Irish food: a push for our plates

‘ANYONE OUT there got a bit of Irish in them?” the late Phil Lynott was wont to call out to the crowds at Thin Lizzy gigs. To cheers, he’d then follow up: “Any of you girls want some more Irish in them?” The joke could be loosely applied to the Irish food industry’s current appeal to consumers to throw “one more Irish brand” into their shopping trolleys. Love Irish Food, the biggest promotional campaign home-grown producers have run for years, goes live this weekend, with television and billboard advertising as well as in-store promotions and a dedicated logo on familiar Irish brands.

Just as in the 1980s, the era of “Self Aid” and Buy Irish campaigns, the recession has prompted appeals to national self-interest to preserve jobs. Love Irish Food, backed by 46 of the country’s largest food manufacturers, is a crisis response to conditions in the industry. The recession, a squeeze by big retailers, high operating costs and cross-Border shopping are all placing enormous pressure on Ireland’s food manufacturing base.

Names such as Barry’s Tea, MiWadi, Tayto and Ballygowan might seem like a part of the fabric of our lives, but the companies that make them clearly believe they are under threat. The big three retailers – Tesco, Dunnes Stores and Musgrave – control 70 per cent of the grocery market, and each has the power to push a food product into oblivion by delisting it or even relegating it to the lower shelves.

The multiples, led by Tesco with its “change for good” campaign, have used this power to force price cuts of 20 per cent and more from suppliers this year. As the retailers engage in a price war – while maintaining their own margins – suppliers have become the meat in the sandwich. Anyone refusing to kowtow to the retailers risks having their products replaced by imported substitutes.

Unless, that is, customers want to see them on the supermarket shelves, which is why Irish food businesses are responding with their version of a “green jersey agenda”. There is plenty of research to show that consumers want to buy Irish, but less that reveals how high they are prepared to jump for the pleasure. Love Irish Food is about cementing the relationship between Irish people and the brands we love, but also aims to remind consumers that jobs are at stake with every purchase they make.

The campaign’s chairman, economist Jim Power, has predicted that 100,000 jobs will be lost if the supermarkets continue to push Irish products off the shelves in favour of imports.

“The Tesco announcement could well mark the first step in turning the Irish market into an offshore version of Inverness. Irish brands like Tayto, MiWadi and Cidona will come under increasing pressure and in some cases may disappear from our shelves altogether,” he told an Oireachtas committee earlier this year.

THE IRONY IS that few cared where a product came from during the Celtic Tiger years. Shoppers wanted convenience and quality, and if they bought Irish it was probably because it was organic, had low food miles or tasted better. Jobs weren’t a factor, even as the costs of doing business went through the roof.

The definition of what is Irish has also become blurred with time.

Ballygowan and MiWadi, for example, which are part of the new campaign, are made by foreign-owned companies. The tea used by Barry’s Tea and the cocoa used by Cadbury are, obviously, not Irish. Jacob’s biscuits, which are not part of the Love Irish Food campaign, are now made in the UK, while Siúcra, despite its name, sources its sugar in Germany.

Love Irish attempts to put some of this fuzziness to bed by insisting on a minimum of 80 per cent Irish-manufactured content, as one of the prime movers, Colin Gordon, chief executive of Glanbia consumer foods, points out.

EVERYONE IS proclaiming their green credentials these days. Dunnes Stores spotted the trend early; out went “Better value beats them all” to be replaced by “The difference is we’re Irish”. In Tesco, “Buy me – I’m Irish” signs flutter from the aisles. Earlier this month, the National Dairy Council launched a packaging mark for Irish milk and cream, specifically to differentiate produce made in the Republic from the growing level of imports from Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile, the longest-established identifier of Irish produce, the Guaranteed Irish mark, is seeing a revival. “We’ve just had one of our best years ever,” says Tom Rea of Guaranteed Irish. “People are much more aware of the need for Irish branding in the current climate.” Consumers outside the M50, he says, are strongly conscious of the need to support Irish goods; Dubliners, it follows, are less inclined to fly the flag.

The scheme, which operates a 50 per cent Irish-content threshold, has 400 members. The latest is Bombay Pantry, which shows how much the food business has changed.

According to John Fanning, chairman of McConnells advertising, there’s a lot more at stake in relation to Irish brands than merely the survival of the companies involved. “A nation that consumes only foreign food or clothing is poorer than one that has the self-confidence to consume its own goods.

“It’s a sign of confidence in your society if local brands are successful; on the other hand, it’s a sign of defeatism if you think that only good things come from abroad.” Fanning distinguishes between parochial societies – which are confident – and provincial ones “that are always looking over their shoulder”, and says strong brands developed by parochial societies can be a source of excellence as well as tourist attractions (witness the success of the Guinness Storehouse, now the country’s leading tourist attraction).

However, he worries about the increasing dominance of the Irish retail trade by overseas chains, for whom Ireland is just another market in which to reap the benefit of economies of scale.

The recession is a double-edged sword for Irish food businesses, he points out; on the one hand, it drives consumers to seek out cheaper, often foreign-produced goods, but on the other, consumers take increasing comfort in the security of the known and familiar.

It’s not enough for a product to be Irish to succeed – it also has to compete on quality. And it helps if you tick the boxes of health and tradition; Flahavan’s, for example, has built a successful business on the back of a quality product, porridge, which is rooted in Irish tradition, yet rides the wave of healthier eating. In contrast, Harp has declined not just because of concerns over alcohol or competition from foreign brands but also, as Fanning points out, as lager was not part of an Irish tradition.