Food Academy Start

Food Academy Start is a training programme aimed at supporting and nurturing start-up food businesses. Bord Bia, SuperValu and the Local Enterprise Offices have joined forces on this initiative to provide a consistent level of food marketing knowledge to new and early-stage food business owners.

In 2013, to help develop Ireland’s artisan industry further, Bord Bia, SuperValu and the Local Enterprise Offices joined forces to create ‘Food Academy Start’, a tailored programme that provides a platform for new and early-stage food business owners to develop a commercially viable business.

For the first time, food start-ups regardless of their location have access to a standardized programme of supports throughout the country. Food Academy Start, which is delivered through workshop style training, and supported by SuperValu in the context of retail expertise and providing a route to market, is designed to guide companies from start-up to their first retail listing.

The aim of Food Academy Start is to provide small food businesses with a solid foundation to progress confidently onto retail shelves. All participants in Food Academy are given the opportunity to pitch their product or idea to a panel of SuperValu representatives including the local SuperValu owner. This panel mentors the businesses and passes on its expertise and advice, to allow the participants make any changes deemed necessary to improve their offer. Crucially SuperValu also provide successful participants with the opportunity to trial their product in their local stores for a period of 12 weeks. This provides a real advantage to small businesses in terms of real retail learnings, as they are in a position to liaise with the store to gain feedback on their product from both the store staff and consumers. Such learnings will help the producer to further develop their product, marketing approach, packaging and distribution.

For more information or to register your interest in Food Academy Start please contact our office on 049-4377200

Food Academy Start Brochure