Food Academy Programme
About this good practice
Food Academy is a training programme aimed at supporting and nurturing start-up food businesses. The Local Enterprise Offices have joined forces with Bord Bía and SuperValu on this initiative to provide a consistent level of food marketing knowledge to new and early-stage food business owners.
The aim of Food Academy Start is to provide small food business with a solid foundation to progress to the shelves of retailers. All participants in Food Academy will be given the opportunity to pitch their product to a panel of SuperValu representatives including the local SuperValu owner. The panel mentor the businesses, share their expertise and advice to allow the participants to make any changes they deem necessary to improve their offer.
The Food Academy Start Programme is delivered through workshop style training over 4 days and includes individual mentoring. It is supported by SuperValu in the context of retail expertise and providing a route to market. On successful completion of the programme, SuperValu will provide participants with the opportunity to trial their product in the local stores for a trial period of 12 weeks, providing an advantage for small businesses to gain feedback directly from the retailer providing an opportunity to further develop their product, marketing approach, packaging and distribution.
Expert opinion
The Food Academy Programme provides a hands-on and close to market training offer to new and early-stage food business owners.
It addresses thereby very practically some common obstacles for new businesses:
- Marketing properly their product,
- Finding access to their first clients, and
- Developing sales channels.
The training offered is short (4 days) and offers immediate returns, which makes it attractive to many startups, which have usually little time for such activities and are in the need of developing rapidly incomes.
The close collaboration with local retail companies can also be highlighted as reinforcing the practical character of the initiative.
Resources needed
Finance and staff resources from the Local Enterprise Office, Bord Bia and SuperValu. The cost of running the programme which includes mentoring and workshops is funded by the Local Enterprise Offices.
Evidence of success
There are over 300 businesses participating in Food Academy supporting over 1,130 jobs
Potential for learning or transfer
This Good Practice has the potential to be transferred into other regions providing a similar partnership can be developed by public sector economic development agencies and supermarkets.
Further information
Website
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.
Local Enterprise Offices