Evelyn
Garland (25) and Luke Judge (27) established Simply Fit Food (SFF) in January
2016, delivering healthy meals and snacks using locally-sourced ingredients right
to customers' doors.
Customer
demand for on-the-ground access to their meals helped them find a foothold in
the somewhat saturated market, leading to the opening of their first pop-up
store in Drogheda last August.
The
young entrepreneurs behind an online Irish health food store have signed
significant retail deals that sees its produce hit stores nationwide.
The
business duo are now stocking four performance-based meals in Dunnes Stores,
Supervalu, Centra and Spar shops, available since the beginning of January in
larger Dublin and Louth stores.
Over
the next month, the new range will be rolled out nationwide, including 180 Spar
stores across Northern Ireland, in collaboration with the Henderson Group.
Ms
Garland said that the four month bricks-and-mortar pop-up, that first opened
while the Fleadh Cheoil was taking place in Drogheda, proved that retail was
the right direction to go in.
"It
went really well and the feedback was really positive; it was the first time
that we'd seen our customers in the flesh. It was great to dig deeper into that
data, finding out what the demographics are, what else our customer
wants," she told Independent.ie
"Now,
with our produce on the shelves of bigger retailers, our sales have been steady
since the start of the month and we know that it will work on a nationwide
level."
It
actually was a health scare that led to the origins of SFF; Judge was diagnosed
with a heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.
The
couple were already passionate about fitness and GAA players for Skerries Harps
and Dreadnots in Clogherhead respectively, but Luke wanted to change the way he
was eating after he had an operation to treat his condition.
While
SFF impressed the TV dragons in an appearance on RTÉ's 'Dragons' Den' in 2017,
the pair walked away without funding. However, the company made over 18,000
meals in their first year, and are now shedding their original structure as
they expand.
"We
found a Louth-based BRC-accredited partner as our orders were becoming so big,
we needed to outsource our production to allow us to grow a lot bigger,
faster," said Evelyn.
"Our
online presence is now gone; as an online business you have to have a techie
mind, which we don't, and we used to rely an awful lot on people to update the
website and fix glitches.
"When
we started out, we had no idea what was involved when it came to selling. After
18 months of problems with delivery that constantly reduced the profitability
of our business, we couldn't find a solution until we put the products into
local stores."
With
more freedom - and time - to spend on business strategy now that they are out
of the kitchen, Garland and Judge are working on using what they've learned
from past mistakes and turning that into future success.
The
pair are intending to launch a snack line by mid summer in addition to getting
their stock into as many locations as possible by the end of 2019 and beyond.
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