Donnybrook Fair celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2021 and what better way to mark it than by opening a flagship store. Maev Martin talks to Donnybrook Fair’s managing director Des O’Mahony about their latest ‘food adventure’ in Dundrum, plans to open more stores, and to expand the brand even further into the superValu estate.
Not only was the iconic and much-loved brand celebrating its 20th birthday, 2021 marked the start of a brand rejuvenation and the opening of the Dundrum store was just one element of that rejuvenation programme.
“There are three aspects to it – firstly, it is about growing our retail footprint, whether that is through new stores like Dundrum or the revamping of existing stores,” says O’Mahony.
“The second part is about bringing the home cooked foods that Donnybrook Fair is famous for to more shoppers through our sister brand, SuperValu and expanding our presence through the SuperValu store network.
The third part is about enhancing our online offering. The latter has grown significantly during the pandemic, via food ordering and food gifting, but we have a lot more work to do on that front.”
One-of-a-kind Store
Located in the centre’s Pembroke Square quarter, the Donnybrook Fair store at Dundrum Town Centre is a stunning new food emporium that comprises a food hall on the ground floor and a restaurant and bar on the first floor, which between them employ a 70-strong retail and restaurant service team.
The food hall features eye-catching seasonal displays, speciality counters offering premium fresh produce, in-store theatre experiences, and an array of freshly prepared meals representing the latest food trends from the Donnybrook Fair Kitchen.
The fresh food areas are laden with enticing salads and pastas, Irish and Continental charcuterie, pies, noodles, cheeses, and the fresh pre- prepared dishes that Donnybrook Fair is famous for.
“Dundrum is a food adventure and a one-of-a-kind store in Ireland, if not in the world,” says O’Mahony.
“As we are situated in the Pembroke Square quarter, our store can be accessed from the main street in Dundrum, the Sandyford Road, and also from the shopping centre side in Pembroke Square, so it is in a prime location in the centre,” he says.
“The store caters for two shopper missions – the food- to-go mission for the local community and people further afield who are shopping in Dundrum and want to purchase a local and premium food and drink offering, and the dine in option.
“We have a fantastic craft butcher and fishmonger in the food hall and there is a super display of Irish meat and beef. We have gone to a lot of effort to source different types of beef, in particular. Forexample, Killenure Castle Dexter Beef, who are based, coincidentally, in Dundrum in Co Tipperary, are exclusively supplying us with their beef. We have a spectacular fish counter, which is the first thing you see when you enter the store, and we work closely with Kish Fish, who are delivering into our stores on a daily basis.”
A Green Butchery
Donnybrook Fair sources locally and in season, where they can, for their fruit and vegetable counter, but the team also provides shoppers with “hidden gems” from markets in Paris and around the world.
“When we can get our hands on them, we like to offer our customers small quantity items that they won’t find anywhere else,” says O’Mahony.
"One of the most interesting innovations is Donnybrook Fair’s green or vegetable butchery.
“At that counter we have colleagues that will chop your fruit and vegetables for you before you bring them home and we also have prepared ranges of chopped fruit and vegetables, as well as smoothies and fruit bowls,” he says.
“The green butchery is a concept that we picked up on our food safaris around the world.”
Chef’s Corner
It isn’t the only concept that has been inspired by the Donnybrook Fair team’s food travels. The Chef’s Corner food-to-go section of the store features international and traditional recipes from some of world’s leading food markets, including London’s Borough Market and the Indore market in India.
“It is a very special area where the food served changes every day,” he says. “A chef cooks a dish every day – it could be Mexican Indian, Jamaican, African or Turkish, or food inspired by that on offer in the southern states of the US.
“For example, one dish is called a Jamaican Bunny Chow – it is an eat-on-the-go product comprising a fresh bread roll with the middle carved out to make room for cooked rice and a Jamaican coconut and coriander curry. It is delicious. We also have an Indian Biryani that is cooked fresh in front of the customer which features cooked rice, fresh coriander, cucumber, onions and chicken supplied with our own Donnybrook Fair naan breads, and we serve it to be eaten on-the-go. In the US, we saw a lot of dishes in the southern states, including a Carolina pulled pork brioche sandwich made fresh by a chef in front of customers. This was a brioche roll with red slaw and pickled cucumber, pulled pork and beef tomato. These are some of the ideas that we picked up on food safaris and we tailored them to our Donnybrook Fair offer. There is a lot of theatre going on in this area because the food is freshly prepared in front of the customer and it changes every day, so there is plenty of variety for shoppers.”
