IT IS a bright first Friday morning of the month, and in the middle of the market in the Square, Bantry, Toby Simmonds, mastermind of The Real Olive Company, is getting hammered.
"I love it when it's animal, when it's real wild," he says. "That's the thing about the markets. The banter is great. It's the only way we can do what we do. Shops are too closed, too polite."
It is a polite queue in Bantry but utterly ravenous. Toby Simmonds hands out a taste of his fabulous sun dried tomatoes to everyone in the snaky queue, and each in turn buys a rake of sun dried tomatoes. It's the same with the olives with anchovies, the marinated feta with chillis, the stuffed vine leaves, and anything and everything that everyone can get their hands on.
"That day, we did twice the business we do in a normal day in the English Market, in Cork," he says, and this polite, animal frenzy is a phenomenon repeated in markets in Galway and Tralee, Limerick and Kenmare anywhere that Toby Simmonds can discover and enliven a street market.
Last autumn, hunting around the St George's Market in Belfast, I came upon the latest off shoot of The Real Olive Co. The Northern operation can now also be found at the markets in Bangor, Newtownards and Newry.
Some weeks Toby Simmonds will drive 1,500 miles, put in multiple 20 hour days, and he thrives on it.
For Mr Simmonds is to markets and olives what Richard Branson is to record stores and cinema multiplexes the man with the drive and the suss, the left field entrepreneur, the bloke who will chase any new project.
Still in his early 20s, he is a classic example of the bloke who dropped out, only to stumble upon a venture that supercharged him and brought him back in through another door.
"I was living in west Cork, doing some gardening for Alan Dare, who runs Essential Foods in Bantry, and I was just going to Germany to do some plastering," he says. "Alan asked me to send back a barrel of olives for him, and I went to an olive market. I met a guy called Jean Pierre, who still supplies me with my olives, and he said No, no, you must do the olives for Ireland, you must do it.
FROM such an innocent beginning, Mr Simmonds has quickly become one of the most dynamic food entrepreneurs in the country and, with his woolly rasta hat and energised gait, one of the best known. Beginning in the English Market in Cork, he brought in many varieties of olives from the Mediterranean, a range of olive oils, chillis, and expanded into sauces, cured fish, herbs and garlic.
Then he began to move into the established street markets. Galway was and is the most colossal success. He works a stall six days a week in the George's Street Arcade in Dublin, and is in Limerick on Saturday mornings. Belfast is Friday, Bangor is Wednesday, and even tiny street markets such as Tralee are unexpected successes "Three stalls!" he laughs. "Three little stalls, that's all, and it's fantastic business!"
But Mr Simmonds' next move takes his passion for markets to a new pitch. Starting today, he and Darina Allen are re opening the old Coal Quay Market in Cork as a Farmers' Market, which will trade each Saturday. Katherine Noren's Dunworley Foods will be there as will Frank Hederman, the distinguished fish smoker from Cobh.
Myrtle and Darina Allen will be up from Shanagarry with the Ballymaloe products, and Arm in Weise, that brilliant charcutier from Continental Sausages, in Fossa, Co Kerry, will be selling his products and grilling his sausages.
There will be a creperie, and organic foods from Cork and Kerry, farmhouse cheeses, the terrific mustards, relishes, oils and dressings from West Cork Herbs. There will be cheese makers and bakers, and Toby Simmonds is as excited as all get out about it.
"We are looking for many more people," says Mr Simmonds. "We want a market like the Galway market, with lots of local foods, local crafts, things from peoples gardens, unusual things.
But the Coal Quay Farmers Market is just one more step for Toby Simmonds and The Real Olive Co. I want to scale down the range of things we sell, introduce rarer things like Tunisian olives cured in lemon juice, and Greek island olives, and I want to sell more local foods."
With Mr Simmonds' track record, when he says it, you can consider it done. And you can count on it that when we get a chance to get out hands on it, like at the Coal Quay Market this morning, it will be wild.
Growers and crafts people who would like to be involved in the market should contact Toby Simmonds at 021-270842, or Darina Allen at 021-646785.