Something's Cooking In The Kitchen

Ireland is rightly known for its superb artisan food products but for many budding entrepreneurs wanting to set up a small food business & develop a new product or range, kitting out a commercial kitchen is simply too big an outlay.

Kicking the mammy out of her kitchen and taking over the family cooker and worktops while the poor children starve is apparently not an option either! So what's a budding food business owner to do?

Ready Steady Cook

Our Kickstart Your Business feature Kitchen Incubators Kerry set up to give food producers somewhere to develop new food products. When Eileen and Ray McClure decided to kickstart their own food business, they were unable to rent a commercial kitchen. They knew from their previous life in Chicago that an incubation kitchen for hire would solve their difficulty, and decided to bridge that gap in the market first.

Kitchen Incubators Kerry gives food businesses the opportunity to rent a commercial kitchen for a few hours, for a day or even seven days a week. This allows the budding entrepreneur flexibility as their business grows and the mammy can breathe a sigh of relief that her kitchen is safe once more.

Hot From The Oven

Whilst Gerard and George admired Eileen's can-do attitude in bridging that gap, they suggested that she is undervaluing her offer, and missing out on the premium available to her for the added value she brings to the incubator kitchen: the knowledge and experience she has gained in getting a new food business researched, developed and to market. In other words, she's charging too little!

Over To You

What other ingredients can Eileen introduce into the mix to help her grow her business and grow the value in her offering? Listen back to the show on Kickstart Your Business and let us know what you think.

We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast live on The Right Hook on Newstalk106 in Ireland every Thursday at 6.20pm and is available on Playback immediately afterwards.

Attention-Grabbing Study Aid (You've Got Text)

It's always been hard to encourage our teenage children to study for exams, but since the advent of the mobile phone and its attraction as an always-on and always-demanding diversion, that challenge just got harder.

How can you expect your child to open a book and study when there's texts to read and answer? What sort of a heartless parent are you?

If You Can't Beat Them.....

Our Kickstart Your Business feature SMStutor (a text-based service created by Frank McNamara) is a classic case of 'If you can't beat them, join them' problem-solving. Frank, a well known pianist and composer, is also the father of two teenage children and it was in that role he discovered his budding entrepreneurial skills.

Seeing how difficult it was to get the two Leaving Cert students to open a book because they seemed more fixated on their phones, he developed SMS Tutor, a learning system delivered by text to mobile phones.

Meet The Parents

Whilst Gerard admired the way in which Frank had neatly handled the challenge of serving two customers (student and parent) in one neat solution, he suggested that his promotional material might better demonstrate his understanding of the particular challenges faced by a parent worried about their child's study habits.

In the mid-term, this simple addition might ensure that SMSTutor establishes a strong position in the market and a loyal following, and doesn't lose out to others who might easily mimic Frank's innovation.

Over To You

What other ways can Frank embed his new service as an essential study-aid? Listen back to the show on Kickstart Your Business and let us know what you think.

We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast live on The Right Hook on Newstalk106 in Ireland every Thursday at 6.20pm and is available on Playback immediately afterwards.

Oh, The Sweet Smell Of Success

In our fast paced, 'get in and and out of that shower quickly' modern rush, there is something deliciously indulgent about soap. Even the name 'soap', along with its implied old fashioned qualities, invites us to slow down, suds up, and take the time to enjoy one of life's simple pleasures.

Let Them Make Soap

Our featured company on Kickstart Your Business is ready and waiting to slow us down and soap us up! Mianra, a business founded by Hajni Kele, a woman fuelled by a love of craft, perfumery and a good dose of curiosity, decided after being made redundant in 2013, to create natural, handmade soaps and bath delectables.

Based in Cork, the business makes soaps full of skin-loving luxurious ingredients likely to tap into the growing trend for feel-good products that do good too.

A Little More Soft Soap, Please!

There is much to admire in how Hajni has gone about pitching her wares, not least the stunning photographs on her website which truly evoke a world of bathing luxury.

Whilst Hajni has some great ingredients for her brand story, Gerard suggested that she needs to work up a narrative lather all of her own  in order to create a compelling and enduring brand that will make her the natural choice of customers in gift shops across Ireland and further afield. These ingredients include the name she has selected for her range (Mianra means Mineral in Irish), her own Hungarian origins, her new home in Cork, and her own enduring fascination with all things soap.

Over To You

What other ways can Hajni help customers to get into a lather? Listen back on Kickstart Your Business (Mianra Soaps) and let us know what you think. 

We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast live on The Right Hook on Newstalk106 in Ireland every Thursday at 6.20pm and is available on Playback.

Never Mind The Plastics, It's The Puncbottles!

We've all gone a bit mad on the fitness and health front lately. Kickstarting the day with a glass of delicious juice straight from the masticating juicer, and then filled with nutritional virtue, we head out on bikes or foot to take over the world, one healthy step at a time.

We may even take an extra bottle of juice with us, ready for the mid-morning slump. But what type of bottle to bring that will keep the juice fresh and uncontaminated? Trying to answer the question may well put a dent in your healthy buzz.

Here's Looking At You, Punc!

Don't panic! This week's Kickstart Your Business feature was PuncBottles, a company set to solve precisely this dilemma. Founded by Trish Mulvaney, who, with a long personal and professional interest in health (she sources and sells juicers and water filters), decided to create a drinking bottle that is non-plastic, reusable and good for the pocket and the environment. Now the healthy buzz never needs to end!

Punc Rocks!

Both George and Gerard appreciated the immediate visual appeal of Puncbottles (so important when you're introducing a new product to a mass market), whilst Gerard suggested that Trish also needs to make more of the distinctive name she's chosen for these bottles with attitude, by creating her own verbal currency (e.g. Do you feel healthy, Punc? Well, do you?). In this way, she helps the all-important word-of-mouth take on a life all of its own.

Over To You

What other ways can Trish make sure her website packs a punc? Listen back to the show on Kickstart Your Business and let us know what you think.

We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast live on The Right Hook on Newstalk106 in Ireland every Thursday at 6.20pm and is available on Playback immediately afterwards.

Movie-Making Never Was This PC (or Android!)

Long gone are the days when only the professional video maker could make a video. From home movies to sales videos, ordinary people are taking their creativity and cameras in their own hands and making great videos.

Up to now the technology to edit home videos has only been only available to Apple product users, denying PC or Android product users their chance to unleash their creativity on the world. All they axe for is a bite of the apple!

Creativity Unleashed

Well, thanks to TrakAx, this week's feature on Kickstart Your Business, PC and Android users no longer have an axe to grind! Business owner Caitriona Barry has created a toolkit that enables novices to shoot great videos regardless of their choice of device.

Whether the customer wants to capture the moment for a home movie or an impressive sales video, TrakAx will transform the raw content into the final product, ready to amaze the world.

Video Woos The Radio-Star

As an inveterate maker of videos, since his pioneering days splicing rugby footage in the earliest days of the medium, George was quickly won over to the benefits of using TrakAx. Gerard observed that for others who might be newer to the whole business of cutting and pasting, selecting soundtracks, title credits and the rest, the beauty of TrakAx is that it's been built using tools that are familiar to users of the latest smartphone technologies (which we know from even toddlers take to with gusto). So making movies with TrakAx really is child's play!

Over To You

What other ways can Caitriona win over new customers to TrakAx? Listen back to the show on Kickstart Your Business and let us know what you think. 

We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast live on The Right Hook on Newstalk106 in Ireland every Thursday at 6.40pm and is available on Playback.