Taste of Kildare Festival 2024, Set in Naas Racecourse 20th to 22nd Sept, is gearing up to be a spectacular celebration of County Kildare’s diverse food culture and artisan craftsmanship
Created by Into Kildare and supported by Ballymore and Kildare County Council’s Local Enterprise Office, the festival is promising an even bigger showcase of artisan producers.
Jacqui McNabb is Head of Enterprise, Tourism and Development at Kildare County Council, in a role that seeks to develop the artisan food sector in the Thoroughbred County, tapping into a part of the country with a strong food-production profile.
Coming from a strong background of marketing at the highest levels (including Waterford Glass where she went from designing to marketing), as well as working as a consultant in mentoring and innovation, Jacqui sees her role as a multi-faceted one, with the primary focus being sustainable job creation.
It was great to work with Áine Mangan, CEO of Into Kildare and her team. Their vision and commitment for the festival was so encouraging. As Áine says, “Taste of Kildare is not just a festival; it’s a vibrant platform where the best of Kildare’s producers has the chance to showcase their fantastic produce. We are excited to showcase the ‘makers and the shakers and the exceptional talents of our local producers and craftspeople. Our aim is to not only celebrate but also to elevate the profile of Kildare as a premier culinary, artisan and craft destination within Ireland and beyond.”
“For many of these producers, these are ‘lifestyle’ jobs, with many of them having secondary jobs working on farms,” says Jacqui. “Also, there are an awful lot of female jobs within the industry.
“Secondly, is building placemaking. Kildare is well known for its equine tradition but food is something that is only newly being tapped into as a brand and as a collective… we’re working with both primary producers and the end producer.”
This represents a lot of opportunity in terms of developing different businesses, building on past success and activities that food-related companies would have been successful at in the past.
“A concept that we haven’t fully developed is around our strong history of grain growing. We have Boortmalt, for example, who are producers of malt for the alcohol industry across Ireland and across the world – they produce substantial quantities of Diageo’s malting barley from a collective of grain growers. They’re based in Athy and what we hope to do is develop a Grain Trail. It’s a tourism offering that gives people the opportunity to see where the food comes from and meet some of the producers along that route.”
With the Local Enterprise Board supplying a raft of supports, innovative ideas that emanate from primary food production are getting funding to become products. One of the most successful examples of a kitchen industry that developed into a global brand is Lily O’Brien’s chocolate.
“Everybody is looking for a story,” says Jacqui, “and for people going to the Taste of Kildare it’s an opportunity to be able taste that story. To be able to sample those products and take some of them home to family and friends and then be able to recite that story is an experience that people love doing.”
For small producers, there was an era in the recent past when they were actively discouraged from distributing their product though the multiple retail units, but that has turned on its head, Jacqui says, with all the grocery retail chains such as SuperValu and Aldi desperately courting the small artisan sector to be able to present the quality local food to an increasingly discerning public.
“The Blas awards do a great job of recognising these producers and now you have consumers looking for the (Blas quality) seal on the product. And still, many of them are producing in their own homes. Many of them might have units adapted to gear up production but they’re still produced at source,” says Jacqui, who mentions that 11 of the 20 Kildare producers showcasing at Taste of Kildare were shortlisted for prizes at the latest Blas event.
Very often, it’s the case that producers have the product but they lack the marketing expertise to bring things a stage further.
“They would often come to us and say, ‘look, I have this product. Friends and family love it and they all think I should be selling it. How do I do that?’”
With mentoring from Jacqui and the Enterprise Board, they help products become certified accordingly and, more importantly again, they show these client companies how to best package and sell their produce and develop an online presence.
Many of the producers started life as hobbies that began during Covid, which started to take off and were then brought to a new level, thanks to the help of Kildare Enterprise Board.
“Food is a great way of connecting with people,” says Jacqui. “We only have 20 spaces at the Taste of Kildare but we could have taken another 50 of them if we had the room.
“Some of these foods are also selling through the hospitality industry and we’d encourage those from the sector to come and have a look at the offer at Taste of Kildare. It works very well because the tourist visiting the area is getting a taste of what the area has to offer without even having to leave their hotel… In the main, those in the hotel sector are always looking for local produce.”
Forums such as Taste of Kildare are a very important opportunity for small companies to network and cross-fertilize. The artisan food sector is a very cooperative one, keeping with the traditional approach to farming when neighbours used to help one another bringing in the harvest, for example.
On a broader level, the involvement of local enterprise boards in a space where food production meets tourism and job creation in the more isolated parts of the country is a very promising one. It is essentially imitating how some of the most successful tourism industries in the world have developed, with world tourism leader France being the best example.
“Fáilte Ireland and our colleagues in INTO Kildare create opportunities to market and tell a story, but it’s the development of the product at the other end where an awful lot of assistance is needed, and also to build infrastructure in order to allow these companies to be able to develop in their own community; to be able to attract tourism, such as the walkers and tourist trails or even with the barges.”
While international tourism continues to be important in Ireland, Jacqui notes that it is the home market where the evolution of tourism has been most dynamic in terms of customer expectations and exigencies, with food occupying a prime place in driving that tourism story forward.
“For me, the success of Taste of Kildare is all about client profile and if any of these companies can tell me afterwards that they have a new source of revenue – a new customer. It needs to take them to the next level.
“Ensuring that these 20 people who have a product that we know is really good, have successfully secured new customers… that is how I would decide if I were going to do the same model next year. And secondary to that is being available to other would-be entrepreneurs that would like to get a product that they’ve been making and that their family love. We love talking to these people.”
