Food Academy

The Birds & The Teas

‘Giving a modern twist to delicious Relishes and Chutneys, using fresh, local ingredients’ 

2014 was a year of both challenge and expectation.  Having worked consistently in both retail and hospitality for over 30 years, my husband and I found ourselves redundant within a week of each other.  Then came the challenge.  Destiny had changed our course and how could we use our combined skillsets and come up with something to move forward?  I come from a farming background and had a strong cooking heritage from both my Mother and Grandmother, who always taught me the value of using fresh and seasonal ingredients.  Pat is excellent at sales, so we decided to test the market with baked goods, relishes and chutneys.  All sold well, but from our research we found a public yearning for handmade, slow cooked chutneys and relishes, bringing back the flavours of childhood, when everything was made from fresh fruit and veg. 

Our journey continued from there.  We were lucky enough to have been accepted by the Supervalu Food Academy which gives us a tremendous platform to sell our Chutneys and Relishes in such a respected environment. This is a fantastic program, both in terms of coaching, advice and opportunity. It formed the bedrock from which we were able to move forward 

We travel around Farmer’s markets and agricultural shows and use this opportunity to develop our recipes, watching and listening to customer feedback and changing some products as many as 17 times!  

We are lucky to have an amazing customer following and are so happy to be able to tell them that they can find our top products in Supervalu.  We have a substantial Facebook following and numerous five-star reviews. 

We are passionate about the quality of our product, made from fresh fruit and veg and our products are entirely free from preservatives. 

They are delicious by themselves with cheese, meats, or sandwiches but also can be used when cooking, to make everyday meals that little bit more special.  We advise using the Tomato and Chilli when roasting a chicken, in wraps, rolls, burgers and even salad. The Sundried Tomato is great with pasta and fish and the Irish Apple is amazing with your cheeseboard and brings a pork chop to life! 

We look forward to meeting our customers at shows like Savour Kilkenny, Tinahely show, Chef demos and numerous events around the country. 

We are delighted to be part of the Supervalu Food Academy program.  We look forward to bringing our product to more stores in the coming year.  We love meeting you, our customers, as we travel around the stores and until we do.. 

Live Life with Relish!