Caryna Camerino arrived in Ireland as a backpacker intending to stay two days. Seven years later, she’s still here. Part of the reason for that has been the success of a business she started here as a hobby, Caryna’s Cakes.
She began baking and selling at a market in Dublin in 2007. Pretty soon, local restaurant and coffee shop owners began asking her to supply them.
Determined to do everything in “baby steps”, only last year did she move into a kitchen unit at Terenure Enterprise Centre and ramp up production to the point where she could take on her first member of staff.
While the bulk of her revenues come from supplying cafes and restaurants, as well as a strong niche in wedding cakes, she has kept her hand in markets, still selling at the Dublin Food Co-op each week.
There’s good reason: “I have no retail front, so the market is still a really important way for me to meet customers and get feedback,” says Camerino, who advises other food start-ups to follow suit. “Markets are a really low-cost way to start.”
It’s a route many known names have followed, including Sheridans Cheesemongers and spice maker Green Saffron.
“It has actually never been easier to start up a food business in Ireland. Of course there are some barriers to entry, but the fact is that you can start up a food business on a very modest budget and legislation exists to enable you do many things from your home kitchen, and then sell through farmers markets,” says food business consultant James Burke.
Markets may have suffered somewhat during the recession, but are still a force to be reckoned with according to Tara McCarthy, director of food and beverages at Bord Bia.
“They went through a challenging time but while some markets struggled, the better ones flourished, which has enabled us to do some research into why that is,” she says. “For prospective stall holders, the key is to look for a market that has a variety of producers and takes place regularly. You don’t want a market that is skewed in one direction.”
Interestingly, markets that relied too heavily on the provision of food “to go” were the ones that struggled most. “The broader the range, from meat to veg to fish, the more successful a market is at drawing people in,” says McCarthy, who advises start-ups to visit a number of markets first to assess the profile of the consumers that visit it.
“Market stalls are still very much at the cutting edge of the food industry. They’re where many of the ideas that create exciting new food products are born,” says Conor Hyde of Bullseye, a food marketing consultancy.
“Starting a food business and selling products directly to the public at farmers markets allows entrepreneurs to interact face-to-face with buyers. It’s a chance to learn about the consumer market, to innovate and be extremely creative. The market stall is often where the first steps of research and development happen. Those skills are also transferable to tradeshows and food expos. These often take the form of a market with companies pitching their product from stalls to major international retail chains.”
Certainly it provided the route to business success for Deirdre Hilliard, who started selling soups at Midleton Market in 2002. Today her business, Just Food, has a turnover of in excess of €1 million and sells in supermarkets nationwide and in Europe. Highly innovative, she has just launched a new range of high protein, low fat soups, called HiLo.
“To be successful at markets you need something that is clearly differentiated, in our case it was wholefood soups that other people weren’t doing,” says Hilliard.
“Next, turn up yourself, every week, so that you get to know your customers. It’s the best market research you’ll get. Farmers market customers are not representative of the population as a whole. They are real foodies, the early adopters, ahead of the main flow when it comes to food trends. If you can refine your product with these guys, you will be one step ahead of the competition when the time comes to selling into supermarkets.”
