The next generation: Young food innovators of Ireland

Innovation and creativity are the life force behind every successful business, and nowhere is this more evident than in food and drink production. Dee Laffan speaks with five young entrepreneurs to see what makes their business tick

Fri, 31 Oct, 2025 - 12:00

Dee Laffan

In Ireland, young entrepreneurs bring excitement to an industry steeped in tradition.

The energy they inject is helping local food and drink businesses compete on the national and international stage, crafting unique products that resonate with today’s consumers and keeping supermarket shelves and kitchen tables filled with vibrancy and flavour. They are quick to embrace new culinary techniques, sustainability practices, digital tools, and build communities around their brands.

Blas na hÉireann recognises this talent annually at its awards, where several young producers have been honoured over the years. Their stories inspire future producers, making Ireland a hotspot for food creativity and quality.

Below, meet five trailblazers who prove creativity and innovation are at the heart of the future of Irish food and drink.

Zsofia Turmezei,

Sophie’s Taste Creations,

Tramore, Waterford

The journey of Zsofia Turmezei, aka Sophie, from mechanical engineer to acclaimed gluten-free baker is a compelling story. Starting in Hungary, she began gluten-free baking as one of her children had a serious gut disease and so needed to be free from gluten. She then decided to study pastry chef education and qualified there before moving to Ireland.

After settling in here, Sophie first baked at home and then started her full business set-up, which she found a lot simpler to do than it would have been in Hungary.

“It was quite an easy process,” says Turmezei. “The Irish rules are easier or more open-minded around starting a baking business; you can do it from your own kitchen initially.

“There, you would have to have separate premises for home baking; here, the rules are more open, and I was lucky Irish people were also open-minded about gluten-free cakes.” Sophie’s Taste Creations began taking orders for private occasions, delivering cakes to Ardkeen Quality Food Store, and some restaurants. And it was when she began working with Grow HQ that she began using low and zero-waste principles in her creations.

“My first creation was the ‘apple’, a sort of illusion cake using the whole fruit, from core to skin. I made jam from the core, dried the skin for glaze,” she explains.

She remembers beginning and juggling many roles alone. “I do almost everything myself, from baking to marketing, accounts, and social media, though my husband helps with the finances and web presence,” says Sophie.

Turmezei’s innovative approach has garnered Blas na hÉireann awards for her creations, including a gold in 2024 for her apricot cake and a silver for her zero-waste apple dessert.

She is now expanding into wafer paper flowers, “ethical and super realistic cake decorations that last for years... something unique in Ireland.”

SophiesTasteCreations

Matthew Collins,

Sibly Food Co.

Ballydesmond, Cork

Sibly Food Co. grew from humble beginnings in Collins’s parents’ kitchen to an award-winning healthy snack brand recognised nationwide. “Starting at 21, I never had a great master plan,” he confesses. “It was partly a side gig while I studied. It just evolved because I wanted to create really high-quality snacks without preservatives or additives. I want to feed as many people as possible with the best food.”

One of the standout challenges Collins describes is the generational divide in understanding his products. “Older people often don’t know what an energy ball is. At tastings, it’s a common question: ‘What are these?’ Younger customers just know.”

Success with retail partnerships, including Aldi and Applegreen, has propelled rapid growth in his business, but Collins stresses quality doesn’t change despite scaling production from 500 protein balls a week to 100,000.

“That was a huge challenge, but customers notice if you compromise. It’s the biggest thing for me and that I will testify for is that the quality has not changed in scaling up. If you ask customers who’ve eaten them on the first day and now, they’ll tell you.”

Throughout the first few years in business, Collins says the importance of networking and learning is something he valued highly.

“When starting early, you get tons of advice and help. I just kept asking questions non-stop. That’s one advantage of being young, people want to help you rather than see you as competition.” His advice to entrepreneurs is simple: “Don’t expect perfection from day one; strive to improve a little each day.”

thesibly.ie

Keith Loftus,

All About Kombucha

Claregalway, Galway

Keith Loftus and Emmett Kerrigan founded All About Kombucha in 2017, working initially from a makeshift brewery cobbled together with scavenged materials.

“We were around 22, 23, and nobody knew what kombucha was. People thought we were mad,” Loftus recalls. “We converted a shed that was more like a gym or laundry room into our microbrewery, using old election boards for walls. It wasn’t glamorous but it was ours.” Their dynamic partnership was key to sustaining morale when others doubted them.

“Even if one of us was at 50 per cent, together we were still 150 and that was so important having that level of camaraderie and friendship belief,” Keith explains. “We’d listen to podcasts, plan products 10 steps ahead even when we were nowhere near ready; it was our north star to make sure that we were always so amped up and so motivated.” In a bold move, they deleted Instagram from their phones to protect mental space and focused on the long haul.

“That is a pro and a con, but being one step removed from your ego is definitely healthy because competition, trends … all these things will play you. They live in your brain and they’ll take up a lot of healthy head space and it’ll rock you from the inside out,” says Loftus.

