NINE YEARS AGO, I came to Ireland for a bit of career change to study tourism and hospitality management.
I used to live in Mauritius, where I was a member of the criminal investigations division of the police force and worked as a detective doing undercover work. After spending nine years there, I felt like trying something new.
When I finished my course, I ended up working as an educational support worker. I have done a lot of disability awareness courses, which helped me get a job that mainly involved helping deaf students in colleges. It was very rewarding work – it was just nice to be helping these students get through school.
I have been doing that job since 2008, but for the past three years I have also been running my Mauritian spices business called Spice Devils on the side.
Since I’m not working all the time, it hasn’t been too hard to keep Spice Devils going in the background. I am working to a student’s timetable, so sometimes I have days off when I can manage it all. But now the business is starting to take off, I’m planning on leaving the teaching support role next year.
Spice business
From an early age, I got used to handling spices because I grew up in a family where biryani making was always a side business.
The idea to start my own venture goes back to 2013, when I was having a chat with my wife in the kitchen while preparing a mix for dinner – and I realised we don’t have any Mauritian-style mixes available in the supermarkets.
I decided, ‘why not try and solve the problem myself by launching a spices business as a side venture here in Ireland?’ However, instead of cooking and selling biryani like my family traditionally did, I wanted to do something else that involved making a business out of providing the ingredients.
So I started to try the idea at a local level and began by producing small batches in the home kitchen, selling my spice blends at market stalls during the weekend.
I’m the fourth generation of my family to get into the spice business, following in the footsteps of my dad’s and grandad’s businesses, which would provide up to 1,000 portions of biryani for certain functions or occasions.
Getting on the shelves
When I started in 2013, it was really hard to kick-start the business. As I said, I started out by going to farmers markets, which was a great way to get ideas about how to develop the business from there.
Attending lots of different markets has been the backbone of my product and market research. It has helped me to tweak the product to suit the local taste and eventually settle on what the product is today. You are meeting customers face-to-face and your repeat buyers will tell you what they like and don’t like.
Even though I was having some success at the farmers’ market level, I knew I wanted to make the next step to get the product into retail stores and supermarkets.
That was a big barrier to get through, but then I came across something online called the Food Academy, which is sponsored by Bord Bia and run by food wholesalers Musgraves, that helps to nurture food startups.
It basically gave me a crash course in how things are done and how a small food company like my own can get its products on the shelves of retailers.
Through that course, I managed to get my spices into 18 Supervalu stores and it gave me the platform to go to Microfinance Ireland and my Local Enterprise Office to get funding to try and expand the business even further.
Making the jump from farmers market to being on the shelves in the likes of Supervalu is a big step for any food startup, which is why you need funding to invest in things like equipment.
It involves you ramping up production and from the very start it is so important to show you will be able to fulfill orders and keep up with demand.
Exporting abroad
It was quite overwhelming for me. All of a sudden, the food business I was running on the side got quite big, and it is nearly at the stage where it needs my full attention.
Currently, I am supplying 31 SuperValu Stores through their Food Academy programme and this year alone we have also won five awards, which has led to even more interest from suppliers and retailers who want to stock my products.
I did worry for a while and questioned whether the business would work since all my products are very new. Sales can be very slow at the beginning for any food startup, however once you weather those early days of slow sales and get over that hump everything starts to normalise and you get some repeat customers.
Right now, I have four dry-spice blends, but to make sure the business keeps moving forward we also have to make sure we are always thinking about what new products people will want. At the moment we have four more products under development, two of which will hit the shelves in Ireland by the end of the year.
The spice market in Ireland is quite small compared to other places, so to grow sustainably as a business we also need to look to export products.
We’re in a good position to export since I already have orders from retailers in the Middle East through a company in Ireland that got in touch with me after they saw my company had won a few awards.
Being an Irish company helps a lot when you’re trying to export into other foreign markets around the world. The food connections this country has are truly second to none.
Food is one of the main industries for this country and that is recognised all over the world – people know that quality products come from Ireland. When I was growing up in Mauritius we used to buy Kerrygold. I’ve known that brand since I was a baby, so you can see that food products from here have an assured stamp of approval.
As I try to grow my business into new markets and export at a large scale, I want my products to have that same assured quality people associate with food produced in Ireland.
Shakeel Jeeroburkan is the founder of Spice Devils. This article was written in conversation with Killian Woods and posted on Fora.ie as part of a series on unlikely entrepreneurs.
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