Guinness have had many slogans down through the years – 'Guinness Gives You Strength', 'My Goodness, My Guinness' and 'Pure Genius' all immediately spring to mind – but 'Good Things Come To Those Who Wait' has proven to be one of their most enduring.

Derek Dunne, a former employee of the famous stout manufacturer, who, along with his father Howard, owns and runs the popular Bull McCabes Bar and Restaurant on Airport Road, doesn't so much wait for the good things to happen. Instead he rolls with the punches and changes accordingly as times, trends and demands should dictate.

"It's a necessity to be able to adapt," he tells the Cork Independent, "particularly in these times when so much is changing in the bar business. It's a tricky time right now because there's so much uncertainty all round. It's time to stick to the knitting, to stick to what we're good at and, hopefully, try to improve on that and give the customers the best we can possibly give them."

Derek, a Dublin native, has himself adapted to changing times in a career that has taken him from Digital to Diageo and Athlone to the Middle East through economic recessions, the Celtic Tiger and now, possibly, back to that brink. Having moved to Carlow at a young age, Derek was then enrolled in the Newtown Boarding School in Waterford, an experience he remembers fondly. "I absolutely loved my time there. I was involved in both the rugby team where I played second row, and the cricket team. I'm still very much in touch with the school and I'm involved in my classes 25-year reunion event this year."

When his time at Newtown was up, Derek, with one eye on the future, headed to CIT where he began studying Electrical Engineering. "I had done the necessary subjects at Newtown such as physics and maths. It was the 80s and electronic engineering was very much the emerging industry at the time. There were a lot of companies setting up in Ireland and jobs were plentiful, so that's what influenced me to take up engineering."

Like many others at the time Derek considered emigrating in search of prosperity particularly as the engineering boom began to wane, but then an opportunity with Guinness presented itself and his career took an altogether different turn. "Australia was on the cards for a while. I was working with Western Digital in Cork after graduating. They closed one of their operations up the country and Apple were also struggling. That's when I saw job going in Guinness as one of their reps on the road. My father was already working there 20 years and they were considered a banker if you were after a job for life."