Money for Jam. Keeping your food business sustainable, profitable and competitive with author and food business expert Oonagh Monahan

The NeighbourFood Podcast

The topic of our discussion today is Money for Jam and the importance of keeping your food business sustainable, profitable and competitive. Despite the fact that this discussion is focused on food businesses, anyone with a spark for entrepreneurship will find it helpful. Our guest today is food business professional and author Oonagh Monahan. She started her own career working in large food companies and eventually carved her own path as a food consultant and mentor through her own agency : Alpha Omega.

Oonagh has a huge passion for artisan producers and during the pandemic, she decided to put her money where her mouth is (literally) and buy foods and drinks from a list she compiled of Irish artisan food producers. We chatted to her about her motivations for this project, who and what she discovered and the digital directory she still keeps updated today.

You may have also come across her book “Money for Jam - an essential guide to starting a food business”. This book contains everything that someone who is new to the food business will need to get started, but more importantly, how to keep going. This came about after mentoring and helping hundreds of small food businesses over the course of 10 years to do the same and of course she also dispensed some golden nuggets of business advice for us too on this episode!

We also discussed a number of other business support services in Ireland, such as the Local Enterprise Offices. We talked about the importance of sustainability, profitability, what does success look like and is growing your business just for the sake of growth a good thing or maybe not?

Oonagh works from her base in Dromahair in North Leitrim so we started by asking her about the food scene in the West of Ireland. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Links:

Money for Jam 2e: The Essential Guide to Starting Your Own Small Food Business (2017) by Oonagh Monahan

ISBN 1781192952, 9781781192955

You can purchase directly from Oonagh here - https://alphaomega.ie/product/money-for-jam/ or through your local bookstore. There are multiple copies available for loan in the Irish library catalogue.

Reach out to Oonagh online @OonaghEats via twitter, instagram, facebook, LinkedIn or her website alphaomega.ie

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