Hunger for new restaurants in Carrigaline and Midleton continues

The Irish economy’s pick-up continues to feed, and be fed by, new restaurant openings in Carrigaline and Midleton, with established operators to the fore.

Asian street food firm, Ramen, opens its fourth outlet today, in Midleton’s Distillery Lane scheme (pictured), in the vacated Mocha cafe unit, paying €25,000 per annum on a ten-year lease. The new outlet (following on Anglesea Street, Ballincollig and Dennehys Cross) will employ 27, bringing the Ramen Group, headed up by Dave Dwyer and John Downey, to 140 employees, and franchises and further sites are now being sought, says Mr Dwyer.

Meanwhile, following on the arrival of The Fig and Olive cafe in Cork’s Carrigaline, a variety of retail units at Carrigaline Shopping Centre are being marketed by Seamus Costello, of DTZ Sherry FitzGerald, from €10,000 per annum, and ranging from 200 sq ft to 1,000 sq ft.

Fig and Olive was opened in Clonakilty, in 2011, by Orla O’Donovan and her mother, Mary Rose O’Donovan; Mary Rose was the doyenne of coffee shops in previous decades, with no less than ten cafes and bakeries under her name, in five cities in Ireland and the UK.

Now, with opening in the Collins family’s Carrigaline Shopping Centre, which has 14 units plus SuperValu, a new entrepreneurial O’Donovan generation is on the expansion trail once more. Other traders at the centre include the Post Office, Walsh’s Pharmacy, Hallmark, Homefront, Chocolate Hair Group, and Moore’s Jewellers & Newsagents.

* Details: DTZ Sherry FitzGerald 021-4275454