Taste the Nation: The key business advice Donal Skehan's dad gave this Cork woman
Erica Sheehan of Homespun.
Douglas woman Erica Sheehan might have flown the nest to make a home in Dublin, but her roots remain strong, and that’s reflected in the fact that a large portion of her customer base is from her home county. “I think Cork people understand good food first and foremost,” the entrepreneur says.
In 2015, Sheehan made the leap to make her hobby a career, making quinoa-based granola from her kitchen and selling it at her local farmers' market. The business, named Homespun because it quite literally “was spun out of our home,” was an instant success, with customers flocking back week on week to stock up on her blend of nuts, seeds and quinoa.
Sheehan, who has a background in journalism and PR, is passionate about food being both delicious and nutritious. She says that starting a food business with a stall at a farmers' market is a wonderful grounding in finding out what consumers want. “It validates your assumptions about your brand. I could test and see what flavour combinations were the most popular, what people liked and didn’t like."
Donal Skehan’s father gave Sheehan a pivotal piece of business advice when he visited her stall. “He said don't base all your assumptions on the farmers' market because they said you're preaching to the converted when you're selling at a farmers market. There are people who've got the disposable income to spend on niche foods. He said when you extrapolate that out to a larger environment, those assumptions won’t hold.” With listings in Tesco, Supervalu, Avoca and high-end London-based retailers like Harrods and Selfridges, Homespun’s Quinoa Crunch began to take a foothold in the market.
“For those first few years I had two flavours of granola – there wasn’t a huge amount of innovation. I was trying to get my head around the industry and learn as much as I could. Since Covid hit, there has been more innovation and growth in my business because demand has grown, and that has been wonderful.” With a desire to grow her brand, Sheehan began to explore new product lines to add to Quinoa Crunch, and that’s when she came across her latest addition: chicory syrup.
“Chicory root syrup is a vegan and low sugar alternative to honey,” she explains. “It has a delicate sweet taste that appeals to a person who likes gentle as opposed to intense sweetness. You can enjoy it much as you would honey - drizzled on porridge and pancakes, in drinks, dressings, cooking, home baking.” When Sheehan began to research chicory syrup and the nutritional benefits of the plant, she found that it was lower in sugar than other syrups. “It contains no added sugar and has very low levels of naturally occurring sugars only. It has just 14g of naturally occurring sugars per 100g. Honey, maple and agave range from 65-80g per 100g. According to the European Food Safety Authority, it is absolutely suited to diabetics and indeed anyone seeking to minimise their sugar consumption.”
The dawning for her, she says, was when she found herself at the bottom of her own sample pot, bereft at the idea of not being able to buy more in a convenient manner. With a taste test among her retail stockists proving a hit, Sheehan set the wheels in motion to add another product to her line, importing the syrup from the Netherlands and bottling it at G’s Jam factory in Laois.
She knows it’s not an immediate sell. “My friend Sarah [Kiely] who owns Sadie’s Bone Broth said to me that when you have an unusual product, you have to keep talking about it. You might think that you’re boring people to death with your story, but actually, you’re educating them about something that’s brand new to them.”
Citing educating customers about her product range as her ‘life’s work’, chicory syrup is an exciting addition to the Homespun brand but it is by no means the last one for this dynamo. “Ireland is the best place to get something off the ground because if people like you and your brand, they will go out of their way to help you, and I feel very fortunate to be expanding my brand in this environment.”
