Future Proof: Building a business in the kitchen that never sleeps

The fishing town of Kinsale in west Cork has earned a reputation for seafood. And when a pair of accountants took over its Blue Haven Hotel in 2004, they were determined to build on that reputation. They didn't realise at the time, however, their efforts would lead to the establishment of a food company that now has international ambitions.

Nine years ago Ireland wasn't short of hotels – they seemed to pop up like mushrooms overnight during the Celtic Tiger years. Despite having no experience in the hospitality sector, brothers Ciaran and Cormac Fitzgerald knew they would have to do something "that little bit unique" to differentiate themselves from the glut of generic establishments around the country. So they concentrated on food.

'Increased staff'

“A lot of kitchens were cutting back on their staffing and buying in an awful lot of products which meant that the product in the marketplace was getting quite standardised,” says Ciaran, the younger of the two at 35-years-old (Cormac is 39).

“As a point of difference, we went the other route and actually made a production kitchen within the hotel and invested in increased numbers of staff.”

Soon they had about 20 chefs working for them. The idea was to produce everything in-house. The results proved popular with customers, who praised the food and started asking whether they could buy some of the jams, marmalade, and chowder to take home.

The brothers realised they could be on to something and devised a way to make as much use of their fancy new kitchen as possible.

“We put the kitchens to use at night. From 10 o’clock when these kitchens would shut down, when service was finished, we put in an extra team who would work through the night. Vans would come up in the morning and, at 6am, the kitchens would be cleaned down and handed back to the day shift again. It was a case of trying to maximise the resources we had and getting the maximum return from what we had invested into the business already.”

They used the hotel customers as their "sensory panel". If they were thinking of launching a new dish, they would put it on the menu, listen to the feedback and then come up with a recipe for retail. First they started selling chowders, jams, cookies and other fish meals in a little artisan food shop nearby and it wasn't long before the larger retail chains came knocking.

'Unique story'

“We felt there was a good story there,”says Ciaran. “We’re built on the site of the old fish market in the town . . . so we’re going back to the roots [to] where the old fish market was producing a chowder using locally sourced produce. We thought there was a unique story to tell and that’s what the multiples bought into; the Dunnes, the Tescos, the Musgraves very much bought into the story.”

There was some fortuitous timing as well. Dunnes was relaunching its Patrick Street store in Cork (where it started out) and was looking for local specialty products. The Blue Haven Food Company was a nice fit, making premium "restaurant quality", pre-prepared seafood meals from Kinsale.

Musgrave’s also took them on and put their products in a few of their stores.

"It kind of snowballed from there," says Ciaran, adding that Tesco was soon on-board and the company was on its way to becoming a national brand under the stewardship of former Kerry footballer Tommy Doyle, who oversaw its growth while the brothers looked after the hotel.

The company had to hurry to keep up, renting another facility while maintaining night-time production in the hotel kitchen. In April of this year they moved everything up the road to a single facility in Little Island.

There was a steep learning curve, with shelf-life testing and all that, but, unsurprisingly, being accountants had its advantages.

Recession

“When we came in in 2004, neither of us had any experience in catering or in the hotel industry or in the food industry but I suppose when you have a business background, you learn pretty fast,” says Ciaran.

The Fitzgeralds were growing this enterprise around the time the recession was bludgeoning other businesses. Fitzgerald says “there are Irish people that will pay a little bit of a premium for a unique, niche seafood product”.

There would seem to be. Blue Haven Food expects turnover this financial year of some €2 million. They’ve also set their sights on the British market and intend to start exporting there next year. All going well, the company aims to be hitting the €5 million mark within the next five years.