Congrats to Galway’s next wave of Super Food and Drink Entrepreneurs

I recently attended the Galway Chamber Business Awards. Pat McDonagh, Founder of Supermacs delivered a fantastic speech in accepting the Special Presidents Award for his contribution to business in Galway.

The performance of Supermacs, Ireland’s largest indigenous quick service restaurant chain, is amazing:

• Over 100 outlets across country and employs over 2,700 people.
• Annual commitment to Irish farmers in excess of €20 million per annum.

The future for Supermacs seems very bright as Mr McDonagh stressed when congratulating the entire Supermacs team on their contribution to winning the award.

The Business of Clean Cut Meals – Micheal & Conor

IBYE is a fantastic competition. Galway LEO recently announced the 2017 winners in the three Best Young Entrepreneur categories: Business Idea, Startup Business and Established Business.

I was delighted that Clean Cut Meals won the Established Business Award. Micheal Dyer participated on a graduate entrepreneurship programme that I delivered on behalf of GMIT iHubs (George McCourt and Maria Staunton) a few years ago (2015). At the time the onus was on Micheal and his business partner Conor to launch the business utilising a new business model – meals direct to the consumer copying a model that was gaining momentum in the US. The process was classic bootstrapping – they had no money, needed a kitchen and to convince customers to pay in advance. That was 2015. Since then, I kept an eye on Clean Cut Meals as they are brilliant on Social Media – see this article in This is Galway.

A few weeks ago, I was delighted that Micheal contacted me asking to meet as he was applying for IBYE. This week, we met again in SCCUL Enterprise Centre, Ballybane for an hour to review the draft 5 minute Pitch for IBYE- thanks to Michael Smyth for the room! Clean Cut Meals is a brilliant story, both ups and downs, to date and has a great future with Micheal at the helm. In the three years, they have developed:

• A profitable business with 9 Employees
• A brilliant brand (and website)
• Hundreds of loyal customers every week – catering to a customer base equivalent to two of Galway’s busiest hotels.
• A nationwide service; and
• A plan for 2018 to include a move to a bigger facility based on growth in Ireland and launching into the UK.

So yes I am talking about Clean Cut Meals in the same blogpost as Supermacs. No pressure Micheal!

Congrats also to Padraic O’Griallais of Micil Poitin on their award – I met Padraic for a chat a few months ago and was hugely impressed with his drive, ambition and smart approach to business.

So the future of Food & Drink in Galway is in safe hands.

I am sure that there are more Galway Food and Drink Entrepreneurs worthy of inclusion here – please feel free to comment and include links. Best of luck to all Galway representatives in the IBYE regionals.

UPDATE – June 2019

Clean Cut Meals is awarded the best ‘Start-Up’ business award at the 19th Annual National Enterprise Awards organised by the Local Enterprise Office.

Media reports state that Clean Cut Meals have delivered over 750,000 meals nationwide to date, employ 15 staff and are planning to enter the US market in 2020.

Best regards

Donncha (@donnchadhh)

p.s shares on Social Media appreciated (just click to reTweet below)