Appetite For Expansion
Canadian Heather Flaherty bought Builín Blasta café in Spiddal after falling in love with the West of Ireland. Now producing its own range of food products, Heather talks to Kathleen O’Callaghan about scaling up and getting onto the shelves of retail gian
Heather Flaherty’s story is sort of the Canadian equivalent of Shirley Valentine. Girl travels from her home country to remote island thousands of miles away, falls in love with the place, opens a café, falls in love with a guy, and stays put.
Heather’s point of departure was Saskatoon, the largest city in Saskatchewan, where the temperature is sub-zero for five months of the year. Seventeen years ago she travelled to the west of Ireland with a couple of girlfriends and landed a job in an Inis Mór restaurant.
Flaherty is one of the most common Aran Islands surnames, though Heather says there was no family connection drawing her there. She took to the West of Ireland like wool to a sheep’s back and upskilled with a Business & Culinary Arts degree at GMIT in Galway.
Heather undertook a number of chef roles before buying her way into business in 2015. With fellow director Jenya Hardziyu, who came in for a 15% stake, Heather Flaherty paid €70,000 to buy the Builín Blasta café in Spiddal from New Zealander Jamie Peaker and Nina Walsh.
Modest bank borrowing was required but the idea was that most of the purchase consideration would be repaid from Builín Blasta cashflow. And that’s the way things have worked out. Filed accounts for Builín Blasta Teo show bank borrowings of €87,000 at end 2021, down from €97,000 a year earlier. The loan funding agreement is long-term, with annual repayments of c.€11,000 a year, which is very manageable for a business with annual turnover of €390,000 and which paid its two shareholders dividends of €52,000 in 2021.