Outdoor enthusiast Jennifer Hurley (pictured) couldn’t find food snacks to take on her hikes that are portable, taste nice and don’t weigh you down. So she set about devising freeze-dried meals in compostable packaging, so that walkers can just add water, eat their grub and move one.

Based in Cork, Wild Atlantic Gourmet will launch in the coming weeks, and the first products include a buffalo and beetroot chili mix, as well as apple porridge. For the moment, Jennifer is a one-woman band, so besides doing the product production and packaging she’s also effecting a DIY website.

“Doing everything on my own has been the biggest challenge,” she says. “I had a lot of mental blocks that I've been able to tear down slowly over time. Priorities will change and you have to be savvy and flexible to know what to focus on.”

New York Career

Originally from the New York, the entrepreneur graduated with a degree in Food Service Management in 2010 and started her career working for a large corporate dining contract company. Then she worked as an event designer with a private catering company and styled food videos for a grocery chain. “Before I moved to Ireland in 2016, the size of the companies I worked for got smaller and smaller until I worked for myself,” she recalls.

In Association with

Jennifer, an Irish citizen, had family connections in Limerick and decided to move to Ireland for a less hectic lifestyle. The portable foods idea took root and she set about seeking out as much relevant business education as possible.

She explains: “My entrepreneurial journey took me from Tralee to Waterford before landing in Cork City. In Tralee, I made contact with the Local Enterprise Office and took one of their Start Your Own Business boot-camp courses. That was a deep dive into how to structure a business and how to find available supports.

“In 2016 I enrolled on the Specialty Food Production diploma programme at UCC. I was working for Grow HQ in Waterford, which is Ireland’s first food education centre, and every three weeks I’d commute to Cork for the two-day course module.

"I learned about food safety regulations, food chemistry and biology, process manufacturing, nutrition, marketing and managing a specialty food SME. By the end of the course, I had moved to Cork.”

The next step was the EXXCEL programme at the Rubicon Centre in CIT. "Blackstone Launchpad is a support I've benefited from too,” says Jennifer. “They host workshops with local entrepreneurs, showcases and competitions for exposure and prize money and events to network with locals and other students.”

Valuable Connections

The entrepreneur is still in learning mode, participating in the Ignite programme at UCC for the next 12 months. “All in all, these opportunities have helped me make valuable connections, build and nurture skills, obtain the necessary resources and obtain funding for Wild Atlantic Gourmet,” she says.

“I love the collaborative aspects of the courses -- I'm working on my own in the business, so having like-minded people to bounce ideas and problem solve has proven to be very valuable.”

Enthusiasm will take a startup so far, and eventually you need investment. “Sourcing funding is hard: it doesn't happen overnight and that was a big learning curve for me. I've learned to plan and have patience, so when it does come through I'm ready to go.

"The sooner you can get a stranger to pay you money, the better. Then you can build that up to 10 strangers and 100 or more.”