It's hard to make a living from food, but that has never stopped enthusiasts from risking everything and following their dreams. Catherine Cleary talks to three entrepreneurs
It is a vast empty building, covered in dust and smelling of weeks of hard slog to come. But Fiona McHugh stands at one end of it with her eyes shining. "This is where the fruit and vegetables will be," she says, pointing to a grimy spot on the parquet floor. In the corner will be the kind of sit-down French patisserie she "fantasises about". Elsewhere, a fishmonger and a full butcher's. Then there will be a dairy and cheese counter. And this is just the first of three floors.
In the pillared basement, she conjures an image of armchairs by a yet-to-be-installed fire, where people can drink in comfort in a wine bar; the top floor will house a 130-seat French brasserie, offering steaming bowls of onion soup and the chance to watch through long windows as Dublin scurries by on Exchequer Street below.
McHugh and her husband, Paul Byrne, are doing what many people have dreamed of, typically around that third-glass stage of the evening. For most, the idea is pushed back into the mental filing cabinet the next morning, somewhere between Lotto Fantasy and Six-Figure Book Deal. They are both giving up lucrative and successful careers - she as editor of the Irish edition of the Sunday Times and he as a property developer - to go into one of the riskiest of businesses. A business journalist who made her way through the ranks to become a newspaper editor, McHugh built her career on reporting hard news and business deals. When she talks about this venture, she uses words such as "love" and "passion" and "dreams".
Friends and colleagues have told them they are mad. The head honchos at News International, in London, are still picking their jaws off their desks. They keep coming back to her with more questions. "The building is what size?"
"In a way, it has almost happened by accident. This is something my husband has wanted to do for seven or eight years. In New York they have loads of amazing food stores, such as Dean & Deluca, Fairway Market and Gourmet Garage. So it was a dream, and we talked about it a lot. Then we were walking along here one day and Paul pointed to the building and said: 'You know, that is the perfect building for it.' "
Once they found the building, a former telephone exchange, her husband's friend Brian Fallon, owner of the Red House Country Hotel & Restaurant, in Co Kildare, and the Lemongrass chain of Thai restaurants, came on board as the third partner. The walls of wires that filled the old telephone exchange have been removed, and the new business, Fallon & Byrne - Fallon, Byrne & McHugh sounded too much like a firm of solicitors - is kitting out the building.
"I alternate between extreme excitement about it and fear, because from next month I don't have a large salary landing in my account," says McHugh."In a way, it's a fantasy shop for us. We're trying to put in it all of the things which we would like, such as a great butcher. Everybody who is coming to look at equipment has said to us, 'Don't do a proper butcher, do precut meats wrapped up in plastic,' which we don't want to do. The whole point is that in each section it will be a full-service great food store."
McHugh hopes that being her own boss will allow her a more family-friendly life, although people have warned them about the crippling hours of the restaurant trade. Her job as a Sunday- newspaper editor meant leaving her two-year-old daughter, Kate, on a Friday morning and then not seeing her again until Sunday, as she worked a 17-hour day on Fridays and up to 14 hours on Saturdays. She is three months pregnant, expecting their second child in May, and hopes that, if they get the food market and restaurants right, life will, at some stage in the future, become more family- focused than was possible in the media world.
She is aware that they are choosing a tough business. "Yes, the average margin in the restaurant business is 5 per cent, compared with 50-60 per cent in other businesses." And the risk, she admits, is huge. Some people have advised them to start small and build up slowly. "But it's all or nothing. It is a big risk, and we stand to lose a lot. But the way I see it, the potential benefits are enormous, and there's the opportunity to work with Paul and Brian on a project we've dreamed about for years."
Despite the obstacles, a life in the food business is often seen as the perfect escape from corporate Ireland. Senior counsel secretly dream of baking bread for a living, and financial controllers imagine putting their energy and imagination into warm cinnamon-scented ovens rather than spreadsheets. But the facts make for sobering reading. Despite the country's continued prosperity, the Restaurants Association of Ireland warned two years ago that Dublin restaurants were closing in record numbers. The association lost 20 members in the first six months of 2003, double the failure rate of previous years. The same year, the Department of Agriculture and Food said that 90 per cent of all new food and drink products fail to survive more than a year.
