A Labels Queen ? Moi ?..,

Hello again,

I've had some tips on blogging from some true pros (cheers Grace & Shane @THEATREclub), & they've suggested I shorten my musings ...I'll do my best...but no promises..

Today I'm going to tell you about me & my relationship with labelling...anybody who knows me well, will tell you that this girl spends too much time on labels...In as much as it is an irony of my life that I am a food producer, it is an even greater one that I have spent so much of my life in Reads of Nassau Street. I'm sure it is no coincidence that my favourite pub in Dublin is The Bailey on Duke Street, just a stroll away from Reads, where I have spent many hours waiting to pick up yet another batch of labels, meeting friends having just picked up labels....labels....labels.....labels..

Labelling is a legal requirement on all foodstuffs, not produced on the premises. Most labelling is applied by machine, but no so in The Delicious Food Company, here, unlike our food which is "made with love & packaged with humour", this does not extend to the physical act of printing or applying labels....no love...no humour...

Last December we took delivery of a new labelling printing machine & 20,000 beautifully designed labels...In the last three months I have printed every single one of of those labels, inserted the best by date, typed in a daily musing....printed them off in my office..& rolled them up ready for application to our produce in the kitchen...hours & hours of labelling...

If there was a pie chart of my life there would definitely be a portion allocated to time I spend labelling... printing labels, sticking on labels, collecting labels from printers, but things are about to change...I'm moving office & leaving my labelling days behind.The labelling machine is not coming with me...we're over.

I've just taken delivery of another 20,000 labels but they are in the kitchen where the machine is headed. This morning I printed over 600 labels, hopefully it is the last Sunday morning I'll have to do that...

Now...what will I do to find the void.....

Shirley x

PS: The Delicious Food Co,salads & sandwiches are stocked in
All Fresh Supermarkets, Mortons Hatch St, Lighthouse Cinema, Spar Merrion Row/Mount St/Dame St/Barrow St/Tara St/Kilmainham/Cracked Nut/Georges St/Green Door Bakery/ Citibank/Ubode/ESBI

Delicious meets Gok Wan....The Make Over

Hello there,

So, you think this is easy, do you ? You just tap on the link & up I pop, me in all my naked (OK exposed) glory...all those emotions...those highs & lows.... fears & jubilation...the agony & the ecstasy of my life as a food producer.

Well let me tell you ..it's not.

I thought starting my blog would be hard, getting it going, finding my voice, that would be the hard thing, but now that I think  I've done that & I like where this is going  the challenge is to keep you interested, amused & informed.. I also  want you to know that whilst the going is tough I'm doing okay.

So take a seat beside me, in my little van & let me share with you my latest musings.

I don't think I've told you my story about how I got here with The Delicious Food Co. We have a been around for about seven years now  and in that time have  been a supplier of premium sandwiches & salads to the in house cafes of many of Dublin's most salubrious joints; Google, RTE, Deloitte, PWC, Ernst & Young, Citibank, AVOCA to name but a few, hundreds & thousands of items to discerning customers.Yet for some reason, I never really felt accepted.The Cafe Sols, The Artizans....they were grabbing all the limelight, whilst there we were with our gorgeous genuine artisan breads, our mini salad pots, our 1,000 items into Google every week, a client list others would kill for...so why did it feel that nobody noticed us.

One evening at a networking event I met a man who introduced me to a concept that incredibly I hadn't really considered before...That chance meeting with the man I now refer to as Gok Wan, changed everything...you see he had heard of us...he was sure he had tasted us....but he couldn't see us,  we had been so busy working, producing & delivering our produce we neglected the most important thing..ourselves  Gok Wan introduced me to the concept known as BRANDING..

It was such a Eureka moment... I knew we were good at what we did, were busy, even after the recession kicked in,  we operated so far  under the radar we had no recognisable identity. Gok Wan gently pointed out that what I needed was ...a MAKEOVER.


Meetings were arranged, design agency appointed...the makeover  commenced.There was a snag....the agency just didn't get me...they were making me look like something from "Tesco's finest"
all twinset & pearls, a poshness  that just wasn't me...They kept telling me that they knew about branding & I kept telling than the brand was mine...so like all relationships that are going nowhere fast..we parted...This makeover was going to be tougher than I thought

Then like manna from heaven, God gave me another chance...when I met Orla Brosnan in car park (don't ask...) of  the Hilton Hotel in Kilmainham

My God ...is Orla Brosnan of BCreative talented or what..she totally got me....she knew that this girl wouldn't be seen dead in a twinset...this girl is more of a hippy chick ...together we have made The Delicious Food Co into a brand, a tiny minuscule brand at this stage ....but it's there...our delicious food, made with love packaged with humour. People say I'm a peoples person My best friend once said to me when I was chatting to somebody, that if I could take the elements of my personality & package it & sell it I could make a fortune. I just never thought it would happen.

