After a stint working in New York and Italy, Rachel and Brian Nolan returned to Ireland to set up Nobó, a high-quality plant-based food business that’s proving to be a hit with its loyal customers. Rachel tells Jordan Mooney about the inspiration behind the company and how they’re expanding the operation
In the end, returning from New York to Ireland was the catalyst for Rachel and Brian Nolan to found Nobó.
What started as an idea for preservative-free, fresh almond milk has grown into a business focusing on dairy-free ice cream and chocolate, nut spreads and a retail space in Ranelagh, Dublin, that Rachel says has become a real hub for the surrounding community.
“My background is communications and advertising. I have a masters from DCU, while Brian went to Smurfit College for finance, so we both worked in those areas in New York while we lived there for about three years.
“But our passion, our interest, has always been in food,” she tells BusinessPlus.ie.
“We went from New York to Italy to work on an organic farm for six months, which a lot of people thought was a bit mad after our time in the city’s corporate world, but we loved it.
“We returned to Dublin in December 2011 and knew then that we wanted to move into the food space.”
While the pair had plenty of ideas percolating at the time — from starting their own organic farm to importing high-quality products from overseas — they kept returning to their feeling that there was something missing from the Irish market.
It was something they had seen widely in New York but couldn’t find back home — interesting, well-made plant-based and dairy-free products.
After some research, the Nolans knew this was the area that they wanted to specialise in.
“It felt like stepping back a decade, to be honest, when we came back to Dublin and found that there were so few options here compared to what we’d seen in New York.
“At the time, there were a couple of places you could maybe get almond milk in your coffee, but everything was full of sugar and 25 other ingredients like thickeners and preservatives,” she explains.
“It never truly felt like these products were made to be a healthier alternative, so that was when we started to look at making our own range of fresh almond milks.
“Initially, this was the centre of their business idea — something more natural, with fewer ingredients.
“They decided to apply for Food Works, an accelerator programme for food and drink start-ups from Bord Bia, Teagasc and Enterprise Ireland, to develop their plan, before quickly discovering a major stumbling block: the product’s shelf life.
“The product had to be suitable for export, and we quickly realised that our fresh almond milk wouldn’t work. Instead of dropping everything, we decided to look at it differently and considered a frozen dessert product, dairy-free ice cream,” Rachel says of Nobó’s origins.
“I just wanted to make something that was made of real food; it made no sense to me that this could be such a radical idea.
“I was never really able to eat ice cream growing up as I’m lactose intolerant, and it never really agreed with Brian either, so ice cream was always something we just wanted to enjoy.
“We borrowed a friend’s ice cream machine and started to experiment with ingredients and freezing, and that’s how we created our first dairy-free ice cream.”
While it was a challenge to develop, the duo landed on a formula, eventually working with a manufacturer in Carlow to help produce it.
Innovative and unique, it contained no gums or stabilisers — a radical move for the industry at the time — and minimal ingredients centred on coconut and avocado.
Their first flavours included roasted Irish strawberries, Bramley apple crumble, fresh lemon, vanilla and chocolate with toasted almond.
Newer flavours, which were stocked in Lidl for a limited time, also include salted caramel.
Thanks to a shout-out from Instagram nutritionist Sophie Morris and public support, the ice creams were returned to Lidl for a restock earlier this year after quickly selling out and will be available in more than 200 stores nationwide from March.
After completing Food Works, the Nolans began to supply their ice cream to local independent stores, before being listed nationwide with SuperValu in 2014.
Rachel credits community support for the business’s early success, which came ahead of the explosion of plant-based products seen throughout Ireland in the latter half of the last decade.
“We got very busy very quickly as the business grew. Farmers markets became really important to us because we were able to build up a customer base and interact with the people eating our ice cream directly.
“People kept asking where they could buy the products and we were selling out really quickly, so we started selling in independent stores,” Nolan explains.
“In 2014, our fresh lemon ice cream won three gold stars at the Great Taste Awards, which was really exciting for us, and that’s how we started to work with SuperValu and other retailers.”
Not content to rest on their laurels, the Nolans then took part in SuperValu’s Food Academy programme to continue developing their ice cream before turning their attention to chocolate in 2016.
“Nobó, in our heads, was always more than just a lifestyle brand — we wanted it to be a lifestyle brand that’s about better options. It’s taken so long to bring to life, but we’re going in the right direction,” she says.
“Non-dairy milk chocolate has been our focus, made with a lower sugar content, as well as coconuts and cashews for creaminess.”
After about 18 months of development, Nobó’s chocolate range now includes flavours like Irish sea salt, roasted hazelnut, sweet orange, caramel crunch and its classic, smooth and creamy.
The company has also expanded into truffles, called nuffles, hot chocolate blends and chocolatecoated nuts.
Retail, however, was a massive goal for the couple, and in January 2022 they opened Nobó Treathouse in Ranelagh.
A café and shop, it’s become hugely popular in the area, with Nolan adding that they served almost 100,000 customers in 2024.
With a staff of 15, plus themselves, they also package their online orders from the space’s office, with bigger distribution orders managed in a warehouse.
Self-funded with help from grants, Nobó took on its first outside investment from BiaVest, the food-focused investment platform, in 2021.
This helped the Nolans further expand their range to include nut butters — which are now some of their most popular products — and their latest launch, Chewy Protein Bites, which were released last summer.
While determined to continue growing, Nobó is showing great signs of success — revenue was up by 46% in 2024 and marked the first year that the business was profitable, something Rachel notes is a “massive milestone”.
Year on year, sales in January 2025 increased by 70%, while online retail continues to thrive.
As for what’s next? Rachel has her eye on exporting to Canada, while continuing to grow within the Irish market.
“I really want to scale our retail and distribution in Ireland so that our products are on more shelves,” she explains.
“Community is huge for us, and I think it’s often underestimated, but we want to keep building the brand within our community and keep innovating.”
