Jose Andre has been creating the ‘flavours of the world’ and picking up major awards for the original foods from his bakery in Craigavon, Co Armagh from many years. He’s introduced consumers here in particular to the rich tastes from his native Brazil and Portugal.

Delicacies he’s launched here through Food NI member L’Artisan Foods, the multi-award-winning small enterprise that he runs with wife Lucia include Pastel de Nata Portuguese egg custard tarts and Coxinha, Brazilian chicken fritters, favoured by street vendors in centres such as Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, the South American nation’s capital.

“We’ve been delighted to win a string of UK Great Taste awards, including last year for our unique Chicken and Broccoli Empanada, a product with Spanish and Portuguese influences,” Jose Andre says. “Our patisserie, quiches and other delicacies  – all handcrafted -are now popular with delis and restaurants here and further afield,” he adds. He’s also won a gold medal in Blas na hEireann, the Irish National Food Awards.

He’s certainly well on way to achieving his mission to “bring the flavours of the world” to consumers here.

Jose and Lucia set up the business in 2013 to bake a range of tasty pastry and snacks at the small bakery at Bluestone Business Park on the outskirts of Portadown. It was a decision, he confesses, was “a bit of a step in the dark for the family including daughter Camilla. “I had to do the rounds to delis, cafes and restaurants to sell them products they’d never seen or tasted before.

”I took samples to cafes and coffee bars throughout the Craigavon area but it was two months before I made my first sale,” he remembers.

“While I was confident about the quality, taste and originality of my products I was beginning to lose faith,” he adds. Perseverance produced rewards in the shape of a contract from a local café. He hasn’t look back. The small food business is going from strength to strength with customers including gourmet coffee chain Synge and Bryne,  CoffeeArt, which commissioned Jose to come up with a new and meaty sausage roll, and high-end delis such as Arcadia, Sawer’s and Yellow Door. 

He’s also opened a small deli beside the bakery and stocked it with own products and many from other local artisans.

Food production was an obvious career move for him. He originally came to Northern Ireland to help leading food companies here recruit employees from Portugal to take on tasks, especially in meat and chicken production, that they couldn’t find locals willing to undertake. An experienced manager, he worked for an all-Ireland recruitment consultancy in both Dublin and Belfast.

An engaging and immensely positive personality, Jose has made a host of friends especially in Armagh, where he’s now an integral part of the local food community and a supporter of Food Heartland promotion initiative run by the local council. He’s also a member of Food NI, the main promotion body and is widely respected in the wider food industry.

Born in Portugal’s historic Évora region, an important farming and food production centre, Jose, however, spent most of his life in Brazil, where he met wife Lucia and ran a number of small businesses including a restaurant and deli. He was just two years old when his father, an electrical engineer, moved the family to Brazil. His father, also Jose, was to become managing director of the big Philips operation there.

Jose subsequently worked in export-import management before deciding to set up a restaurant in his Brazilian home town of Porto Alegre, the largest city in the south of the huge South American nation. “I’d always loved food and been keen on the industry. Porto Alegre has a very diverse and cosmopolitan cuisine with German and some Portuguese influences. The restaurant scene, however, was also intensely competitive.” Margins were “very, very tight”. A severe downturn in the Brazilian economy didn’t help the small business.

What it did was to encourage Jose to look beyond his adopted home and to explore opportunities in Britain for his management skills. Another influence on his decision was a desire to improve his knowledge of English. A friend suggested he should look at Ireland because of the growing demand within the food industry for workers.

He found employment with a recruitment agency in Dublin and was then given the task to helping food processors in Craigavon in particular to hire production staff from Portugal. He moved north and began making contacts within the region’s biggest manufacturing industry and subsequently set up L’Artisan Foods.

Food NI member Irish Black Butter, from Portrush, was the only local company on a UK trade mission to Dallas last week.

The mission gave Alastair Bell, the founding managing director of the Northern Ireland company, an opportunity to sample the unique sweet/savoury spread to shoppers at the big Central Merchants store in one of the most important food stores in Texas.

Alastair was part of a trade mission organised by the UK’s Department of Business and Trade over a period of several days. As a result of ‘meet the buyer’ event in London organised by the department last year, Central Merchants already stocks Irish Black Butter.