And now it has....Shirley...food producer...available in a salad pot near you.



Who'd have thought it.....


Shirley x

Moving on up...Nothing can stop me

Okay....


It's a week since I first posted my blog on Twitter & FB & got  a really positive feedback.Yesterday I tried to write a new blog but I just couldn't get it right. I kept letting elements of my inner demons rise to the fore & you & me aren't close enough for that...not yet.....

A friend who read the blog thought it was great..."very Sex in The City"..he said....My oh my...me & my stilettos  tottering into shop after shop with my box of produce...if only it were so.

Hello there,

This week the weather has been playing games with my head...Monday as always we produced  full orders for everybody, later as the weather got worse we decided to be cautious, pull back, reduce production, who'd buy a salad in that weather we thought...but oh no....as I made my deliveries on Tuesday morning, it was only the reliable lot who had sold poorly, whilst the others were cleared out.

My friends in Barrow St, must have read my blog (I said they were an erratic bunch) and are now on a mission to show me their love & support.....that they too, like the Merrion Row, Morton's & Fresh crowd can be consistent loyal customers.Our gorgeous sandwiches made with such love, using bread from The Bretzel Bakery & Aruna (a Bridgestone Award winner, if you don't mind) have been selling really well. Check them out in in all the Fresh Supermarkets & Morton's, Lighthouse Cinema, Spar Dame St..... And just in case any of you out there ever think about eating a "garage/wedge" sandwich, check out the ingredients in the bread first.....just sayin.....

One of the hard things about being self employed is getting the energy to keep going when really you just want to stay in your PJs all day, watch silly movies & munch on popcorn . When it's good it's exhilarating...but when it's rough it saps your energy in a way that  running a marathon couldn't do.
March has been one of those months... But often it's just a simple thing that gets you back on track...cos lousy & all as the next Croke Park agreement may seem to the gainfully employed...for us entrepreneurs there ain't no choice but to get back on the horse & keep going.

Yesterday myself & Mr Delicious met up with the lovely Johan van der Merwe (see last weeks blog) & his Thesaurus book of flavours in a city pub.I was worried that my products wouldn't be exciting enough for him...Salad & Sandwiches, they're not exactly sexy are they...? However last night as the three of us huddled together & with an A4 pad  I could feel the energy & excitement fill me as idea after idea flowed from Johan & Mr Delicious. Johan as former head chef of Cafe Paradiso has a passion & knowledge about food that's intoxicating. My business has always been about producing great tasty simple food,
we are now about to up our game...over the next month we will be tweaking the current product range & introducing fantastic new salads & flavours, ingredients I can't even pronounce, never mind spell, a pinch of this & smattering of that. Johan with his vast experience will be teaching us things about food that no amount of cookery books could teach us. Himself & Mr Delicious are starting in the kitchen next week, cooking, experimenting...coming up with new ideas. I'll be behind them every step of the way, cracking my whip, setting time targets, seizing the day.

I'm back on that horse and I've started jumping the hurdles....the finishing line is sight..and it's bright...

Happy Easter.
Shirley x

Fifty Shades of Delicious

Here's the thing..

I've been tinkering away with this blog for a few weeks now & last night with a little help from my friends I managed to link it to Facebook & Twitter & if the stats are to be believed its already been read by over 100 people.....now that to me seems like a lot of hits, but maybe it's nothing. It's just that I have such a tiny social media presence...I'm surprised.

I thought it best to write something today to keep the momentum going....after all, didn't EL James start her blog last April, so that gives me a ten day start on her. Maybe the appetite for erotic fiction that was so fierce last year, has been exchanged for a different kind of fiction. Maybe my account of my beating heart,  the agony, the ecstasy, the drama of my life as I race  around this city replenishing shelves with The Delicious Food Co salads & sandwiches, with more passion & love than Anastasia  could ever possess, will strike a chord...

Forget Anastasia, this is my time...today I am the heroine.


Shirley x

You just never know who....

Hello again,

Wow, sometimes it's hard to just keep going.

 Lovely Paddy's weekend, but the weather is not my friend, so this morning it was with a heavy heart that I set out on this road of self employment.
Every morning I drive to the kitchen, where I transfer, me, my thoughts, my energy, into the drivers seat of my little van which has been packed by Mr Delicious,with our delicious salads & sandwiches, ready for delivery whilst he & the team get on with phase two of the mornings work (more beautiful sandwiches made on gorgeous bread from The Bretzel & Aruna Bakeries ).

I wrote last time of my emotional journey around the streets of Dublin delivering my wares... the ecstacy of an empty shelf & the agony of unsold product, but this morning it was pure ecstacy as shop after shop revealed clean sweeps of sales. Forget that it was Paddy's weekend...., retail.... as George Michael would sing about guilty feet.... "has got no rythm" (stay with me...you'll get use to my ramblings). It lightened my heart, as I trudged through the Spring snow, with my box of salads & sandwiches knowing that out there in this city are over 2,000 people who have eaten our food in the last week.

