Feeding a passion
Spotting a gap in the market for healthy Japanese food-to-go, Oishii Foods has gone from strength to strength over the past 12 years
Ciara Troy didn’t realise how spending a semester studying in Tokyo 13 years ago would change the direction of her life. It led her to set up a food business fresh from college that now employs 21 people at a fully fitted unit in Smithfield in Dublin.
“I felt good on the diet in Japan, as it has so much rice, seaweed and fish and less processed breads,” she recalls.
On completion of her Business, Economics and Social Studies degree at Trinity College Dublin, Troy realised there wasn’t much Japanese food available in Ireland and wondered could she share her love of it with a wider audience.
She started making a variety of dishes in her kitchen at home, including dumplings and katsu curry, and in 2006 registered the company and got a place in a farmers’ market in Greystones, Co Wicklow.
“Everyone was taken with the sushi back then, so I focused all my efforts on where the demand was. Oishii means delicious in Japanese and we became known for the sushi range,” Troy explains. “In the past couple of years I have been able to develop other product ideas as people know now there is more to Japanese food than sushi.”
Troy and her team put a huge amount of work into improving existing products – by tweaking ingredients such as protein content or sugar for example – as well as developing new products with health, good nutrition and convenience in mind. Last year, two of its new products – Salmon, Edamame & Brown Rice Mealpot and a new Teriyake sauce made with sesame – were awarded gold stars the Great Taste Awards.
Oishii Foods supplies 120 retail outlets around the country including selected Musgrave, Tesco, Topaz and Applegreen stores. It is set to supply Musgrave Northern Ireland in the coming weeks, which will mean its first foray into exporting. “Shelf life has been a barrier to exporting up to recently, but we are starting with our unique Teriyake sauce range which has a shelf life of 18 months,” Troy explains.
The company is also making good inroads into the food service area, having opened a sushi bar kiosk in Morton’s Hatch Street three years ago. It also sends sushi chefs to onsite events in hotels, for example. “We have a loyal following for our sushi bar now and will be working on finding more kiosk locations in 2018,” says Troy.
“In the past couple of years I have been able to develop other product ideas as people know now there is more to Japanese food than sushi”