'People might think you're flying, but it's just perception. I'm not buying a Lamborghini yet'
When she lost her fashion store to the recession, Irene Queally swore she’d never run a business again.
AFTER MY FIRST business succumbed to the recession, I swore I’d never work for myself again – but time is a great healer.
I started out working in the fashion industry in London and Italy before returning home to Waterford to start my own store, called The People of Oslo.
For eight years I put all my energy into it and it was very successful with a loyal customer following, but when the recession happened, the menswear side of the business disappeared overnight.
I went from having a store with eight staff down to just myself and two part-timers. I managed to keep the womenswear side of it going for another 18 months, but it was physically and mentally exhausting.
I knew in my heart it wasn’t sustainable, but it’s so hard to admit defeat when you are in that kind of situation. Eventually in January 2011, I closed the doors.
During the three years prior to closing the store, I started training as a psychotherapist. I had always been interest in the field and learning a new subject with new skills was fascinating and helped keep me motivated during an otherwise difficult time.
When I started counselling full-time, I found it very rewarding and felt really privileged to be able to use my skills to help other people.
In May 2012, I had my second child. On the eve of returning to work as a counsellor, I spent the whole day batch-cooking baby food for the week ahead.
I love cooking and find it very therapeutic, but when you already have a million jobs to do it can sometimes feel like a burden. I thought to myself, “Why is there nothing easier than this?”
That night, unable to sleep, I thought, why wasn’t there a better quality, fresh product in the market – like something I would make myself at home?
When I woke up the next morning, I started talking to my husband about the idea of selling the type of homemade baby food I was making. That’s where the idea for Pip & Pear began.
I know lots of mums have had the same idea, but I was lucky to have some experience in business and owning a restaurant, No.9 Barronstrand St, with my husband.
I also had a lot of contacts in food manufacturing, so I knew where to go for advice, although they all said I was mad.
Irene Queally
Juggling careers
It took a year and a half to get Pip & Pear off the ground. I had to research baby food and understand if there was a market for the products.
I also had to find out what the standards for baby food production were – this was a real challenge as the requirements are incredibly high. Once I was ready, I started working with recipes in our restaurant in Waterford.
With our restaurant, we didn’t particularly start out with the aim of being so family-friendly. We opened at the bottom of the recession and the aim was to serve the best brunch we could because nobody was going out for dinner.
The day we opened was insane – we had expected it would be years of hard work to build it up, but people were queuing up outside the door. It was a huge success and such a relief.
Every night after the restaurant was closed and the kitchen had shut down, I would go back in with a kitchen porter and one of the chefs and we would clean the kitchen and then start Pip & Pear production.
With our thermometers and stopwatches at the ready, we had to record every step and constantly monitor time and temperature.
Once we had everything cooked and chilled, samples would then be sent to the lab in Dungarvan for analysis before we could sell it to customers.
I started with five dishes and I didn’t know what kind of reaction to expect, but really quickly people started buying it – at first just to use in the restaurant, and then asking if they could buy pots to bring home. I knew we were on to something.
It was funny that a lot of customers assumed that what we were doing was normal, they assumed restaurants making baby food was no big deal.
But we were the kind of place that went the extra yard, so of course we had homemade baby food. They had no idea this was cutting-edge stuff being supported by Bord Bia and Enterprise Ireland.
The real tipping point for us was when I entered the products in the Blas na hEireann Irish Food Awards. The different recipes were blind tested and three got through to the final, which meant we all headed off down to Dingle.
We ended up winning gold, silver and bronze medals, which was the most exciting moment we’d had so far. I still get goosebumps when I think of the moment I realised we had won.
That’s actually where we met SuperValu and Aldi, and within a year we were listed in all their stores.
I only gave up my counselling work in 2017, when Pip & Pear really took off, as I felt so attached to my work as a counsellor. But it was clear the business needed my full attention.
Challenging moments
Our real challenge is letting people know where to find our products.
Everyone is aware there is an aisle within the supermarket where the baby products live, but Pip & Pear is found in the dairy fridges, so we have to educate our customers on where to find us.
Finding the right manufacturing partner, scaling up, creating the right products, understanding costs, shelf life, IT systems for individual customers, all of these issues we have had to work on.
Those aren’t the only challenges though, the whole thing has been a learning curve for me – equally exciting and daunting.
I was really green coming into this and didn’t even know the language of the food industry, but people held my hand through that phase, advised me and mentored me, for which I am hugely grateful.
The wins are great but the losses are huge as well. Not meeting deadlines can be tough, and trying to get stuff over the line when you’re running on empty is tiring.
As a small company, you’re trying to portray to all the supermarkets that you can fulfill orders just like a bigger company can, but it feels like a never-ending battle at times.
Pushing through
I’ve learned more from our mistakes than anything else – finding solutions and resolving problems ensures you won’t do them again. There are certain things I wouldn’t change about it all because I like where we are now as a business.
When the shop closed, I had a huge sense of failure. I said I’d never work for myself again. But time is a great healer, and I really enjoy the challenge of Pip & Pear.
It can be difficult to weather the first few years of setting up a business when you’re left fretting if you’ll get a listing or you can pay the bills. But little things can keep you going.
I have to say, seeing people putting my products in their trolley is a huge source of motivation for me, or hearing from mums how Pip & Pear has made their lives easier. Those are moments where I think, well done us.
I remember early on I was standing in Aldi one day and a woman put a dozen pots on the conveyor belt, and I was blown away. In the back of my head I was thinking, “She must be really happy with it.”
What’s next
People might look at your business and think it’s flying, but that’s just perception. We’re growing slow and steady, I’m not out there buying a Lamborghini yet.
We’re very much a small company still. There’s five of us working in the office, and I’m lucky to have a great team who work flat out alongside me, believing in the value of what we’re trying to do.
Three years ago we started with nine products and we’ve added another three since then. It’s great to see we’ve gone from this tiny idea to selling about 15,000 pots a week and growing. A month ago we launched with Tesco nationwide.
As a brand in Ireland, unless you’re in every town it will be really hard to grow it. With the best will in the world, mum might want to feed her child the best food but it’s not always realistic to drive 20km to the nearest stockist.
After the new listing with Tesco, we’re in every town and also online, which means mums can order our products to their doors.
The next step for growing the business is exporting – that’s our big goal. Ireland is only a small market with 60,000 babies born here each year. So by the end of this year, we want to expand into new markets.
Irene Queally is the owner of Pip & Pear. This article was written in conversation with Killian Woods as part of a series on business mistakes and what can be learned from them.
