Dragons fail to bite after chef serves up website
But he and his business partner, Sean Fee, still believe the food social networking website they run with fellow chef Pieter Plaetinck has all the ingredients for success.
“We want to help change the way people cook and inspire those who have never cooked by being their personal 24/7 online chef,” says Harbison.
“Our recipes are so easily created that you can’t fail to impress.”
The pair braved the BBC’s Dragon’s Den on Monday night, to seek a £100,000 (€125,295) investment for a 10% stake in their company.
Harbison, formerly of Peacock Alley, and chief executive Fee, formerly of Davy Corporate Finance, had just three minutes to pitch for investment from the Dragons on the BBC 2 TV programme.
The Dragons are a team of hard-nosed multi-millionaires who decide whether to invest in companies presented on the programme or send the would-be entrepreneurs packing.
Although impressed by the presentation and the website, www.ifoods.tv, the Dragons baulked at parting with their money when they learned there existed a similar website with an almost identical name, www.ifood.tv.
But what the Dragons did not know is that there is a third website called www.ifood.com which also publishes recipes and cooking tips online.
Despite the inevitable commercial fallout from this, Harbison and his partners have decided to press ahead with their website and believe their track record will see them through.
Harbison, 27, started his career as a chef in Peacock Alley under the guidance of the Michelin-starred Conrad Gallagher, later becoming the youngest head chef in Ireland when he took the reins at Lloyd’s Brasserie in 2001, aged just 20.
There he cooked for Victoria Beckham and Robbie Williams, and since then has catered for the rich and famous as a private chef on super yachts and in their mansions. Among his clients are U2, Lance Armstrong and Mariah Carey. He even cooked for the 50th birthday celebrations of Microsoft owner Bill Gates.
Based at the Digital Hub in Dublin, ifoods.tv was founded in October 2007 by Harbison and Plaetinck because they felt a step-by-step approach might help people discover the art of cooking.
“It was my idea,” says Harbison. “We get about 100,000 hits a month on the website, it’s 100% free for users and the revenue is based on advertising.”
Plaetinck spent three months developing the ifoods recipes “making sure everything is measured to perfection”.
Yet foodies would be forgiven for being confused by some of the contents of the website.
A recipe for Irish stew describes the main ingredient as beef, although the directions and accompanying video use lamb. A recipe for the Asian dish Pad Thai, warns it is “very unhealthy” and gives the main ingredient as tiger prawns although the directions and video use shrimp.
It also excludes tamarind which many chefs consider to be a vital ingredient in Thailand’s famous dish.
Presumably, Pad Thai was not on the menu for Bill Gates’s birthday bash. According to the website, it takes 15 hours to cook and that might have been a recipe for disaster.
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