Author Archives: Keith

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August 26, 2012

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Ethical Food, Startups

Vegtoons @cartoonsaloon

This one is a small bit personal. It steps outside of the world of food producers and distribution and revisits the vegetarian ethos and how that is communicated into a wider audience.

A good friend of mine in Kilkenny – Tomm Moore of Cartoon Saloon (known best for his Oscar nominated Story of Kells) is working with Paul Young and Greg Singer (Dreamworks) to KickStart a new animated series promoting plant based diets – Vegtoons.

You can see more underneath and join in here.

UPDATE 31/8/12 – Initial $16k target reached with 1 day to go 🙂

/ Keith

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August 26, 2012

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Ethical Food, Packaging

Slowpack #terramadre

One of my “must attend” events at the 2012 Terra Madre is Slowpack – being held for the first time in October.

This tackles one of the many challenges around packaged foods – the waste involved in packaging individual items. The aim of the awards is to foster greater use of ecological and sustainable packaging options and there are 4 categories:

1) Traditional techniques and materials: This award will recognize a form of packaging that consists of materials that recover a traditional way of packaging and conservation.

2) Innovative techniques and materials: this award will recognize a form of packaging that is both eco-friendly and eco-sustainable, made with innovative, reusable, recyclable and biodegradable materials that are derived from efficient production processes from an energy point of view, with low levels of harmful emissions.

3) Communication of the product’s quality: this award will recognize a label with highly effective communication that helps that consumer understand the product’s characteristics that distinguish it from the competition by describing, for example, the traceability of its ingredients, the history of the product or its uniqueness and indicating the correct way to reuse or dispose of the packaging

4) Chain of primary, secondary and tertiary packaging: this award will recognize a label whose choice of all levels of packaging fully respects the environment.

More information here (closing date for entries 31st Aug)

/ Keith

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August 25, 2012

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Ethical Food, Startups

@BeyondMeat

What they do

Set up to develop plant based proteins and directly substitute them for meat proteins. The photo below shows their “chicken” strip in a product from Whole Foods.

Where they do it

US based (currently opening new manufacturing facility in Columbia) and currently US focused in their distribution and business development. As they are a relatively new business even that focus is limited to the West Coast with a small present on the East – see their map here.

Who are they

The business was started by Ethan Brown in 2009 (he has a background in clean energy and avoids social media as far as I can make out) and in June 2012 hit the headlines with a investment round which included Biz Stone and Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. Biz is better known for Twitter but a has been a vegan the past 10 years.

On the Kleiner side this one is in their Greentech portfolio – I find that very interesting indeed.

The ethical bit?

Combines a move away from slaughtered protein with a very strong pro-environment message.

My thoughts

Like this one a lot. The last 10 years have seen enormous strides in vegetarian/vegan foodstuffs and this startup could accelerate the sector nicely.

Captured nicely in this quote from Biz Stone “These guys are coming at the meat analogue industry not as a novelty kind of thing or hippy dippy. They were coming at it from this big science, super practical, scalable angle. They were saying, ‘We want to get into the multi-billion-dollar meat industry with a plant-based meat,” says Stone.

This is where significant change happens – where a business can scale and create impact without sacrificing core principles. Would love to work with these guys and girls 🙂

Links to more

http://beyondmeat.com/

twitter.com/BeyondMeat

https://www.facebook.com/beyondmeat

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20120805/entlife/708059945/

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680007/biz-stone-explains-why-twitters-co-founders-are-betting-big-on-a-vegan-meat-startup

/ Keith

 

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August 19, 2012

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Ethical Food, Great brands and producers

Alter Eco Foods

What they do

They have created a food brand which starts from the point that food is fundamental to life – and whole, healthy, delicious food can make life better for people all over the world.

Where they do it

They started in France and in 2010 expanded into the US with a separate entity and a funding round there.

Who are they

Tristan Lecomte in France, Mathieu Senard and Edouard Rollet in the United States and Ilse Keijzer in Australia.

The ethical bit?

They work directly with the producers who grow and process their products. Fairtrade, carbon neutral and organic. Check out this product information page which gives a great view of how they communicate comprehensive information on each product.

http://www.alterecofoods.com/products/chocolate/dark-coconut-toffee

Couple of great images from their site give an overview of their ethos

My thoughts

It is so difficult to do what they have done and are doing – running a business is a compromised activity at the best of times without the apparent constraints imposed by deliberately not following the standard commercial arrangements.

Having been a consumer of organic and fairly traded products for over 25 years it is a joy to see high quality products which hold their own in terms of taste and presentation – a million miles away from the badly presented and barely edible products of years ago 🙂

I have never seen these products on my travels but will keep my eyes open for them from now on.

Links to more

http://www.alterecofoods.com

https://twitter.com/alterecosf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alter_Eco

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/mathieu-senard-and-edouard-rollet

/ Keith

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August 18, 2012

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Ethical Food, Media Watch, Startups

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Ethical Food Businesses – some information sources I will be keeping an eye on

I already subscribe to a couple of these blogs and follow their founders on twitter and I will be adding to the list as I find more.

Worth saying here that a food startup in itself is of no interest to me personally – it must have a ethical core to it. The perpetuation of cheap food for the mainstream is irrelevant here as are reviews of normal restaurant chains and mass produced dishes. So while these sources cover a lot of great businesses not many of those will be mentioned in posts here. Just so we are clear 😉

2/9/12 – http://www.springwise.com/?s=food

31/8/12 – http://www.good.is/tag/food/

31/8/12 – http://ethicalfoods.com/

Food and Technology Connect – Danielle Gould

Forbes Food Startups

Quora Food Tech Startups

Edible Startups – Michelle Paratore

Guardian UK Organics Coverage

Meetup Food Startups Group

If you have ones to add to the above please let me know in the comments
Keith

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August 18, 2012

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Great brands and producers, Marketing

Time flies…and Biabeag is going to change a little

Been a long while since I last posted here and in the meantime have been working in my other life on some interesting online projects.

