The Counter Deli
We hope that someday soon Richard and Olivia Finney, of The Counter Deli in Letterkenny, find the time to write a book called How To Run An Artisan Food Business.
To write it, they just need to tell their own story.
Give up your cushy job, and open a wee place selling nice wines. Find your audience, through sheer hard work. Introduce speciality foods to your wine offer. Move to a bigger premises. Open a café with stonking cooking. Grow your wine and food offer. Make the big leap into roasting your own coffee, and call it New Kid. Collaborate with your peers and have speciality food nights, and brewing collaborations
Richard and Olivia’s book will be the textbook for a new generation of food lovers who want to work creatively, because their own progress has been a textbook example of how to run a business, starting with the fact that they opened in 2008, as the Irish economy evaporated. No matter. They persevered, mastering one element of the food world after another, progressing, developing, improving.
Their latest endeavour, the beautifully realised New Kid coffee, is already for sale in all of the Sheridan’s Cheese outlets and, like everything else they have done, it is pretty, and perfect. Lucky Letterkenny. Lucky us.