INTERVIEW: Richael Connolly, JoupWhen Connolly was studying for her final year of a commerce degree in UCC, she wrote down her idea on the back of a scrap of paper for a fast and healthy food service where customers could get their fruit and vegetables blended for them in either a juice or soup format and entered it into the Good Ideas Competition run by the Enterprise Society, writes Ciarán Brennan.
"I thought no more about it, and then three months later I got a phone call saying I had won €500 for the idea," she says.
The win prompted her to look more seriously at her business idea - she had seen the popularity of juice bars when working in San Francisco during the previous summer. However, she reckoned the Irish climate would warrant adding home-made soup to the ticket. Joup, the name she put on the idea, is a combination of the words juice and soup.
"If I could win a competition so easily I thought maybe there is something in this idea," she says.
She approached Bill O'Gorman, a lecturer in the management and marketing department in UCC and mentor for the Enterprise Society, and he encouraged her to research her idea further.
Connolly decided to do a research masters with the management and marketing department in UCC on the area of entrepreneurship, focusing on graduate entrepreneurs from UCC who started their businesses within a short period of leaving college.
"While doing that I was able to do more research on what was my little note on the back of an envelope to come up with a really good, comprehensive business plan. I was able to talk to the food department in UCC, who were helpful, and I spent time surveying and researching the market and looking for premises."
Before she even got her business off the ground, her idea was earning her money. She picked up about €10,000 in award money by winning the overall award in the UCC entrepreneurship competition and the postgrad award in the National Student Enterprise Awards. In 2004 she took the plunge with Joup, selling her home-made produce at a farmers' market in Cork one day a week.
"The farmers' market was a great way to get to market without huge start-up costs," she explains. "It was an excellent location. Although it was just for Saturday mornings, I was able to produce my product, give it to my customers and they would be able to give me feedback. It gave me a feel for the market before I ever took a huge risk by putting money into it. I knew I had a market there."
The next step was to find premises and Connolly knew that would take money.
Impressive trading figures from the farmers' market, plus a clutch of enterprise awards, meant she had no fear approaching the bank.
Having secured about €100,000 from Ulster Bank, she set up in Cork's English Market in 2005, and in 2006 secured a second premises in Ballenlough which she used to prepare food fresh every day, as well as providing a catering business.
Connolly is passionate about providing healthy, nutritious food, something she says has helped her see her business plan become a reality.
"When you start your own business it's a lot of hard work. You really have to believe in what you are doing, and for us that is healthy food.
"What is different between us and other cafes out there is that we produce everything ourselves. I find the industrialisation of food is a frightening concept. We are hand-producing everything."
And she has found that there is a ready market for it. Business is booming; she is employing between 10 and 13 people depending on how busy it is, and is turning over about €500,000 a year. She's also on the lookout for other outlets.
Entrepreneurship seems to run in the Connolly family - her mother, Peggy, was the brains behind Irish Breeze soap. But while starting her own business came natural to her, she says there's also a lot of hard work.
"I learned that a lot of perseverance and blood, sweat and tears goes into it to make it successful as well."
