Delivering the goods
Timing means a lot in business, and along with listening carefully to its core target market, has been at the heart of Goodness Grains’ success
T he story of Goodness Grains Gluten Free Bakery began in 2009 when a customer ordered soup in Michael Kelleher’s restaurant Douglas & Kaldi in Dublin and had brought his own bread in cellophane to have with it.
It turned out the man had coeliac disease and said he had no confidence going out for lunch without bringing his own bread. This prompted Kelleher to go about getting gluten-free products onto the menu.
For a year and a half he trialled and tested products with the help of a consumer forum of people with coeliac disease – the first of these was a lemon tart, which has stood the test of time and is one of the company’s best sellers still.
Goodness Grains launched at the Catex exhibition in the RDS in 2013, which led to listings in Tesco and Dunnes and steady growth in the business ever since.
In the same year, it opened one of the very few purpose-built gluten free bakeries on the island of Ireland, in Co Longford. Having started out with 4,000 sq ft, 3,000 sq ft were added two years ago and this June Goodness Grains will move into a new 15,000 sq ft facility.
In an average day it produces about 4,000 units – which could be anything from a single-serve option, a four pack or a loaf of bread – and the family-run company employs 18 people.
“We entered the market at the right time and would see ourselves as first movers,” says Geraldine O’Shea, marketing and sales manager. “By the time we launched at Catex, we had been through the research and development phase and were confident that we were meeting the requirements of our core market [people with coeliac disease]. Our consumer forum had helped to determine which products to go with and how they should taste.”
Over the past four years, the ‘freefrom’ food market has grown overall and Goodness Grains has grown along with it, increasingly appealing to the socalled ‘lifestyle’ consumer group. Retail makes up 50% of its business; the rest is the food service market, through its distribution partner La Rousse Foods.
It delivers fresh products into supermarkets, with a shelf life ranging from 11 days (for bread) to 35 days (for other baked goods). Hotels and restaurants can buy its products frozen, which means a shelf life of eight to 12 months. “All of our products are individually wrapped, which reduces cross contamination – this is a big issue for people with coeliac disease,” says O’Shea.
Things started to take off in the UK last year after two years of trying to crack the market with the support of Bord Bia’s food service programme. Goodness Grains now has four food service partners in the UK. It is the only producer of gluten free Danish pastries in Ireland and the UK, which O’Shea says helps to make the company stand out with customers and distribution partners.
“We entered the market at the right time and would see ourselves as first movers”