'I was six months pregnant during my chef training. Nothing was going to stop me'

This biscuit-company founder dabbled in stockbroking and radio before starting her business.

By Beth-Ann Smith Co-founder, The Lismore Food Company

I COME FROM a family that has six generations of grocers behind it.

My grandfather set up Smiths Stores in Cork city, a beautiful delicatessen somewhat in the style of Fallon and Byrne, while my father, who left school at 15 to work in the business, subsequently inherited it.

‘Smiths Stores, smart service’ was their motto. The business wasn’t just stylish, they were also innovative and the first to do home deliveries in Cork city.

Eventually my father sold on the business to the Musgrave Group and joined the company as a director.

My father was a big foodie and I got that side of my personality from him. I remember going back to boarding school with things like chorizo, smoked salmon and blue cheese. The other kids in the dorm were always a tad bemused at my tuck as I unpacked my bags.

My dad, who died when I was a teenager, was very entrepreneurial, which catapulted me into studying business in Trinity.

I loved university, but my love for business only really kicked in when I started freelance cheffing and then set up the Lismore Food Company. It was the point when I could apply all the theory I had learned to the business ideas we had – it was a eureka moment for me.

12316563_447918975412790_4499755328665636381_n Beth-Ann Smith
Source: The Lismore Food Company

Many career paths

Initially when I finished university, I spent a year living and working in Barcelona. It was that year that really opened up my eyes to good food.

The Catalans had such a healthy and wonderful approach to food and life. That love of food and good ingredients stayed with me all through my 20s as the craving to work full-time in food grew stronger.

When I graduated from Trinity, I went into finance, beginning with stockbroking and then onto banking.

I enjoyed banking much more as there was more of a business and creative aspect to it. When I think about it now, I suppose I was experimenting to see what finance was like, but there was also an end goal.

I wanted to see if I could go in and make some money so that after 10 years I could use that to do what I really wanted to do.

When I was in finance, I was continually looking for ways to express my creative side. I did catering and window display work on the side, but also I loved arts and culture.

So one day I rang Anna Livia – the radio station now called Dublin City FM – and asked if there was an opportunity to come in and do some presenting. The very next week I started with a show called Art Beat and I co-presented that for several years.

I really enjoyed chatting to artists, playwrights and creatives and getting an understanding of what inspired them. I longed for that feeling of having a vocation and I vicariously experienced it through these inspiring people who I interviewed.

Cookery school

When I turned 30, I was fortunate enough to go to Ballymaloe Cookery School to train as a chef. They shoehorned me in at the last minute and I did the course from when I was between three and six months pregnant – nothing was going to stop me.

It was the most wonderful three months of cooking, and I was living on the organic farm surrounded by fabulous people. I couldn’t get enough of it.

LFC Full Range 2016
Source: The Lismore Food Company

Then I moved to Lismore, Co Waterford, where my career as a chef really kicked off. I started getting frequent calls for jobs as there are many people around Lismore who looked for chefs for private events.

I immersed myself in cheffing and within two years was working for Lismore Castle. I later became its head chef, which was an incredible opportunity.

However, it was a seasonal role between March until the end of October, so once I had recovered from the busy season I would find myself twiddling my thumbs feeling the need to do something else.

Business idea

While living in Lismore, I had become very friendly with the Madden brothers, Owen and Ken.

We had all talked about developing a product together and had several ideas over the years, many of which we investigated quite thoroughly. In fact we started with biscuits, diverted away from the idea for a while, and then went full circle back to biscuits again.

We held off the original biscuit-company idea because the timing wasn’t right. We had always wanted to bring out a premium biscuit, but in 2011 Ireland was in a recession, so it was too big a risk.

In the end, the economy began its upturn and with that came an increasing level of optimism. We took the plunge as we really felt there was a gap in the market for a premium biscuit in beautiful packaging.

The great thing about the biscuit idea for us was that we knew at the onset that we could do everything from creating the recipes to the baking, which was done in the Summerhouse – Owen’s café in Lismore. It meant we had full control.

So we trusted our gut feeling, set up the Lismore Food Company and it turned out we were right. We haven’t looked back since.

LFC - Owen Madden, Beth-Ann Smith & Ken Madden
Source: The Lismore Food Company

Modest beginnings

The Ballymaloe course really helped to kick off my career as a chef and, later on, I found the same with the Food Works accelerator program when setting up the company.

I learned a lot in a short space of time in those and gathered a lot of momentum from being around so many like-minded people.

Even though we have the business now, I continue to work in season as head chef in Lismore Castle. Owen has also kept his day job, while Ken is working full-time for the company.

There have been tough times where we haven’t been physically there to help Ken or when the finances have been tight, but we’ve always managed to push through and stay focused.

The business was tiny at the start and only had €15,000 of investment from ourselves, which in business terms is nothing.

We made the most of that investment though and developed our product, the packaging and branding ourselves. We also did our own marketing and public relations – which was all done through social media.

As an aside, the packaging is somewhat inspired by our love of art, with the gold disc on the front a quiet nod to the wonderful Irish artist Patrick Scott.

From those humbling beginnings, we built up the company organically and as the recession eased we managed to get some loans from the bank.

Now we’re looking at both the year ahead, but also thinking about the five-year plan. One of my jokes is that we’re going for global domination, but I’m only half joking because my father always advised me to aim for the top.

Our plan going forward is to really focus on our export strategy while still maintaining our business in Ireland. So we’re analysing markets all over the world including the Middle East, Asia and the US with a view to really drive exports over the next five years.

We’ve already made great inroads into the UK market and our biscuits are in their top food halls like Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and Selfridges, and also over 300 Marks & Spencer stores. We’re also in several other countries around the world.

With currency exchange fluctuations, and things like Brexit, we do have to be exercise a healthy level of caution while driving forward into new markets, but striking that balance is all part of the challenge in the quest for global domination.

Beth-Ann Smith is the co-founder of The Lismore Food Company. This article was written in conversation with Killian Woods as part of a series on unlikely entrepreneurs.

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