Freshly Prepared
Donnybrook Fair is probably most famous for the quality of its freshly prepared meals and this is a big feature in the Dundrum store. “Food prepared by our chefs in our Donnybrook Fair Central Kitchen ranges from the Donnybrook Fair classics such as our fish pie, shepherds’ pie and lasagne, which are all very popular with shoppers, to Asian- and Thai-inspired meals and side dishes,” says O’Mahony.
The Dundrum store also features a handmade pizza counter with a huge dome oven where they make pizzas for consumers to take home or eat on-site in terraced seating areas that face onto Pembroke Square and the Sandyford Road.
And the food hall isn’t just about freshly prepared meals and fresh produce.
It also houses a vast array of ambient product geared towards high quality ingredients for cooking at home, including sauces, herbs, spices, pastas, rice, salts, and a food gifting area during the Christmas period.
Taste Profiling
Donnybrook Fair has a strong heritage in wine, and when it comes to their Dundrum store, the brand’s wine specialist Antonia Dominguez has introduced a novel concept to the Irish market.
“We don’t categorise our wine by country like everyone else,” says O’Mahony.
“We categorise our wines by taste profile. For example, dry and crisp, fruity, or full-bodied reds, so it is a different way of navigating a wine section. This allows the consumer to safely try new wines in a taste profile that they like, and it has gone down very well with shoppers.”
The food hall also features a special coffee offering on the ground floor, with expert baristas making exclusive Donnybrook Fair single origin coffees for customers to consume on site or take away. Located nearby is the in-store bakery with plenty of beautifully packaged cakes, as well as an assortment of pastries and macaroons, and Donnybrook Fair’s artisan breads which are baked fresh every day.
Loft at Donnybrook Fair
Loft at Donnybrook Fair is the store’s all-day restaurant. It serves breakfast, brunch, lunch and evening meals and is focused on locally sourced ingredients. “A lot of the Donnybrook Fair food that we offer in the store is cooked and served in the restaurant,” says O’Mahony.
“So far, the restaurant has proven to be very popular for breakfast, lunch and brunch and seems to be a real treat for people at the weekend. We only had a week or week and half of evening trading pre- Christmas, so now that the restrictions have lifted, we are looking forward to trading after 8pm as well. Loft at Donnybrook Fair is a beautiful space that is nicely designed and very airy, with an outdoor terrace that looks out onto Pembroke Square. It will be a fantastic space in the summer. At the back of the restaurant, we have a private dining area for small corporate events and we also plan to run wine appreciation courses and food tastings here in the evenings.”
O’Mahony believes that the store’s blend of a quality restaurant and food hall experience is on a par with gourmet food stores in London, Paris and New York.
“Our new concept in Dundrum is one of the best in Europe, if not in the world,” he says.
“Two years ago, we were looking at various concepts on food safaris in London, Europe and the US where the combination of food hall and restaurant in the same premises started to emerge a few years ago. We recognised it as something good and we have done it now, and from what I have seen on our food safari trips, Dundrum is up there, if not better than, what we have seen on those trips.”
Driving Brand Expansion
Donnybrook Fair Central Kitchen in Clondalkin, Co Dublin produces all of the brand’s freshly prepared convenient meals, including signature dishes and main meals, sides, accompaniments, pizzas, salads and sandwiches that are sold in their stores.
It is also the central bakery where all cakes, cookies and mini bites are produced, as well as seasonal products like Christmas pudding and cakes.
While a total of €4.5 million has been invested in Donnybrook Fair at Dundrum, an additional €3.5 million has been invested in the brand’s gourmet food production facility in Clondalkin, leading to the creation of a further 50 jobs at the company.
“The Central Kitchen is built on the legacy of Donnybrook Fair creating high quality and restaurant quality meals and the further investment in the kitchen is to allow us to scale up and facilitate the growth in Donnybrook Fair stores and our expansion in the SuperValu estate,” says O’Mahony.