Alastair commenting on the sampling trip, says: “I was delighted to represent Northern Ireland with other UK smaller businesses on the mission. It gave me an opportunity to meet hundreds of shoppers in Dallas and to talk to them about Irish Black Butter.

“As a result of the interest shown by shoppers, I am confident that sales of my spread will continue to grow in Dallas.”

Irish Black Business, a Food NI member, has also won worthwhile business, especially with hamper producers, in New York and Boston.

Multi-award winner Irish Black Butter, which is based in Portrush, has been invited to join one of the leading small business networks in the UK.

Led by entrepreneur Alastair Bell, Irish Black Butter, a Food NI member and a unique sweet/savoury sauce,  has just joined Small Business Sunday #SBS on social media, created by business leader Theo Paphitis in October 2010. 

#SBS is now the UK’s biggest network of small businesses. Alastair applied to join and was delighted to qualify for an invitation to the influential network over 1,000 small enterprises..

Commenting on the invitation from Theo Paphitis, best known for appearing on BBC’s popular Dragons’ Den, Alastair, who has also appeared on the programme, says; “Being invited to join such an important network for small companies is a marvellous way to start 2024 because it provides access to business contacts across Britain, one of my most important and successful markets. It’s also a market I am especially keen to grow in the year ahead.”

#SBS is also partnered with industry leader Google “to inspire businesses and entrepreneurs” like Alastair.

Alastair continues: “The growth of my small business is dependent on building networks in markets like Britain and the US. It’s easily the best way possible to increase awareness of the company and its products especially Irish Black Butter. It’s a great way to exchange information, contacts and tips with other smaller companies especially sole traders like myself. Being a sole trader can be lonely and very challenging.

#SBS Small Business Sunday is a free small business community with almost 4,000 winners, all working together to thrive in this important UK sector, through the support of headline partner Google, and other #SBS partners such as NatWest, DHL, and HP.

#SBS is all about providing small business owners with a platform to develop and upskill themselves. The networking opportunities include a major event in Birmingham next month which will feature almost 1,000 member companies, including Irish Black Butter.

Black Arch Gin, which has been created in Larne by three longstanding friends from school days, has been designed by them to reflect the rugged and rich landscape at the start of the famed Antrim Coast Road outside the town.

The entrepreneurial trio, all ‘graduates’ of the respected Larne Grammar School – Kerrie McKay, an accountant and financial consultant, Graham Boyd, a hospitality and entertainment professional, and Karen Fergie, a supply chain management expert – grew up in the coastal town and are passionate about the area’s natural advantages.

They spotted a gap in the market for a locally distilled gin and decided to develop an original product for Larne and further afield that reflected their hometown and the local area, naming it Black Arch Gin after the striking landmark. They continue to pursue their careers and produce the handcrafted gin on a part-time basis.

Developed during the global Covid pandemic and launched in October 2022, Black Arch Gin, according to Kerrie(33), who has held financial posts in Britain, was “inspired by happy childhood memories of growing up in an Irish coastal town, the power of friendship during challenging times and forward-looking ambitions of eventually escaping the nine to five”.

“We had been enjoying various local gins and were conscious of the craft spirits being developed in other parts of Northern Ireland. There was nothing available from our area and we agreed that we should develop one for the town and wider region,” explains Kerrie. “This led us on a mission to find out all we could about distilling gin and then to rent space in a local enterprise park that would enable us to come up with a spirit we all liked,” she continues. Two copper pot stills were subsequently purchased for the process.

The trio harvested the essential botanicals, including wild raspberries, blackberries and nettles, for the gin from around the Black Arch. “By combining local botanicals like blackberries and nettle that grow on the land above, with a subtle hint of seaweed, the gin, like the arch itself, perfectly bridges the land and the sea,” adds Kerrie.

Launched at the end of 2022, the gin, they believe, “encapsulates the rugged but bountiful landscape around the arch”.  Alana McDowell, a local design studio, helped them to devise an eye catching brand that focuses heavily on the inspiration for the gin – the Black Arch and the Antrim coast. The talented designer had previously worked for the successful Copeland Distillery in Donaghadee, a producer of gins, whiskey and rum for international markets.