Taking part in Blas na hÉireann and being part of the community around the awards has meant a lot and he has high praise for Artie Clifford and Fallon Moore.

“They really get what the food industry needs. They champion it. They always give me honest advice and feedback is what we’re about, so it’s really great. They bring great people together and have great energy. It’s so worthwhile and they’re the centre of it.”

On what advice to give to new entrepreneurs: “Play for the long term and do something you love, because it will bring you down to your knees sometimes.”

Their sustainability-led business now thrives in a carbon-neutral brewery and has won top Blas na hÉireann awards, highlighting their global-standard Irish kombucha.

allaboutkombucha.ie

Niamh Dooley,

BiaSol

Offaly

BiaSol’s origins lie in lockdown, when siblings Niamh and Rory Dooley pivoted from uncertainty toward sustainability. “I just said, ‘Well, let’s try create healthier products and look at the sustainability angle as well.’ That’s really where it started,” says Niamh Dooley.

Niamh had studied food science and health and her brother’s background is in finance and accounting. “I was 27, very naive, but that was a blessing because we didn’t know what challenges we’d face bringing upcycled grain products that no one else in Ireland was doing,” says Dooley. “We started small, testing at farmers’ markets and gathering honest feedback.”

Starting young gave them risktaking freedom: “I had no mortgage, no kids, so I went all-in from day one.”

Their bold steps won recognition, boosting consumer trust. “Blas na hÉireann’s awards really validated us. It’s like a third-party endorsement saying, ‘This product is good.’

Today, the business employs 13 in a 9,000 sq ft facility, and exports to Dubai and Europe. Dooley encourages young food entrepreneurs to embrace imperfection early: “Don’t wait until it’s perfect. Get out there, gather feedback, iterate — and don’t be afraid to take risks.”

“I always say go to your local farmers’ markets and test it out and just get as much feedback from the public because if you’re asking your family and friends, they’re going to be a bit biased and tell you you’re great. And you should do that still, but to be honest, you really need to go out and get general feedback on taste, quality, and flavours. You could even be asking them what name you call it. It’s a very cost-effective way of getting consumer research done,” she says. “That will help you develop your packaging, your branding or what other flavours you should look at.”

biasol.ie

Cass McCarthy,

Lúnasa Farm

Clarecastle, Clare

Cass and Nick McCarthy chose to leave Australia and start Lúnasa Farm in Ireland with a clear vision of ethical, regenerative agriculture.

“We planned everything during lockdown, moved in 2021, and sold our first products by 2022,” Cass recalls. Nick, an engineer turned passionate butchery expert, and Cass, a qualified nutritionist, combine skills to run a pasture-raised beef and pork operation focused on heritage breeds.

Their farm shop, located in the heart of the town of Clarecastle in a 100-year-old butcher shop, fosters close community ties.

“Opening on Saturdays is about more than sales; it’s about chatting with customers, seeing friends, and building relationships. We have such a loyal community and customer base that come in every week and our children are in there with us. Our kids are growing up knowing everyone and being part of it.”

Balancing family and business has been intense for them and it is a constant balancing act. The years 2022 and 2023 are “a blur,” she says. “I ran a stall at a Christmas market six weeks after having our daughter, Isla. There’s a photo of the two of us and she’s strapped inside my jacket and we’ve set up and it was freezing cold and pitch black and we were just exhausted.”

Now, Nick works mostly butchering meat during the week in the shop and Cass is on the farm and with the children; it’s a joint effort and they manage it all together.

“We feel really fortunate that we get to spend so much time with our kids at this age as hard as it is,” says McCarthy. “I think one of our biggest priorities as parents … is sitting down for family mealtime. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s like the most important thing for us, sitting down as a family to have dinner. We do it every night. For young children, they learn and model your behaviour, it’s so important.”

Despite pressure, their commitment to farming the food they want to eat drives them. They focus on transparency, minimal processing, and organic standards. Looking forward, they’re hoping to hire a butcher and make some improvements on the shop.

“We’re going to be putting in a kitchen so that we’ll be able to start doing things like baking, making puddings and smoking hams and just offering some more of those cooked products to our customers.”

The McCarthys are part of a new wave of first-generation farmers that are more focused on regenerative farming, animal welfare and organic methods of producing the best quality meat products. They are innovators in one of the oldest food production traditions in Ireland, and at the heart of it, creating community and food education too. Lúnasa Farm pork and beef products are of the highest standard because of this and have garnered them recognition nationally.

“They’re whole food products, we use nothing but real ingredients, so they’re not full of fillers or additives or preservatives. It’s much more important that we offer these products because they’re better for our health, better for the health of the animal, and health of the land.”

lunasafarm.ie

Passionate innovators

These five voices show the passion, intelligence, and ingenuity fueling Ireland’s next generation of food producers. These innovators are crafting the products and practices that will define Irish food for decades to come.

Irish Food Awards