In March 2020, in the early days of the COVD-19 pandemic, when all the hotels and restaurants were closed and people only went to the shops when they absolutely had to,  Food & Drinks Producers really suffered. Suddenly, overnight, most of their routes to market were gone. Some producers were very reliant (up to 70% in many cases) on the hospitality sector for sales.

In trying to come up with some way to help them, I set up the Food & Drink Producers’ On-line Directory which lists those producers with an online shop who delivered direct to consumers. You might remember that online shopping sales went through the roof back then, but most food and drinks producers just weren’t ready for it. Luckily, the Local Enterprise Offices in Ireland decided to offer 90% funding (up from the usual 50%) for businesses who set up an e-commerce site.

This was really encouraging, and having started with only 40 producers that I could find with proper e-commerce sites, over the course of 2 years this increase to over 280 producers around the country who were selling online through e-commerce sites and delivering locally, regionally or even further afield.

I decided to put my money where my mouth was and every couple of weeks I ordered foods from a different producer, making sure to cover the 32 counties or Ireland (you can check out past social posts to see what I bought!)

Time has moved on again. Things have settled back to a relative normal, and online selling while still a good route to market for producers, isn’t as critical now s it was then. So, I’ve decided to close the service.  We’re not currently taking any new entrants and won’t be updating the Directory any more. It was great while it lasted.

August 15th 2024