Picking up this blog and starting again – with a twist. The same core emphasis on food the way it should be – describing it as artisan, local, slow, organic, ethical seasonal or small (beag). But now moving beyond the producers whose passion and energy drives all of this and into the world of the larger businesses which support that passion.

They could be online retailers, real world brands, distributors or ones which blend the older business models and bridge the gap between consumers and producers. In all cases it won’t just be about food – they will all have at their core good food produced properly.

Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto

As part of this revitalised focus I am really looking forward to being part of the Irish Slow Food contingent in Turin, Oct 2012 – the Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto event. Check out this video.

Keith

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December 16, 2011

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Great brands and producers, Packaging

World Exclusive “Drivers Cider”

The first time in public & from the award winning artisan organic Kilkenny based Highbank Orchards comes this new product.

Drivers Cider – an alcohol free cider drink. Check out the front label – a lovely zero alcohol visual in the style of a speedometer. For more check out their site: www.driverscider.com

This bottle is in the fridge to chill it, tasting later 😉

Thanks to Julie & Rod for sending the sample in to me.

Keith

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December 4, 2011

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Events

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Tipp Food Producers Christmas Extravaganza featuring Rachel Allen

It’s been quiet here on BiaBeag – my day job has been keeping me away from my artisan food addiction. Wednesday evening will see a brief revisit when I attend the Tipperary Food Producers evening in Clonmel as part of the twitter panel there.

From their website:

Rachel Allen, who is part of the world famous Ballymaloe Cookery School in East Cork and who is well known from her regular Television shows and for her bestselling cook books, will prepare a variety of delicious dishes for the Tipperary food showcase. As well as her unique take on traditional Christmas favourites, she will also be offering exciting new ideas using the finest of local ingredients.

 Tipperary Cheese and wine will be served at the informative Christmas Cookery demonstration. Clonmel-based wine expert, Gary Gubbins of Red Nose Wine, will be giving guidance on wines to accompany the variety of dishes from the cookery demonstration. Well known food blogger Imen McDonnell, will give a live butter-making demonstration.

 “I am very excited about coming to Tipperary to do this demonstration. Tipperary food has such a fantastic reputation and the local producers are doing great work to promote this wonderful asset. I will be doing traditional recipes but there will be a few surprises thrown in there too” said Rachel Allen.

Looking forward to it – if you are there please say hello 🙂

Keith

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October 31, 2011

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Events, Great brands and producers

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Savour Kilkenny Food Market – some of the people behind the food

That was a great weekend and after the Foodcamp on Friday I relaxed a little and just enjoyed walking around and chatting to the artisan food producers around the market on the Parade.

This is a view of the market from one of the surrounding buildings. Against the backdrop of the Rose Garden and the Castle over 70 passionate food producers gathered to share and sell their wares. For a change this post focused on those people and not brands or packaging.

First up in this post – Mag Kirwan and Marian Flannery. Mag is a food producer, member of the Savour Kilkenny Committee and co-organiser of the Foodcamp with me. Marian is the person primarily responsible as festival organiser for the delivery of the event. Both did amazing work.

Moving on 4 sets of couples who work together in their businesses – and really lovely people to chat to as well. Julie and Rod Calderpott have an organic farm for many years and Julie came up with Orchard Syrup last year. Another apple based product about to launch too – but Mum’s The Word.

Audrey and Norbert make chutneys in Dunhill, Waterford and as with the 2 above I have never seen them without a smile on their faces.

A steady stream of people queued to taste the 2 beers on tap from Grainne and Tim Walsh from the Metalman Brewery in Waterford. Very tasty pale ale.

Michael and Paul are another organic business and brand and so well respected in the food sector for their range.

And Now. The Award Winning Helen Finnegan – voted Supreme Cheese Maker……stop – check out this post for more. It was lovely to hear John McKenna on Friday evening talking about how he had come across Helen 8 years ago when she was studying cheesemaking and just how special it was to move in that short space of time to winning that title against tough competition with over 600 unique cheeses to battle against.

One of the nice things about starting this blog (nearly a year ago now) is constantly coming across really strong brands which I had never been aware of. Gee’s Jams is one of those, started by Helen Gee 12 years ago.

A mere 6 years old is Tess’s Homestyle Baking, a Kilkenny based business and this is Paul Doyle who is one of the co-founders.

Cakes, cupcakes and various other delights are the speciality of Mary McEvoy. She was a little shy around the camera!

A completely new brand to me at the market was Prue & Simon’s and this shot is of Prue Rudd with a customer.

That’s it – the best part of artisan food festivals for me. Chatting to and hearing the stories of the producers. I missed loads of them in that round up!

Keith

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October 18, 2011

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Great brands and producers

Irish Artisan Drinkmaker’s Association

This tweet caught my eye today – it was put out by Cornelius Traas twitter.com/theapplefarmer

Any beverage makers out there interested in starting an association? Irish Artisan Drinkmakers Association? Contact me if interested.

So that is interesting – and no better man that Cornelius to get it started, even as a foodie I am aware of the amazing reputation he has amongst his peers. Go check out his website and if you are in the business send him an email.

Have suggested to him that it might be useful for him to grab a speaking slot during Foodcamp and explore it there. Will keep updated on that 🙂

Keith