New innovator: BiaBox

The newly-launched BiaBox fresh food delivery service is the brainchild of social entrepreneurs Ross Rabette and Aidan O'Brien, who believe that a national roll- out of their concept will help create strong communities that can support small local businesses, especially food producers.

BiaBox was launched in Limerick city in March and grew out of a successful pilot project funded by the North Tipperary Leader Partnership. “The model is to offer people top quality, locally-produced, free-range food without spending more while still paying producers a fair price for their produce,” Rabette says.

O’Brien’s background is in eco-home construction and Rabette is a bioengineer. He says BiaBox is also a way for people to cut their food miles and, in turn, the amount of energy consumption accounted for by imported food.

BiaBox is different to most existing food box systems in that it offers a much wider mix of products. Fruit and vegetable, meat, dairy, bakery and deli products are all included in the twice-weekly delivery.

“Our capital and running costs are low as we do not have shops to maintain, storage, distribution or warehousing to pay for or heavy transport costs,” O’Brien says.

“We don’t try to compete with the supermarkets in a general way. Our focus is specifically on providing really fresh food, and we offer people a guarantee – if they haven’t been getting better value for money after three months of using BiaBox, we’ll send them a week’s supply for free.”

O’Brien and Rabette are dismayed at the rate of attrition among small Irish fruit and vegetable growers, in particular. They hope that by expanding BiaBox nationwide, people with an interest in growing food on a small scale will have a viable way of making a living.

“Irish food producers have been under increasing pressure as the food system has become more and more globalised. Some 50 per cent of jobs in Irish agriculture have been lost since 1980,” O’Brien adds. “Food is becoming more expensive with climate change and increasing worldwide competition for resources.

“These factors can result in us spending more on our food than we really need to. It also contributes to making our food system ever more fragile. The aim of BiaBox is to help people get quality fresh food conveniently while building our food security together.”

Bia Box keeps its suppliers as local as possible. Orders are filled centrally and brought to a local delivery point where low -cost electric cargo bikes deliver them the last mile to customers.

“The last mile is the most energy intensive part of logistics. Every delivery will reduce the carbon footprint of your food by 1kg,” says Rabette.

Bia Box employs four people and it has cost about €30,000 (mainly self-funded) to get the project off the ground.