Just Food Soups
We spoke to Deirdre Hilliard from Just Food about her delicious soups and how SuperValu helped her get to where she is today.
When Deirdre Hilliard set out her stall at the farmers’ market in Midleton back in 2002, little did she realise that, with the help of SuperValu, her fine organic soup would soon be creating quite a stir on the national stage.
“People in the market began asking me if they could get my soup anywhere else so I approached SuperValu in Midleton and they said they would try it” she explains. Later, one SuperValu store took all of her products and gave her a big shelf space. Luckily enough they sold immediately.
“People in the market began asking me if they could get my soup anywhere else so I approached SuperValu in Midleton and they said they would try it”
This initial success led Deirdre and her husband Kevin to set up their company Just Food in 2005 with soups as the core range. There are plenty of other soups on the market today, so what was it that had the consumer asking the Hilliards ‘please, can I have some more?’ “In a word, it’s the fresh taste of our soup that has people coming back for more” Deirdre answers.
She puts the soups’ appeal down to the quality of the organic ingredients and the really good price. All the ingredients are organic and most organic produce tastes better. Organic tomatoes have a lot more flavour than non-organic Deirdre tells us. Buying organic is not as expensive as people believe. “Our soup retails at €2.69 for 400g, which is really good value” she says.
As well as great taste and great value, there’s “eating and drinking” in the wholesome Just Food soups. “Our soups are like meals. One bowl will keep you going until dinner. In each soup you will get at least 2 of your 5 a day” she says. This serves very well in that people are increasingly health conscious these days.
Deirdre’s hobby and labour of love soon turned into a serious enterprise. By 2007 they were selling into 8 shops. That was when it became serious business and not just a hobby. So they applied to the enterprise board for funding which they got.
The funding put some confidence in their step and enabled them to step up to meet the public’s growing appetite for their soup. They then moved into new premises. “Before I had been doing everything at home in my kitchen but that became too small” Deirdre says.
But while the premises were bigger, this husband and wife team maintained the same standards of cooking they had implemented in their own home kitchen. “We still make everything in small batches. We literally have large pots in the kitchen, not big machines that pump everything from one place to another” she says. They even make their own stock. It is labour intensive but it tastes like you just made it yourself”.
Even with her husband on board, Deirdre soon needed more cooks to make the broth! She has nine employees now. They are all local people. In fact, her chef lives on the other side of the ditch at the end of her garden. It doesn’t get more local than that.
Participating in the SuperValu Supplier Development Programme was a huge boost to Just Food and enabled them to step up onto the national retail stage. Deirdre explains how she used to deliver direct to the SuperValu stores but now she can avail of the SuperValu central distribution system. That has helped her enormously because someone from the other side of the country can order as much as they want from her six days a week. Another big ingredient in the Just Food success story was winning last year’s SuperValu ‘Local Producer of the Year Award’.
“We are very happy working with SuperValu. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them so we owe a lot to them” she says.
Looking to the future, the Hilliards are thinking of offering their wholesome soups to continental diners. They want to export and have met with people recently about selling to Belgium. After that they hope to expand and export to other European countries
Finally, to sum up their ambition for Just Food in a sentence? “To continue to work with SuperValu and to be a household name in Ireland and across the continent” Deirdre proudly proclaims.