World warms to ‘Hot Irishman’
However, that is the trip the husband and wife team of Bernard and Rosemary Walsh are excitedly looking forward to this week and with very good reason.
Their visit to Istanbul follows four momentously successful years since they took the bull by the horns and set up their Hot Irishman company in 1999.
A winner in last year’s National Enterprise awards, the Hot Irishman has now been listed in the World Young Business Achievers awards which are being held in Istanbul next Friday, and Bernard and Rosemary will be there for the prestigious occasion.
Hot Irishman is one of the few Irish companies ever to make it onto the short-list since the launch of the world awards scheme in 1995.
“We set about creating what we believe to be the world’s first authentic Irish Coffee using an original Irish Coffee recipe,” Mr Walsh said.
“It is now the leading Irish Coffee product in Ireland and is available in all of the major stores (Dunnes, Superquinn, Tesco, Musgraves, and Airport Stores). We are also exporting the Hot Irishman to Britain, the United States, France, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Russia.”
The product has made a major breakthrough with many of the top airlines, including BA, BMI, Finnair, and Iceland Air.
The Walshs will tell you that they always struggled to find an Irish Coffee that tasted as good as those made back home in Ireland, where it was first conceived by a bar tender at Shannon Airport, Joe Sheridan, in the 1940s.
They eventually got their inspiration to make their own brand of Irish Coffee after Mrs Walsh quit her job as a software engineer in London to attend a three month course at Ballymaloe House in East Cork.
She recalls making an Irish Coffee for 30 and more guests at 11 o’ clock at night as being “a challenge at the best of times.”
Bernard would lend her a helping hand in Ballymaloe at weekends. “Guests often commented on the special taste of our Irish Coffee and there and then we both recognised the opportunity to produce one that would consistently taste great,” Bernard said.
“Rather than pay millions of euros to some marketing company we involved a circle of about 20 close friends and after a long night of sampling the ‘Hot Irishman’ was born on June 24th 1999.”
Since then it has been success all the way. Today you will find the product in hotels from the Rochestown Park in Cork to the Plaza in New York’s Manhattan. National and international awards have come thick and fast, including the International Mercury award for the best new food and drink product in the airline industry.
From small, even humble, beginnings the Walshs have brought their company a very long way.
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