This is Irish Food - Meet some producers

On March 5th, with a room full of over 200 people, all connected with the food industry, I listened to some fantastic speakers talk about the challenges they have faced and their path to success in the food industry in Ireland. It was organised by The Dublin Food Chain , their core aim is to support a sustainable local food industry, it is a collaboration with Local Enterprise Offices, Bod Bia and Enterprise Ireland and has over 2k members.

The first speaker was Caroline Keeling Caroline Keeling is the CEO of Keelings, a 100% Irish-owned family business which started producing fruits and salads on their farm in the 1930’s supplying produce to local Dublin markets and are now a leader within their category.

Caroline was an inspiration. Keelings has developed their business hugely over the past 10 years, they play a big role in giving back to the local communities, Caroline describes herself as an 'opportunist', making the most of every situation. She has a great story about how it was to grow up in the family business, she took over the helm just before the recession in 2008. When they couldn't find a software system that would manage all all their figures and allow then to spend more time looking to the future rather than analysing figures from the past, Keelings developed the software themselves!

While Caroline spoke of many things, including winning Image Magazine Business Woman of the Year, what stood out for me was the importance she placed on looking after yourself! For the Peak performance needed she spoke about education and continuous development, managing self and all those around you and the importance of nutrition, stress and fitness.

The next speaker was Tom Keogh of Keogh's crisps. Tom Keogh is founder & Managing Director of Keogh’s Crisps. He used excellent videos to show the provenance of their product, the passion for producing an excellent, sustainable Irish food product was very evident. I would say if you are buying crisps, make sure they are Keoghs!

The third speaker was Michael Hoey of Country Crest and Ballymaguire Foods , the largest chilled ready meal producer in the Republic of Ireland. While as a consumer you might not be aware of the brand, they make meals for companies like Tesco, The Happy Pear and Cully & Sully. Michael spoke of how the company has developed over the years from potato and onion growing to producing chilled ready meals and the importance they place on Irish produce and giving back to charities. He also spoke of food innovation, biodiversity and the importance of producing sustainable healthy food.

Then Alison Cowzer, the co-founder of East Coast Bakehouse - a large scale food manufacturing business based in Drogheda Co Louth, producing a range biscuits for the Irish, UK and European markets. She is also an investor and mentor for a number of smaller Irish food businesses.

Not only did I enjoy tasting the biscuits but I enjoyed hearing the details and story of the purpose built biscuit factory in Drogheda. Facts like 77k packets of biscuits produced a day! The oven is 80m long! They have a 40 Tonnes chocolate tank!

While my ethos is to cook every thing from scratch, I know not everyone will make their own biscuits all the time. So if you are buying biscuits, I would recommend you buy the East Coast Bakehouse - Award winning, delicious, Made in Ireland , using Irish butter & oats and awarded the Bord Bia’s Origin Green Programme – the world’s first national food sustainability programme.

This is Irish food. Four of the many successful Irish food businesses, most of the other Irish food businesses were sitting in the audience! It is great to see the passion for the Irish food industry, we use the size of our country to our advantage to create this fabulous food community.

The common theme at this event was whats your story? Does it start with farm, family or community?, most of all it must be authentic! As International Women's Day is this week it was great to see two inspirational women in the food industry on stage.

Fiona