NEW LIFE:When Deirdre Collins spotted a gap in the fast food market, she came up with a plan to fill it by giving people the choice to take the healthy option

DEIRDRE COLLINS is heartily glad she didn’t listen to the official who dealt with her when she was looking for assistance in setting up her new business, when he questioned whether people would buy a meatless burger.

So determined was she to develop a business selling her gourmet wholefood burgers that she upped sticks and moved to a different area in the hope that she would get a better hearing there.

It was a move that paid off for the 32-year-old former legal secretary, who has just secured a contract to sell her product in 40 Dunnes Stores outlets around the country.

A native of Co Clare, Collins had a long-standing interest in food and went on to study food science at University College Cork.

“From doing the degree, I realised what actually went into food in terms of additives and preservatives and what I didn’t want to eat. As a student I used to scour the supermarket aisles looking for fast, healthy options for my lunch or dinner, and I was always amazed at the amount of salt, fat, sugar and artificial additives in foods. I was interested in going back to wholefood cooking, using wholegrains, beans and seeds.”

After college, Collins worked for the Department of Agriculture for a number of years, but soon realised that she did not want to be stuck in a lab for the rest of her life. She decided to do a diploma in legal studies after which she worked as a legal secretary in Cork for three years.

“At work, all the women in the office tried to be healthy all week, bringing in pitta bread, chicken, ham and tins of tuna. I got so sick of the same thing every day. I had a barbecue one evening and made my own veggie burgers for a few friends who didn’t eat meat. Every single veggie burger was eaten while some of the meat burgers were left.”

The burgers, which contained oats, millet, seeds and a variety of herbs and spices, proved a huge hit with the health-conscious women in the office, so Collins decided to try them out at a farmers’ market in Skibbereen.

“I finished work one Friday evening and drove down to Skibbereen with 150 burgers. On the first day, they all sold out and it was even better the second week when people came back for more. I started to listen to feedback from customers and decided to take the oats out as a lot of coeliacs can’t eat them.”

The veggie burgers were proving very popular with mothers of children with dairy and wheat allergies, who were at their wits’ end trying to find products in the shops that were dairy or wheat-free while also nutritious and tasty to eat.

Initially, when she went to look for support in starting up her business, she was asked, “Who would eat a burger without meat?” Luckily, she says, her local Enterprise Board was convinced it was a fantastic idea and gave her the help she needed.

Through the board, Collins did an advanced food development programme and learned all about branding, marketing, how to price your product and, importantly, financial planning. Last year, she was granted 50 per cent funding from the South Cork Enterprise Board for capital equipment and she rented a dedicated food unit through Cork County Council’s economic development section.

In March 2008, Collins left her job as a conveyancing legal secretary to devote all of her time to her fledgling business. At this stage, she was selling her burgers at farmers’ markets, agricultural shows and music festivals around the country, but every cent she made was being ploughed back into her overheads. So she set up a catering stall, selling healthy fast food cooked on the spot, which helped bring in cash to drive things forward.

At a retail exposition in the RDS Dublin in 2007, she had compiled a list of about 20 local stores that indicated that they would be willing to take an order once she was ready to go.

“I got my packaging machine on a Monday evening and the following afternoon I had my first delivery in the stores,” she recalls.

Her Dee’s Omega Burger contains a blend of wholegrains, fresh Irish vegetables and super seeds and is 100 per cent organic, vegetarian and gluten-free. She has also developed a spicy bean burger made with aduki beans for her customers who like their food with a bit of a kick.

She got her product into Supervalu through the approved local supplier route, which strengthened her position with the banks and bigger distributors.

In October, she made her first delivery to Dunnes Stores, which was a huge coup for her, and she is also working on the recipe for an organic pinto bean and mushroom burger for the Eddie Rocket’s restaurant chain.

Although she describes getting out of bed in the mornings as “torture”, these days Collins starts work in the kitchen at 5.30am and keeps going until evening when she has to do a big clean-up after her last delivery goes out.

“It involves a hell of a lot of work but it’s really enjoyable. When you’re doing it for yourself, it doesn’t really feel like work. Obviously I am very tired when I go home, but then there are e-mails to catch up on. I really value my days off, which are few and far between at the moment. I am completely focused now where before I was just going into a job that wasn’t challenging me and I was getting bored.”

Collins says she is very proud of herself for getting this far, “even if it all went belly-up in the morning”, but she is optimistic that she can make a relatively good living out of her small business.

“I hope to get a part-timer in to help with the packing and cleaning and my next step, hopefully in a year’s time, will be to get someone in to do the cooking so I can concentrate on sales and marketing.

“I’m going to concentrate on the burgers for now and service the stores that I’m in really well, and then I can look at where else I might take the brand.”

“As a student I used to scour the supermarket aisles looking for fast, healthy options for my lunch or dinner, and I was always amazed at the amount of salt, fat, sugar and artificial additives in foods