 The Antrim Coast was designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1988 and in 2018 was voted Lonely Planet’s Top Destination for Visitors – and it’s not hard to see why.

“All aspects of the design and brand have been carefully cultivated or selected by us, with a conscious focus on sourcing as much as possible from local suppliers,” she adds.”

Kerrie continues: “Our tagline, ‘Where would you get it?’ is an irreverent saying familiar to most local folk. It was coined by a lifelong Coast Road resident, the late Jimmy Dobbin, a popular musician, to describe his home’s location and vicinity. His initials are hidden on every bottle. We now hope people will adopt the phrase when taking their first sip of our Black Arch Gin!”

She says another ‘unique aspect of Black Arch Gin is that the trio do absolutely everything themselves, from handpicking the botanicals and undertaking the entire distillation to bottling by hand and labelling each individual bottle”.  Their objective is to create a premium gin.

 “We have high standards about the quality of the product and only use the best materials and ingredients, including traceable and ethical water supplied locally by Clearer Water, a social enterprise, in nearby Magheramoune,” adds Kerrie.

Lacking a significant budget for advertising and promotion at this early stage in the business, they have depended heavily on social media channels, creatively promoting the product and its stockists, as well as engaging with our customers and followers. They’ve joined promotion body FoodNI to develop contacts and plan to sample the gin at this year’s Food Pavilion at the big RUAS show at Balmoral Park.

“We’ve been supported by local bars, hotels and off-licenses and had great feedback on the product so far, with customers citing the smoothness of the gin, it’s coastal notes, as well as the bottle design and story.”

While they have been focusing on developing business in the local area, expanding sales across Northern Ireland is another key objective for the ambitious trio.

Whiskey produced in what was once one of the world’s largest distilleries is set to be revived by the successful Food NI member Rademon Estate in Crossgar, home to the award-winning Shortcross gins and whiskeys, and now an outstanding export successes.

Master distiller of Shortcross spirits David Boyd-Armstrong, a leading innovator, and wife Fiona, the managing director, have been quietly working with the original mashbill (recipe) to rejuvenate whiskey from the Connswater Distillery in east Belfast, part of the city’s great heritage of distilling. Belfast was once the island’s biggest whiskey producer.

East Belfast born David, elected in December as chair of Drinks Ireland, the body which promotes Irish whiskey, explains: “We’ve been developing the lost Connswater whiskey since 2020. And now after almost 100 years we can say Connswater is back! It’s marvellous to be able to revive one of the great whiskeys from the city’s golden age of distilling.”

Connswater, once located on 12-acres near the Connswater river produced two million gallons of whiskey a year and used river barges to bring in barley and other raw materials and then to ferry the whiskey barrels to ships anchored in Belfast Lough for export to the US in particular

The distillery had been founded in 1886 by whiskey blenders and was one of two successful operations in east Belfast, the other being Avoniel, a producer of spirits for leading gin and whiskey specialists in Britain. Avoniel distilled around 850,000 million gallons of whiskey a year. The mashbill from Avoneil was subsequently used to produce Belfast 1912 gin.

They were among 18 distilleries in Belfast.

The introduction of prohibition (the ban on alcohol in some American states) in 1919 caused a massive drop in sales of Irish whiskey, then the market leader.  Connswater and some other Irish whiskeys were acquired by Scottish rivals to protect their sales and subsequently closed in the 1920s. Connswater and Avoniel both ceased production in 1929.

Shortcross expects to launch the revived Connswater whiskey, which is maturing in casks at Crossgar, within the next few months.

Food NI member Two Stacks in Newry, a leading blender and bonder of Irush whiskeys, has come up with another highly innovative but exclusive release, limited to 300 individually numbered bottles.

This exquisite single pot Irish single malt is a collaboration with James J Fox, the famed Dublin cigar specialist. The limited edition five-year old pot still whiskey has been aged in ex-bourbon casks with a final seven months in Red Ice Wine barrels.

The company says each bottle represents a cherished artefact capturing “the essence of this rare collaboration between purveyors of distinction”. Situated in the heart of Dublin, James J Fox is celebrated for its commitment of craftsmanship and tradition especially in cuban cigar.

Two Stacks has emerged as one of the most innovative blenders of Irish whiskey, winning a host of major awards for its single malt and blended Irish whiskeys.