Not only did we produce all those delicious salads & sandwiches, but we also catered for events at The Dept of Justice, The Irish Stock Exchange & a Gala fundraiser at Project Arts Centre, to name but a few.You see The Delicious Food Co....not just a great name...

I love parties, some would say I'm the ultimate party girl, I think it's  'cos I love people & their stories and at a recent party, the lovely hostess Lorraine with great genorosity introduced me to her friend, Johan, saying we'd get on. ....if he were my friend, I'd keep him to myself, I wouldn't share. And yes we did get on, Johan van der Merwe was fab....You see, Johan is a food purist, a food stylist, former head chef of Cafe Paradiso in Cork. His passion & interest in food & food styling were a joy & infectious. I've admitted before that I can't cook, that's Mr Delicious forte, but I am  passionate about food, about my company & about how food looks. We agreed to hook up again, so today myself & Mr Delicious, met Johan in our kitchen in Smithfield and shot breeze about new ideas and where to next for The Delicious Food Co.

So watch this space, next week Mr Delicious & Johan are going to start cooking up some new salad ideas,I can taste the flavours already, I can see the colours ..Johan has told us to be careful with our leaves...they bruise easily.....it's a pet hate of his... bruised leaves...don't you just love that kind of passion......So in the next few weeks The Delicous Food Co. & Johan will work together to create some fab new tastes which you will cross the city to buy....I swear.


...xShirley

My Emotional Rollercoaster...Deliveries

Hello again,

I mentioned before that The Delicious Food Co make mini salad pots/salad bowls & preservative free & spelt sandwiches for the retail trade...We do lots of other stuff, but one thing at a time...as I said before I hope  we are going to be friends dear reader, and I'd like you to get to know me slowly..one product range & skill at a time.

I know it's only Tuesday but its been a tough week so far. Last week was slow for sales in the shops and Monday was a disaster for returns, shop after shop giving me baskets of unsold product. That happens sometimes, no logical explanation other than it was exceptionally cold.

 The trouble is that it's MY brand that hasn't sold. It feels personal, all those deep rooted rejection issues, crawling to the surface.....was it the "Herbed Chickpea Salad" they rejected...or was it ME....my gorgeous funny brand of lovely produce made with such care & love.

I gotta get a handle on this....

The day of a food producer starts with deliveries. I start my day in SPAR Merrion Row, it's a lovely posh SPAR, black shiny marble floor, gold logo...ambitious owner...busy, busy, busy. I have a great position there two shelves in the front fridge, always sell well there. Next it's off to Mount St (another shiny SPAR) where we sell well. It's as I head off to Barrow St, that the nerves start to kick in...as I unload the van with my box of salads & head for the store, my heart starts pumping...boom, boom, boom faster, faster...I enter, take a deep breathe & confront my fear....yes, yes, yes...my shelf is empty, I've sold well. This is one of those stores that performs erratically. They are an all or nothing crowd in Barrow St...I blame Google all that free food.

And so it continues Fresh Grand Canal, unload van, head for the store....deep breaths...remember that stuff I read about mindfulness, live in the moment....enter the store...be confident, smile at everyone...this one's not so easy, cos I gotta get past the coffee dock, head high & prepare myself....and there I am, The Delicious Food Co, proud as punch, almost sold out...my shelves waiting to be replenished ...which I do..with all the love of a mother, in the front row of a toddler & tiara competition watching her offspring moulded by her, crowned ....queen of the shelves..

I deliver to 15 shops every day (& growing)...so my emotional roller coaster needs managing.
Mindfulness that's what I'll do...live in the moment...accept rejection if & when it happens...lift one of those unsold salad pots, feel it, absorb the sounds of the store, breathe in, breathe out, slowly, live in that moment of rejection & replenish with new stock,then... hop in my van & leg it to my next store which will be better.

Shirley x

The Drama of it all...life in the food lane..

Hi there,

I hope that you read my first blog & that it encouraged you to read this one. If so, thank you & if not welcome to my world, I hope you enjoy.


I always knew getting the blog started would be hard.
Finding my voice, a tone, for the content....

 I suppose like Twitter it's  just a matter of rolling up, sticking with it until it happens...just to be able  post a tweet without cringing....

Twitter is fun, it's like trying to get attention in a room of beautiful people....and then it happens..someone cool with 9k follows retweets you.....OMG the adrenaline rush of thinking WOW they liked my 140 characters...I'm special....Although there is a mixed emotional reaction when I discovered that the Tweeter who has just retweeted my words of humour to its 15k followers was in fact a waste disposal company based in Holland...
Oh the agony & esctasy of a twitter retweet.

I'll be back later....less is more they say....

xShirley