Just before the COVID-19 pandemic made its presence felt and ripped through the heart of Ireland’s hospitality trade, Kilkenny LEADER Partnership had launched Kilkenny Food Vision 2020-2025, a food strategy for the county.
At the time, several deliverables were highlighted including the support of two food processing startups each year of the five, the increase of local food on local menus and the creation of more market (indoor and outdoor) space and pop-up retailing for food producers.
Reading through the report again last week to see where things might be at four or five years on, I came across a link for the Digital School of Food, a platform I had almost forgotten about. It’s singled out in a section of the report on achieving targets, with the Digital School of Food serving as a food e-learning hub for food startups, supported by Local Enterprise Offices around the country.
You can, however, still register for its self-paced lessons with material broken down into six themes, each containing a handful of courses. In my case, it looks like I registered at peak pandemic times or close enough to it anyway (late 2019 – early 2020).
Plenty to learn
For example, the first section – Plan Your Journey – encompasses research, creating your business model and brand and brings mentor tips on doing your research. From there you’ll move to the Route To Market which looks at sales channels, distribution and direct selling before touching on finance, sales growth, business expansion and product development, and additional supports. Each section is broken into a number of digestible videos, backed by a resources section that includes branding checklists, maps and directories for markets, guides for retail and food markets, a list of potential funding resources and more.
In a year where I’m all about learning, training and upskilling, if you’ve been thinking about or have a food product idea, you’ve got nothing to lose by signing up for a look.
Plus, for Irish readers in particular, if you do have an idea and the course material tickles your fancy, then reach out and contact your nearest LEO to find out about additional support.
Register for free on digitalschooloffood.ie
