The New Irish Pantry
The New Irish Pantry
Forget Market Share, the Artisan Quotient now drives the chain stores and supermarkets.
Think of all the Irish retail brands that didn’t exist a decade ago but which you now regularly pop into your shopping trolley.
There’s Builin Blasta, whose iconic smoked onion mayos have now been abetted by a range of salad dressings. There’s White Mausu, and who can live without White Mausu?
Sham’s Sauces. Goatsbridge’s tinned rainbow trout. Scarlet for Yer Ma. Wild Irish Seaweeds. Highbank Orchards. Nutshed peanut butters.
But consider the newcomers to the shelves such as Rivesci’s Chilli Catsup which has debuted in Lidl. Shannon and Declan have voyaged down the path of the new orthodoxy – from food cart to commercial kitchen to supermarket shelf – and, once tasted, the Chilli Catsup will be another artisan-inspired taste bomb to be dropped regularly into your basket.
It’s no surprise to anyone that there is now a range of Chimac sauces and marinades on sale in Aldi, developed by Sophie and Garret who have shown themselves masters of merchandising, as well as masters of KFC. Everything about Chimac is fun, the sort of fun that retailers are desperate to get a slice of.
What has been happening on our shopping shelves over the last decade is genuinely radical, and it’s incredibly important because so many of the foods we used to buy – Heinz salad cream; Branston pickle; HP sauce; Hellman’s mayo – are the products of massive, industrialised food production.
But the Irish artisan retail brands, like Irish farmhouse cheeses, are made by the people who created them. The taste of the creativity is still there.
The Irish trailblazer in this march to the multiples was Jasmin Hyde’s Ballymaloe Relish, the original upsetter in the retail stakes. Leveraging the iconic Ballymaloe name opened doors everywhere for a series of relishes and sauces that had a true signature style.
This close identification with the original producer is one of the major reasons why the chains are so keen to welcome Irish artisan brands that fit onto their shelves.
Supermarkets can no longer expect to expand by price offers and bog-offs. Their best hope for growth lies in adopting and facilitating the true cutting-edge foods, and identifying closely with the producers of those foods.
Sometimes the relationship is somewhat subterranean – the new Ethnic Stir Fry Sauces sold under Dunne’s Stores Simply Better range, which include Black Bean Sauce and Sweet and Sour Sauce amongst the five different pouches, are made by the team behind Temple Bar’s Gallagher’s Boxty House.
Then, sometimes, it’s overt: a supermarket niche brand made and produced by an artisan, of which one of the the best recent examples is the extensive range of Thai foods and sauces produced by Paul Cadden and his team at Saba, for Dunnes Stores Signature Selection brand. Another example is Niall Sabongi’s Seafood Suppers for SuperValu.
Bringing the producers front and central is now a major multiple marketing ploy. Lidl has its Kickstart initiative, with several new lines just launched. Supervalu has its Academy, Tesco long ago teamed up with Love Irish Food, and Aldi recently announced the three winners of its Grow with Aldi scheme.
Dunnes Stores, of course, have taken this collaborative idea further than anyone, revising their supermarkets as umbrella operations with room for James Whelan Butchers; Sheridan’s Cheesemongers; O’Connell Fish; and others.
They have recognised that these specialists have an expertise that they can simply never hope to source. Similarly, they have recognised that own-brand goods simply don’t have the same heat as artisanal foods: the producer needs to be front-and-centre to ensure that premium price. A Saba red curry paste has a story and a cachet that is implicit in its promotional branding: “Crafted by Saba.”
One of the key drivers helping to take artisan foods into the mainstream has been Blas na hÉireann, and we look forward to learning about new products, and new medal winners, when the 2024 Blas Awards are announced in Dingle this weekend.
Staples:
A new Monday news item from The Irish Stew:
Who can doubt that, once the public gets a taste of the new Magic Sauce from Arán Bakery in Kilkenny, the brainchild of Bart and Nicole and a mainstay of the Arán menu ever since the bistro opened in 2019, that we won’t be seeing Magic Sauce on supermarket shelves far and wide. It’s a staple in Arán’s richly flavourful brunch specials, such as the Korean Chicken Wrap, the Crispy Kimchi Chicken Burger and the Not-So-Turkish Eggs. You could use it as a marinade or a glaze but, frankly, all you need do is pop a splodge of it onto some eggs or some noodles and you are in Happytown. For now you can get it from the Arán Deli and in some Supervalu supermarkets in Kilkenny and Dublin. From tomorrow, the World…
wow, Ireland sounds much better than England! What an awesome array of bits, thanks for sharing x
Having grown up in Laois in the 1960s and ‘70s I hardly recognise today’s Irish foodscene. It’s fantastic. Ireland has always been full of great cooks and creatives and to see all that fantastic produce now being shown off in the best way possible is a dream!
I wish the UK ( where I now live) supermarkets would take on the initiative of bringing products from here to their shelves as is being done in Ireland ( there are a few, but too few) and if they could get some Irish products in as well then all the better!