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Domini and Peaches Kemp

Itsa

It's just over 10 years since Domini and Peaches Kemp set up the itsa food company, which has since expanded to include four gourmet bagel stores, a café, three restaurants and the outdoor catering company, Feast.

Domini and Peaches Kemp were inspired to set up a bagel store, something unheard of in Ireland in the Nineties, because of their love of the US and the time they spent there.

“Peaches had gone to school in the US and I worked for a Grand Prix show jumper there. There was a big gap in Ireland for bagels, which were synonymous with breakfast in New York. A door wedge sandwich with ham, cheese and coleslaw was exotic at the time and there was a real lack of good quality fast food,” says Domini Kemp.

Having grown up in the Bahamas, which she describes as an “odd society” thanks to its relative glamour and sunny weather, the sisters had flirted with the idea of running a business together for quite a while.

“Our father moved to the Bahamas to work as a chartered accountant for KMPG. He believed in sheer hard work, which has definitely passed on to us. We were lucky he always loved good food and brought us to nice restaurants. He encouraged us to eat and try everything,” Kemp recalls.

“Peaches had done a cookery course in Dublin and was involved in starting the Periwinkle in Powerscourt Townhouse Centre. I helped her throughout my teenage years with various outdoor catering jobs, as well as doing other bits and pieces like running an upmarket deli in a food hall as well as a hamper business.”

Domini got involved with horses and ended up doing the show jumping circuit in the UK, while Peaches also worked with racehorses.

“The realisation hit me in my early 20s that I didn’t want to be show jumping in 20 years as it was really tough and you needed deep pockets. Cooking was another dream job, so I got a diploma from Leiths School of Food and Wine in London and worked in London restaurants during the Olympics,” says Kemp.

She had a chance meeting with Conrad Gallagher that led to a three-year relationship, from which she learned huge lessons from a work perspective, “often more about what not to do”, she says. They parted ways in 1999 and when Peaches also separated from her husband and the sisters found themselves unemployed, they decided the time was right to work together.

Itsa start

They opened the first itsa gourmet bagel store in Dublin 1. “We wanted really good fillings, so we made everything ourselves, like coleslaw, hummus and marmalade. We made contact with H&H in New York because we knew it exported frozen bagels, and just went for it, ordering a container full. If we had stopped to think it would have stifled us,” says Kemp.

The concept of a sandwich made to order was new to Irish consumers and people didn’t know what bagels were. A good write-up in The Irish Times gave itsa a boost and the business grew from there.

“A difficult thing for us is the fact we resisted outside offers from investors looking to buy in, which was tempting. We never made a huge amount of money in the early years because we put most of it back into growing the business. It was really painful at times. Everything was hand to mouth. Finding suitable properties was, and still is, the biggest challenge,” notes Kemp.

“During the boom we couldn’t find any locations we could afford. This was why we looked to grow other areas such as outside catering [Feast], as well as exporting. Our long-term ambition was to move manufacturing to Ireland, which we managed to do last year.”

Feeling vulnerable with the supply from the US and conscious of the airmiles/carbon footprint aspect, the sisters carried out five years of research and development until they found McCloskey’s Bakery in Drogheda, which now manufactures itsa’s bagels.

“In all the stores and retail outlets we’re phasing out the bagels from the US and developing our own packaging, which we will use for exporting. We already have customers in France, Belgium and Northern Ireland and the idea is to push that further.”

Success on the double

Itsa food company now produces one million bagels a year, according to Kemp, who was awarded the Image Magazine Businesswomen of the Year Award in 2009, along with her sister.

So, how do they get on? “Of course we have fights but Peaches and I work really well together.We both have different strengths. The most important thing for us is identifying who does what best and sticking to that. There are four of us at the top of the company and we’re all answerable if things don’t get done. It’s about performing and being really supportive of each other.”

Both sisters also have interests outside of itsa. Domini is a member of the Taste council, a Euro-Toques chef and the main food writer for The Irish Times, and her second cookbook will be published by Gill & Macmillan this autumn. Meanwhile,

Peaches holds a postgraduate diploma in public relations and recently completed the advanced-level WSET Wine Diploma with the Irish Wine Board.

Marketing on a budget

Kemp says the company has adopted a “Blue Peter approach” to marketing, in that it’s home-made, just like their ingredients. “We would use small, targeted campaigns and try to secure editorials.

Investing in vans, equipment and premises was always the priority so we would do things that wouldn’t cost much time and effort from a marketing point of view.”

In recent times, the company’s marketing and events assistant, JoshWhelan, has made the most of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, ensuring it is engaging with customers and fans on a constant basis, she adds.

The itsa food company now has 80 full-time staff and on any given week there could be 120 people on the payroll, says Kemp.

This article first appeared in Owner Manager magazine