Our mission is to

reconnect people with local, organic, wholesome, sustainable food,

rooted in place and assured provenance,

grown by us and other like-minded producers.

Team

Build a thriving business to generate and sustain up to 200 jobs in our rural area.

Create an energising working environment built on: Mission, Health & Well-Being, Work Life Balance, Financial Reward, Profit Share, Career Development, Diversity & Inclusion.

Customers

Serve award-winning food which is beautifully presented, tasty, nutritious, and trustworthy in terms of food safety, food allergen management and provenance.

Only use ingredients that have been produced with respect for people, animals and the planet.

Develop fantastic recipes and menus which showcase the ingredients produced on our farms.

Serve our food in comfortable and stylish surroundings.

Provide a retail experience that is inspiring, beautifully presented, with informative point of sale, and sources products responsibly.

Deliver customer service which is warm, welcoming, respectful, efficient, knowledgeable, multi-lingual and inclusive.

Be product experts.

Be location ambassadors.

Seek out and listen to customer feedback and create a culture where all feedback (both positive and negative) is welcomed as an opportunity for the business to learn and grow. Measure our success in terms of the engagement, enthusiasm and loyalty of our customer base.

Suppliers & Producers

Promote and provide a route to market for like-minded farmers, producers and their products.

Build farmer and producer networks to knowledge-share and improve best practice.

Pay a fair price and be fair, transparent and honest in our dealings with suppliers.

Seek guarantees on working conditions, prevention of modern slavery, animal welfare and environmental impact for the products we source.

Community

Knowledge Sharing

Organise internship programmes, apprenticeships, workshops, courses and school visits. Teach about our experience of organic farming and small-scale, local, organic, food production systems. Facilitate discussion about what those systems can offer as sustainable, regenerative, nutritious and tasty alternatives to mainstream, intensive systems.

Network and knowledge share with like-minded farming, retail and restaurant businesses also in pursuit of a sustainable business model.

Location Brand

Work with Failte Ireland, and other food, tourism and accommodation providers to help position the North West region as a food tourism destination. Play our part in promoting the Wild Atlantic Way and Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands brands and in attracting domestic and overseas visitors, and tourism revenue to the region.

Support Community Initiatives

Set aside an annual Community Initiative budget. Elect an internal working group tasked with spending the budget in support of local, community initiatives, organising team participation in local fundraising events, and organising an annual charity fund-raiser of our own.

Global Partnering

Explore ways in which we can partner with our overseas suppliers, especially in terms of ensuring smaller producers and farming communities, receive a fair price. Commit to work with partners who can offer assurances on the prevention of modern slavery, good working conditions and sustainability.

Animal Welfare

We, as a family, and as a business, fully respect the decision to follow a plant-based diet. We believe we share many concerns with those who have chosen that route. However, we also believe that there is such a thing as an “ethical carnivore” and that the farming of livestock is an important part of Ireland’s heritage, of Ireland’s ability to feed its population with food produced here on our own shores, and that properly managed livestock farming can actually benefit the environment.

We also believe that a lot needs to change. Animal welfare needs to be made a priority over profit; quality and nutritional value over yield; and an understanding of the ways in which farming can reduce its impact on, and even benefit our fragile eco-system needs to be re-learned. Farmers, and this way of farming, need to be properly supported by the food industry and government bodies. Consumers can help farmers by applying pressure and demanding wholesome, ethically produced food at an affordable cost.

As organic farmers, and food retailers, we are trying to make a small contribution to this way of thinking. We will be ever vigilant in ensuring the highest standards of animal welfare on our farm, our partner producer farms, and in our abattoir. We will establish an annual, independent audit of our animal husbandry and welfare guarantees and publish the results.

 

Rare Breeds

We will support rare and native breeds, including continuing to build our own Dexter Cattle herd.

 

Biodiversity

We will work to conserve and enhance biodiversity on our farms, through our farming methods and conservation measures.

Carbon Emissions

We will benchmark net carbon emissions on the farm and in the Farm Kitchens, and work towards achieving a carbon neutral business. We will publish our progress and our results.

Research

We aim to make ongoing research and development an integral part of our business model. We will seek out partnerships with academic institutions and research students to conduct and facilitate research that can be fed back into our mission, aims and goals on an ongoing basis. Research topics might include:

  • Benefits of organic farming and small scale food production versus mainstream systems
  • Organic farming best practice
  • Abattoir management best practice
  • Environmental impact of our farms, farming systems and our retail and restaurant trades
  • Grassland management and carbon sequestration
  • Soil management and fertility in organic systems
  • Nutritional value of our products and menus
  • Nutritional benefits of grass-fed versus grain fed meats
  • Bio-diversity protection on the farms
  • Food-provenance transparency methods and systems

Lobbying

We will promote our research findings and network with other like-minded businesses, to contribute to public consultations and make submissions on local, national and European government policy.

Green Technology

We will seek to incorporate green, energy saving technologies, fuels and sustainable materials into our building and shop-fit designs and our trading and farming practices.

Green Business

We will establish an internal Green Working Group tasked with reviewing and improving our carbon footprint, environmental impact, food waste and use of non-sustainable materials like single-use plastics, on an ongoing basis.

We will seek out and adopt best practice. We will look for external audit verification of our progress through signing up to schemes like, for example, the Sustainable Restaurant Association Programme.

To be a commercially astute business that seeks to maximise sales and profits through:

  • Excellent financial management
  • Re-investing profits in the business to make it as good as it can be
  • Transparency in our financial dealings including publishing results on our website
  • Maintaining Integrity and Accountability
  • Fostering excellence and rewarding performance
  • Paying competitive and responsible salaries bench-marked against industry
  • Driving the business forward through innovation
  • Responding to market trends and changes
  • Managing Risk effectively
  • Seeking out opportunities for growth within the framework set by our financial, social and environmental goals and ruling out those which compromise those goals