Elaine Murphy had to make the heart-breaking decision to close her restaurant in 2002, after two and a half years in business. "It is about dreams and passion. So many people who throw great dinner parties and imagine they can run a restaurant have no idea there is so much more to it than that," she says. From her perspective, the restaurants that thrive in top-rent Dublin are in two categories: the high-spec pasta and pizza places with cream and beige interiors, and the franchises flogging wraps and lattes. "It means you have an absence of small, quirky restaurants and bars."
Working in restaurants as a student - Murphy studied at Trinity College and the College of Music - fed her fascination with the trade. She and her business partner, the chef Ian Connolly, opened Moe's, on Baggot Street, in 2000. It was a dream come true when she left her job as manager of the Mermaid Cafe, on Dame Street, to live on a subsistence wage and work 80 hours a week. The critics liked the French-style food, and she will always remember the buzz of their opening night, when friends and family toasted the new venture. "It was a good restaurant and it was great food."
With no advertising budget, they had to rely on word of mouth to fill the tables. But they were hamstrung by the size and location of the premises. They could seat just 30 customers in the basement premises once occupied by Peacock Alley and L'Ecrivain. It was therefore too small for them to pack in customers at weekends, which might have got them through leaner days at the start of the week. And being in a nine-to-five heartland meant most customers wanted a takeaway sandwich or a formal lunch.
"A lot of people come to the business with either a lot of money or an interest in food but without hands-on experience. That was the one thing we had going for us." After two years, it was clear they needed a bigger and more central premises. A potential investor was in the wings, but at the last minute he changed his mind. After that, they had to wind up the business.
Both are still involved in Dublin restaurants. Murphy manages Il Primo, on Montague Street, and Connolly is head chef at the Mermaid. They intend to try again if the right opportunity comes along. What is the appeal of such a gruelling business? "For me, it's the hospitality end of it, creating a space where people are having a great time. The ability to turn even a bad dining experience into a good one is a great joy. In a way, food is one of the new loves of affluent Ireland. I suppose people feel it's the kind of work they can be in which is closer to something real."
In her mother's kitchen in Malahide, Lynne Swarbrigg was certainly at the real end of things - and feeling sorry for herself - one recent Saturday night, as she sat labelling jars of produce. Then her mobile phone beeped and a message came through. A customer was texting to say that her plum jam was "absolutely divine" and she should not dream of changing the recipe. She carried on with her labelling with renewed gusto.
Swarbrigg is four months into her food adventure, cooking and selling her range of chutneys, jams and pestos. She trained as a hotel manager in Shannon, then spent two and a half years at Sanderson, a boutique hotel in the West End of London. Along the way she worked briefly with Conrad Gallagher, was in sales at the Morrison and worked with Itsa Bagel's catering arm, Feast.
This summer she finally dispensed with the safety net of a pay cheque and threw her all into Saucy Swarbriggs. The venture began last Christmas, when her mother asked her to make a few jars of lemon curd for hampers for a golf club. She printed a basic label, then decided to try to sell some more jars at a few parish markets. She had been tinkering away, taking on a few catering jobs, when "a big break-up" with her boyfriend prompted her to channel her energies into her business. She turned up the heat on her venture and turned her six-product range into 24 different goodies to sell at farmers' markets.
The next step for Swarbrigg, who has been appointed a business mentor through Dublin City Enterprise Board, is to find a professional kitchen unit, probably in an enterprise centre. She plans to develop a range of sugar-free jams.
Selling at farmers' markets provides the kind of immediate feedback that new businesses need. The camaraderie is great, she says. Bread sellers give her bread to try - although at one market another jam seller picked up one of her jars and muttered "shop bought". Then there are the perils of stallholders' discounts. "The trick is to leave the market without spending more than you make," she says.
She has looked over at the jewellery stalls occasionally and wondered about her choice of business; one that requires no fridges, sell-by dates or three-sink premises sometimes appeals. There are days when her profit from a market has been as little as €8.
Swarbrigg is grateful for the help of more experienced artisan producers. She recently cooked with another small producer, Janet Drew, who gave her lots of invaluable tips, such as investing in a pair of gardening gloves so she doesn't burn her hands when she is filling jars. In the meantime, she has just broken the motor on her mother's blender, which was a wedding present more than 30 years ago. A new industrial blender would cost about €1,000. "My car's not worth that much." So she will make do with a Magimix for the moment.
The Butler's Pantry, whose seven shops around Dublin and Co Wicklow sell home-made food, has approached Swarbrigg about stocking her products. If that happens, she will definitely graduate from domestic kitchens. In the meantime, it is late-night labelling and long hours, in all weathers, at the markets. It is, in every way, a labour of love.