“We currently employ around 65 to 70 people there and we would see that expanding up to about 100 to 150 people by the end of 2022.”
The Dundrum store joined Donnybrook Fair’s five stores at Donnybrook, Stillorgan, Malahide, Greystones, and Baggot Street in Dublin, and while O’Mahony can’t yet confirm that there are any new sites in the pipeline, they are looking at opportunities in the Dublin market, and in some of the bigger urban centres around the country, for new stores. “Cork is Musgrave’s home so you never know,” he says.
“Aside from new stores, we will bring the Donnybrook Fair brand to more people via the concessions that we have already installed in SuperValu stores.”
Donnybrook Fair launched its exclusive ‘DF in SV’ concept in nine SuperValu stores towards the end of last year, including at SuperValu Kilbarry in Waterford city and in SuperValu stores in Blackrock, Mount Merrion, Knocklyon, Lucan, Sutton, Kilmainham, Churchtown, and Dalkey in Dublin.
“This consists of 300 lines of product that are primarily freshly produced meals and sides, but also some bakery lines, and a range of ambient products, including pastas, sauces, relishes, chutneys and lemonades,” he says.
“The brand has performed beyond our expectations and we plan to roll it out to up to 70 more SuperValu stores this year because Donnybrook Fair isn’t just a Dublin concept. There is an appetite for it around the country.”
Digital Transformation
Apart from new stores and the expansion of the ‘DF in SV’ concept throughout the SuperValu estate, the third part of Donnybrook Fair’s rejuvenation strategy is the development of its online business. “We have a lot of work to do to drive Donnybrook Fair’s online business forward,” says O’Mahony.
“Online shopping is a big area in SuperValu, and with Donnybrook Fair we experienced high demand for food delivered during the pandemic, particularly in the area of food gifting, and that could be anything from hampers to ready- made meals being delivered to elderly peoples’ homes. The delivery of food into peoples’ hands is a big area that we want to develop, and then there is the corporate catering area and business to business delivery, both of which are potentially very big markets for us online.”
While he retains responsibility at director level for Donnybrook Fair, in December O’Mahony was appointed director of digital within the retail division of Musgrave. “Looking after the SuperValu online shopping operation is now part of my remit, as well as the product management of all new technology for SuperValu and Centra, such as existing and new apps, and also for Donnybrook Fair,” he says.
O’Mahony’s career has been founded on successfully building and marketing brands. He started working for Musgrave in December 2001 and since then he has had 12 different roles with the company, mainly in marketing and branding.
“I worked as marketing manager and brand manager for both the SuperValu and Centra brands and I was involved in the change from Superquinn to SuperValu,” he says.
“I was also fortunate to have been the marketing director for both SuperValu and Centra before I moved to Donnybrook Fair in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic. It was a great opportunity for me to bring my marketing expertise together with a commercial role to rejuvenate the Donnybrook Fair brand, to bring it to the fore again, and that’s the exciting journey we have been on for the past two years.”
New Look Store
Design and branding plays an increasingly important part in the success of any store and Donnybrook Fair at Dundrum is no different.
“Last year we looked at the brand as a whole and at what we would see as the key components of a brand,” says O’Mahony.
“For us, it is about the products we sell and the people in the store that sell them. My colleagues at Donnybrook Fair are to be commended for their dedication. They are a great team of experts with a real passion for food and for the food experience. Other key aspects of the Donnybrook Fair brand are our communication of what our products and our retail team are about via marketing and advertising, as well as the environment that we sell in, whether online or in-store.
“The result of that assessment is a new branding that respects the Donnybrook Fair heritage, but gives it a new look and feel, and that is evident in the store, from the logo to the packaging and signage. The Dundrum store is a combination of a row of terraced redbrick houses built in the 1870s, which face out onto the Sandyford Road in Dundrum, and a new modern building, and that is what makes the store space so interesting. We have retained the back doors, some of the interior walls, windowsills, and exposed brick of those terraced houses and worked those features into some of the store counters, such as the Green Butcher counter. That approach is a new departure for us. Donnybrook Fair at Dundrum Town Centre is our first store designed with the new look and we intend to revamp our existing five stores with this new look and feel over the next few years.”
© 2022 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Maev Martin. For more retail news, click here. Click sign up to subscribe to Checkout.
