the East Village before moving to nearby Stuy Town. “It’s my first time here. I saw the line outside and wondered what was going on.”

She waited and was given two scones and was looking at some of the displays. “This is so sweet,” she said and said she’d be sure to come back.