MARKET TO BUSINESS
Getting the market to decide
C
Food markets are a low-cost way to test the water and get feedback from customers
on innovative fare writes Sandra O’Connell
aryna 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 Cheesemon-
gers 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
‘‘
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
Caryna Camerino of Caryna’s Cakes
with a pineapple wedding cake
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.”
THE IRISH TIMES | March 26, 2014 | 29