A spicy gin, a poitín-based cream liqueur and a whiskey finished in a non-traditional way are three of the bright ideas emerging from the current FoodWorks accelerator for food and drink start-ups.
It’s been 10 years since the FoodWorks accelerator for high-potential start-ups was launched. Since then, more than 100 companies have participated in the 10-month programme, which is designed to get them customer focused, investor ready and scaled to make the maximum impact on domestic and international markets. FoodWorks is a joint initiative between Bord Bia, Enterprise Ireland and Teagasc, and those with bright ideas for new products still have time to apply for the next intake, which closes in early December.
Drinks entrepreneurs figure prominently among the FoodWorks cohort, with innovative products from distilleries in Galway, Limerick and Cork, where a refurbished section of the old Ford factory has become home to the Rebel City Distillery, which launched its first product, a premium spicy gin, in June.
Rebel City is very much a family affair. It was set up in 2020 by Robert Barrett and his wife, Bhagya, with Robert’s father Brendan (ex-Bam Construction Ireland’s managing director) as chairman and éminence grise.
“I had always wanted to establish a distillery, and we found a great building in the docklands and will make all of our products there,” says Robert Barrett, a biochemist with a master’s degree in brewing and distilling.
“We decided to start with a gin, and Bhagya, who comes from Kerala, which even in India is known as the land of spices, suggested we use nutmeg, mace and cassia as the foundation. In 2019 we visited the women’s Vanamoolika collective in India. They suggested the inclusion of pomelo, to which we then added six other botanicals to create a recipe that gave us a citrus and spice-style gin that sets us apart in the market from a flavour perspective.”
Barrett, the company’s head distiller, cut his teeth in the industry over an 11-year period first with Cooley Distillery in Co Louth and then in Canada before returning home to help set up a number of small distilleries around Ireland. Bhagya, who heads up business development, is an IT specialist with an MBA and a background in the international tech sector.
Rebel City employs five people, and start-up costs have been contained at about €500,000 between personal investment and support from Cork City Local Enterprise Office and Bord Bia. The company sells in Ireland, Singapore, Germany and the US.
Its Maharani gin has already won four awards, including a gold medal at the 2020 Gin Masters competition. Maharani means “queen”, and the company’s branding is designed to reflect the Cork-Kerala connection. “We have included words and script in Malayalam, the language of Kerala, and the word on the neck label reads “moksha” – liberation – as we see our gin as a liberation of spirit and spice,” says Barrett.
Going legit in Galway
“I am the sixth generation poitín producer in my family, but I’m the first one to produce it legally,” quips former university tutor Pádraic Ó Griallais, co-founder, with businessman Ross Tobin, of Galway-based Micil Distillery.
“The distillery is called Micil in honour of my great-great-great-grandfather, Micil Mac Chearra, a famous local distiller, and our poitíns are unique because they’re made from old family recipes,” says Ó Griallais says. “We have the longest uninterrupted family distilling tradition in Ireland, beginning in 1848, with an illicit still on a Connemara hillside and my family has been crafting exceptional spirits ever since.”
Micil produces gin and two poitíns using local flora such as Connemara bogbean, heather and hawberry, but Ó Griallais has his grandmother to thank for the inspiration behind the company’s latest product, a poitín-based cream liqueur that he says is a world first. “My grandmother was a woman before her time, taking the poitín made by my grandfather and combining it with dairy to make a different sort of drink,” he says. “There was precedent for this as there was a drink called scailtín in olden times which mixed milk and honey and spices with alcohol.”
Ó Griallais says Micil, which employs five people with two more jobs on the way, got off the ground with private funding of about €200,000. The distillery is based in Salthill, and its primary markets so far are Ireland, the UK and Germany, with plans to expand into the US, China and throughout Europe.
“We applied for FoodWorks to help us commercialise and launch my grandmother’s recipe for the cream liqueur. The funding support (up to €35,000 per participant) combined with the mentoring and other expertise we received gave us the impetus and confidence to push ahead,” Ó Griallais says.
New blends
Alice Carroll and Tony Foote are the entrepreneurs behind Limerick-based Foxes Bow whiskey. Carroll has spent much of the past decade working with Pernod Ricard on its global whiskey portfolio, while Foote is a chartered accountant previously employed by X, Google’s Moonshot (innovation lab) Factory.
Their business is due to launch in October, and its first product is a blended Irish whiskey aged in bourbon barrels and finished in Oloroso (sherry) and rye casks, which Carroll describes as, “a highly novel mix of finishes in an Irish whiskey”.
The idea for Foxes Bow came when Foote was living in San Francisco and visited a whiskey bar there. “Tony noticed that most Irish whiskey brands were quite traditional in nature, with few options that represented modern, contemporary Ireland,” says Carroll. “Inspired by the incredible wave of creativity coming out of Limerick city over the last couple of years, Tony thought this should surely extend to whiskey and went about putting an idea in motion to remedy that. Our product is designed for the new generation of whiskey drinkers, 28 years plus, looking for a more contemporary, accessible option without sacrificing quality.”
Unlike Rebel and Micil, Foxes Bow is taking a different approach to production, preferring to focus on the product’s launch before commissioning its distillery. “We’re taking a unique stance with our whiskey and offering something that’s disruptive in our segment,” Carroll says. “Foxes Bow is designed to be a contemporary, quality whiskey at an affordable price (€39), so it’s different from the tried-and-tested approach investors would be familiar with. But we really believe in our product and decided to boot-strap the project ourselves at the beginning so we could maintain our vision. The reality of that approach is that we can’t do everything right away. So, we’re starting by launching our Foxes Bow whiskey and working towards the end goal of opening our own distillery and visitor centre. So far, investment in the business has been around €250,000, including support from Limerick LEO and FoodWorks.’’
