FoodAcademy graduateshit theshelvesin supermarkets
EIGHT graduates of the Food Academy from Co Wicklow have seen their products hit the shelves of Supervalu stores around the county.
Since Monday, the locally-produced food and drink items have been on sale at Supervalu in Baltinglass, Blessington, Greystones, Wicklow, Charlesland, Arklow and Bray.
All eight businesses have participated in a number of workshops and mentoring sessions since September as part of the Food Academy progamme, which is a collaboration between the Local Enterprise Office network, Bord Bia and Supervalu. The Food Academy helps and nurtures small businesses as they transition from start-up company to SuperValu supplier.
The eight local products now on sale in the dedicated Food Academy section in Supervalu are:
A desire to showcase the top quality milk he had been producing in west Wicklow for 20 years led Tom Burgess to create Coolattin Cheddar – an award-winning raw milk cheese made exclusively from summer milk. Tom’s fertile soil and lush, clover-rich pasture provides the ideal diet for cheesemaking milk. The traditional ‘pasture to cheddar the same day’ cheesemaking process allows Tom to capture the maximum amount of nutrients and unique taste profiles. The alchemy of cheesemaking relies on working with microorganisms and enzymes to convert the milk into cheese and Tom maintains that these are ‘ the real rock stars of cheesemaking’. The cheese is slowly matured in carefully controlled conditions, creating ‘an award-winning gourmet experience of flavour, texture and aroma which develops slowly from sweet fruit, to a full nutty note.’
For more on Coolattin Chedar, visit coolattincheddar.ie, CoolattinCheddar on Facebook or @CoolattinC on Twitter.
Matt Byrne and his girlfriend, Finn, left Ireland in 2010 to eat their way around Asia and ended up in Australia. Melody Street Foods began in a tiny kitchen by the beach on Melody Street in Sydney, Australia, where Matt spent his spare time cooking up a storm. The result was a unique spicy, natural and versatile slow-cooked tomato-based sauce, bursting with natural ingredients such as turmeric, fresh ginger, fresh chilli and cumin. Now married, Matt, Finn and their two boys moved back to Ireland in 2016, settling in Wicklow town. With the help of the SuperValu Food Academy, Matt learned how to bottle his love for food and flavour and bring it to the supermarket shelf. He now creates handmade, slow-cooked batches of Melody Sauce and the