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ELAINE LAVERY AND best friend Hannah O’Reilly want to change the way you think about butter.
“People see butter as something they put on their bread, but it is a great carrier of flavours,” Lavery said.
In barely more than a year, the pair, who met while studying business and commerce at UCD, have gone from tinkering in the kitchen to a fast-growing food enterprise with over 50 stockists and a weekly turnover in the thousands of euro.
The idea for their product, Improper Butter, came during Lavery’s post-college stint working as a chalet chef in France.
“I didn’t have any qualifications to cook but it was what I loved,” she told TheJournal.ie.
To maximise her time on the ski slopes, Lavery started pre-preparing flavoured butters she could add to meat or vegetable dishes when she had to whip something up quickly for guests.
After returning home, she combined her culinary nous with O’Reilly’s business brain to form their company, which started selling handmade, flavoured butters at local markets.
At the start it was very much trial and error; the big food companies have huge product-development budgets – as a small company you don’t have that finance behind you. Plus we didn’t have the expertise.”
From 20 to 2000 sales a week
But through a small Enterprise Ireland grant the two 25-year-olds were able to get some advice from food technologists about increasing the scale of their production and the brand’s reach.
The next breakthrough came with the Food Academy scheme, a programme put together by Bord Bia, SuperValu and the Local Enterprise Office network.
The scheme connects startup food producers with experts in marketing, business building and distribution to help budding entrepreneurs grow their operations – as well as providing guaranteed shelf space from the supermarket chain.
From one outlet in Blackrock, the pair have expanded their reach into about 30 SuperValu-branded and affiliated stores, as well as specialist shops across Dublin and across 10 counties.
A year ago the company was selling only about 20 sticks of its butter a week – but now, Lavery said, that figure is more like 2000.
They also made it onto the Dragons Den TV show, where they struck a deal with dragons Ramona Nicholas and Eamonn Quinn – in return for an initial 30% stake in their business.
What now?
“The next stage will be more of the consultation process and growing as a business,” Lavery said.
Because we have been able to supply a number of stores quite quickly with this programme we want to add new product lines, which will just be about me playing around in the kitchen and trying recipes, going back to scratch, and then doing some market research.”
The company sources butter from Irish producers then adds its own herbs and flavourings, and in the future Lavery said they wanted to look at how they could use technology to improve production.
Graduation Day
Today the pair’s business was among 30 to graduate into the next stage of the food-enterprise scheme – the Food Academy Advance program.
They will join food startups from around the country in further ramping up their operations with more than 8 in 10 of the operations planning to hire staff to grow over the next year.
Some of the other businesses to make the grade include DeRoiste Puddings, from Co Cork, Patels Authentic Spices, from Dublin, and Wild About Foods, from Co Wexford.
Over 260 startup food businesses have been through the Food Academy program so far.
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I so would
The guy must be hang like a donkey because it sure isn’t his face they are going for……..
Or his dyed head.
or his lifts.
Mao: “I want to know your secret”
Kissinger: “My secret, Mr President?”
Mao: “How a fat man gets so many girls?”
Kissinger: “Power, Mr. Chairman, is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
-Stone’s Nixon(1995)
Why is this news?
We all already know politicians have no integrity, no sense of honesty or even loyalty.
Riveting stuff ! Just joking
Sexy biatch tbf
A standing Mickey has no conscience…
Classy bird
Why thank you kind sir,one tries one’s best.
and spread legs, apparently to feminists, have no blame.
Maybe Ms Trierweiler should ask the only class act in this sorry tale, Segolene Royal for advice.
How is this any of our business and since when is Closer magazine a valid source of information? I’m seriously concerned about the integrity of the Irish media at the moment.
The role of the media is to report the news.
The reader then decides if it is any of their business or not.
Ms Trierweiler is on the French taxpayer dime and is/was designated First lady of France.
Ah now California don’t be so naive, you really think the media is that impartial? Come on now…
About as impartial as you
I will decide what is newsworthy for me.
if you don’t want to read about it, then don’t click on the link but you don’t get to decide what others can read.
Don’t be ridiculous I’m not deciding what others can read, I’m merely stating that its fodder news and as I said it makes me doubt the integrity of our media, especially when there is a lot not being reported on that, to me, is much more important.. This is a bigger issue than Hollande and his affairs and if you don’t see that well there’s not much I can do about it.
Fodder news?
The integrity of a leader? A cheat? Someone who leaves the mother of his three children?
The media’s integrity is always doubted when it’s a story you don’t like to hear or a belief you had, gets challenged.
You are also describing a false choice. Stories that matter(subjective) are reported. The reporting of one does not stop the reporting of another.
“bigger issue than Hollande and his affairs ”
‘Their’ affairs. There was two in the bed.
“if you don’t see that well there’s not much I can do about it.”
Oh please, Bill Burr’s “If you can’t do the math on that…”
“Stories that matter are reported.” That’s the most naive statement about the media I’ve ever heard. Stories that sell are reported. Seriously California…
You are through the looking glass, Rosy.
Nice tin hat btw.
Your wan is a bit of a ride.
1 woman should be more than enough for any man. He must be a sucker for punishment.
I’ll bang her if he doesn’t want to.
Hollande only has one mistress. We are all being screwed by Irish Politicians!
What is it that makes Hollande irresistible?
I’m gonna guess his millions… ;)
He isn’t a millionaire though.
He’s a career politician & though comfortable, he’s not super rich.
I guess he has a tongue that never tires.
Sure all she would have to do is talk french !
If Hollande is as dedicated to the wellbeing of the citizens of France, as he is to fulfilling his personal sexual appetite on a a-la-carte basis, does he turn up in a motor cycle helmet to screw them too?
Pig
Did you just walk past a mirror?
Harsh. Trierweiler is not that bad.
The French don’t care what others get up to in their personal lives. Nor do I.
you clicked on a linked to a story and commented.
You care, you simply don’t like the fact that you do.
No. I don’t care and I clicked on it so as to post what I did.
Would you like my browser history too? There’s plenty of links in there I don’t care about.
Sarcozy is behind all this
I thought the French were all liberal and open minded to the extent that affairs are mandatory. Wouldnt have expected the wife to get in a tizzy over it, sure its normal there.
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