Appetite for success

Jenni Timony, Doolittles.

WHEN YOU win a major deal to supply an airline against strong competition from well-established and well-funded rivals, you must be doing something right.

Jenni Timony, founder and managing director of Donegal-based sandwich-maker Doolittles, has no doubts about the significance of securing the contract to supply sandwiches on all Aer Arann flights from this month. "It's great profile," she says. "Our product is available to everybody on 600 flights a week out of Ireland."

The deal with Aer Arann could be worth an additional €300,000 a year in turnover for Doolittles, which is already forecasting revenues of €2.5 - €3 million this year. Not bad for a company that started life seven years ago as a small coffee shop in Donegal town employing just two people.

Timony has been more or less self-employed since she was 19, having returned to Donegal from Australia, where she had been living since she was 11.

"I was doing seasonal leases on coffee shops locally, catering to the tourist market and it went on from there," she says.

In August 2001, she opened her own coffee shop, Doolittles, funded by savings and a €20,000 loan from microfinance agency First Step, which she describes as an unsung hero of business-start financing.

"They are there for a lot of small businesses when the banks don't want to know and they really do give people the first step."

In October of the same year, the company started a small, prepacked sandwich delivery service to local forecourts and retail outlets. "I would make the sandwiches in the evenings and deliver them at five in the morning before the coffee shop opened, and that side of the business just grew and grew. By 2003, we needed to put it into designated premises."

Timony accessed a further €25,000 from First Step to move the prepacked operations to a purpose-built facility outside Donegal town. By the end of 2004, the company was turning over €1 million, up from €180,000 in 2002, as the prepacked sandwich business took off. So successful was it that Timony was faced with a decision on what to do with the original coffee shop business.

"We were spending 40 per cent of our management time on a business unit that generated not even 20 per cent of the turnover," she says. "We didn't have a big enough budget to split into two teams, and we had to ask: what was the core business? What was going to be sustainable in the long-term and what was scaleable?"

"The prepacked side of the business clearly won on that. So we discontinued the coffee shop and it was really one of the best decisions we made. We were able to focus with clarity on our strategy and it helped channel our energies into one common aim."

That dedicated vision has resulted in a company that is making some 8,000 sandwiches a day and supplying retailers, forecourts, hospitals and colleges.

Quality and attention to detail has been the hallmark of the company's success, Timony says. "It is amazing that, with such a simple product like a sandwich, so many people get it wrong."

Doolittles regularly benchmarks its products against the competition and Timony argues that her sandwiches are not just better but bigger than those offered by rivals. "Our brand would be easily 15-20 per cent heavier, better built for the same price. It is a better product. We use fresh bread where our competitors would buy frozen bread from the UK."

Innovation is key, whether it is new breads or fillings, she says.

The firm has added a mobile unit to its sales channel and was present at this year's Oxegen and Electric Picnic festivals. Expansion into Waterford and Cork is earmarked for later this year. ON THE RECORD

Age:33

Lives:Donegal town

Family:Three daughters, Chloe (9); Jasmine (7); and India (5).

Background:Born in Donegal, but moved to Australia at 11. Returned to Donegal after school to work in the food industry. Has a BA in business from Letterkenny IT and master's in international business from TCD.

Inspired by:"Anyone who has taken a massive chance and grown things from nothing."

Most likes:Kayaking and walking.

Favourite book:Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom