Eddie O'Malley is the fourth generation of his family to farm in the hills close to Westport in Co Mayo, but the first to set up a business selling premium pork products.
The family has been farming pigs for years but it wasn't until 2000 that O'Malley decided to turn a hobby into a business by producing artisan rashers and sausages. Now Jack and Eddie's, the brand he created, has gone from farmers' markets to supermarket shelves and is becoming well-known nationwide. In the process the company has expanded to having five full-time and one part-time employees.
Jack, for those wondering, is O’Malley’s 10-year-old son, who as well as helping his father at work, is becoming a local celebrity thanks to his appearance on the packaging.
“We always had pigs, but in the past it would have been more of a mixed farm with some sheep and cattle as well,” said O’Malley. “It’s predominantly pigs now and I still see myself as a farmer before anything else.
“Like all farmers, we’ve experienced our share of hard times and so about five years ago, I started looking at sidelines to keep the business going. Some people locally had approached myself and my brother Noel about preparing meat for their freezers and that led us to thinking that we could do something beside farming,” he said.
The family went about creating its own sausages and rashers and set about getting certified by Bord Bia. Initially, it sold its products at the Westport Country Market but, due to the heavy demand, it soon began to think of expanding.
“We decided that if we really wanted to make a reasonable job of it, we needed to get into the shops. So we brought in our cousin Paul who had a background in business. With his help, we went about creating the brand and trying to get into the shops.
“We felt the fact that we were a family business was a good selling point as was the fact that the whole cycle of farming would run its course with the piglets being born and reared on the farm and the pork being used to make the most delicious sausages and rashers,” said O’Malley.
“Once we were up and running, we went from one town to the next telling shopkeepers that their rivals in the next town were stocking Jack & Eddie’s products and that they should too and it worked.
"We got a bit of a name for ourselves and that made it easy for us to approach the Kavannagh Group, who own a number of Supervalu stores in the west. They were a huge support to the business and really helped us get going."
Having managed to get its products into outlets throughout Connacht, Jack & Eddie's set its sights on Dublin. Its products are now available in a number of branches of Dunnes Stores and Supervalu there and the company is spreading out into Co Kildare and Co Wexford with high hopes of having its offering available nationwide within the year.
As far as O’Malley is concerned, part of the business’s success is due to the brand.
“None of us had a retail background so this has been a learning process, but we knew all along that having a strong brand that reflected who we were would be crucial. That’s why we decided to have Jack and me as the people behind the brand so that people would know us and by extension know our products.
“When we started out people, told us to spend a lot of money on marketing but we didn’t have the money so what we did was sell ourselves. When we were doing food tastings in the shops, for example, we’d rope in our siblings, cousins and various aunts so that if anyone asked, it could be said that the rashers and sausages were produced on the family farm,” he said.
O’Malley originally studied biotechnology at Dublin City University, but after working in the sector for a while decided it wasn’t for him.
“It was easy to fall into working on the farm because there’s always something to be done. So when I moved back home, it didn’t take long before I got involved. I have four brothers and a sister, but am the only one who ended up farming although my brother Noel didn’t stray too far really. He came back to help when the building work went quiet and it was around that time we cooked up the idea of Jack & Eddie’s,” he said.
O’Malley has four small children but he has no idea whether they will follow in his footsteps and doesn’t want to pressure them to do so. He does say, however, that his eldest child Jack is very happy fronting the brand.
“Jack has become a bit famous in the west and he loves it. He was at a football game the other day and joined in with a couple of the Mayo players signing jerseys for fans. He’s enjoying the publicity and loves it when he gets recognised,” he said.
