It’s been a fascinating road. Our idea for a kombucha drink has been knocking around a long time but like a lot of things, it happens when it’s meant to and not exactly when you want it. This part of our journey started in earnest about six months ago when we signed up to the Food Academy programme in Supervalu, maybe not knowing exactly we were letting ourselves in for.
The Food Academy programme is run in conjunction with the local enterprise office (In our case, South Cork LEO – you really gotta get in touch with these guys if you are starting out!) and allows small startups a space in Supervalu stores in which to market their products. Hurray!
After a crash course in everything business related, the end result is a space on the shelves of Supervalu. It means you don’t have to have the capacity to supply a gazillion stores and really, we guess Supervalu have a lot better things to be doing than juggling a thousand small producers each with their own Big Plan.
But the big thing with Supervalu Food Acadamy is it gives people the chance to try out local products that might never make it to the shelves of supermarkets. Often these products are made within a few miles of the store and most probably within the county. It’s like a microcosm in a supermarket of what local produce would look like.
So here we are, a few days out from launch and still second guessing labels and bottles. It never really goes away, there is always something better that can be done, some little thing that goes on a mental roll call to change next time out.
But for now, the labels are rolling out from the printers (we hope), the bottles are on the way and it’s pretty much down to getting our kombucha onto the shelves asap. Look out for us in-store over the coming weeks – we’ve put together a schedule of free sampling in various Supervalu shops. Anything to get out of the office 🙂