The average food start-up generally follows a path of product development, financing and brand design before reaching out to potential buyers. Depending on their end goal, they may want to just be stocked in smaller boutique shops or they might try for supermarket listings to enable scaling production. Once established, some might look into export opportunities.
Janet Miley and Eoin Kennedy, who own and operate Emerald Ice Cream, did things a bit differently. The two friends first registered their business in the summer of 2024. By September, they had secured their first-ever listing – and it was a big one.
Filling the gap
Sprouts Farmers Market – a high-end supermarket chain in the United States – loved their product so much, they requested their full line of ice cream (all seven flavours, including Brown Butter, Irish Coffee and Chocolate Salted Caramel) for their 420 stores nationwide.
“We kind of went in reverse,” Janet says, laughing. “Go big or go home.”
Janet and Eoin first met as colleagues while working in food service sales with Sysco (formerly Pallas Foods) and immediately hit it off. Their careers eventually took them in different directions, but they always stayed in touch, and both ended up on dairy farms – Eoin on his family farm in Co Limerick, and Janet moving to her husband’s family farm in Co Kildare.
“I’m married with three kids, Janet is married with four kids; we each have young families and are into sports, so we stayed in touch, we always got on well,” Eoin explains. “A few years back, Janet started making artisanal ice cream. I was travelling around with a frozen food business the Geary family [former owners of Pallas Foods] had invested in and was looking at different business options. With my dairy background, I identified a gap in the premium ice cream market.
“I had experience working in international sales and frozen food logistics, and I knew Janet was making excellent ice cream at home. We got together and initially it was just a thought that we could do something cool together – we have the same work ethic, sense of humour and similar interests.
“We had a conversation about setting up a brand. We started throwing ideas out there and the word ‘Emerald’ came up from a WhatsApp chat – Janet had sent a bunch of potential names and Emerald immediately stuck out to me.”
In the beginning stages, Eoin and Janet were mostly engaged in blue sky thinking. They had no real budget, but plenty of business contacts and a deep understanding of food supply chains. They approached the Condon family in Co Cork, who had just purchased the SilverPail ice cream factory in Fermoy, and they also approached the Geary family, with whom they were both previously employed.
“SilverPail liked our business idea and flavour concepts,” Eoin says. “They said, ‘If you get orders, we’ll make your ice cream.’ Then, Tadgh Geary said, ‘If you get orders, we’ll back you and help you with your inventory.’ So we started making samples and sent our first box out to America. It takes three days for samples to land in the United States, so during that time we were just constantly checking our emails. The samples landed with the Sprouts buyer, Lisa Taylor, who absolutely loved them.”
Janet believes if an ice cream brand doesn't have a great tasting vanilla flavour, they aren't a quality brand.
Eoin and Janet were elated with their success – an order any small start-up would dream of. Then, Eoin says, the full reality of what they were about to take on hit.
“We thought, ‘Oh sweet Jesus; this is going to be huge,’” he recalls, laughing. “We got straight to work. We had registered our business in the summer of 2024, received our first order by September and would have to have the orders in place by the following March.”
Aside from Sprouts Farmers Market, Emerald Ice Cream is also currently listed in other high end American supermarkets like Lowes Foods, Wegmans, Shaw’s and Haggen.
Uncompromising quality
Janet and Eoin were smart to have their supply chain secured in advance of these first orders, but it was Janet’s recipe – the creamy, delicious Irish-made ice cream – which made buyers truly excited.
She first developed the product because she felt most ice creams weren’t offering the quality she was personally looking for in an indulgent treat.
“Over COVID and in between having babies, I was making ice cream here on our farm,” she explains. “I had gone through the good, the bad, and the ugly of what I wanted and what I didn’t.
“I started the SuperValu Food Academy programme and quickly realised that to do anything like this on your own would be really tough, but then when Eoin approached me, I had all the product development work done. I knew what I wanted in the recipe, and that’s where the expertise from SilverPail came in; they were able to scale it without losing any of the goodness.
“The beauty of our product is that there is so little in it. Because it’s frozen, it naturally has a long shelf life – there is no need for preservatives or additives.
The Emerald Ice Cream line currently features seven flavours, but there are more in the pipeline.
“A lot of consumers are conscious about what they’re eating and are generally willing to pay more for a quality product,” she continues. “People might think I’m boring, but I’ll always try a vanilla ice cream first because if you have a really good vanilla, you know you have a good brand. You can add inclusions [like brownie bits], but sometimes that just hides a bad ice cream.”
Eoin and Janet always try to keep things fun with their business despite the many challenges they face working in frozen food export.
“We’ve been on the current American administration’s rollercoaster, so that’s been one thing, but you just have to keep going,” Janet says. “If you stopped every time there was a challenge, you’d never get off the ground. Having really good, solid supply chain in place is so important, and we’re lucky to have that.”
“We have a lot of combined experience – Janet on the food side and myself on the business side, and together we’re able to deal with any problems quickly, calmly and effectively,” Eoin adds.
Their business started in America, but Eoin and Janet never took domestic support or the Irish market for granted. You can find a variety of their flavours in Tesco, Dunnes Stores and select SuperValus (they plan to go nationwide with SuperValu in April) with their tubs retailing for approximately €7. When it comes to ingredient provenance, they are passionate about sourcing Irish wherever possible.
“Our milk comes from Clóna and our cream comes from Carbery,” Eoin says. “In the longer term, we’d like to be able to use the milk from our own farms. But we’re thrilled to be supporting Irish farmers.”
“When it comes to flavours, our whiskey comes from Cork Distillery, the salt we use is Oriel Sea Salt and our eggs are from Ready Eggs – free range Irish eggs,” Janet adds. “Everything is sourced from the island of Ireland. In an upcoming product, we’ll be using Wexford strawberries.
“We’re in the process of sourcing an Irish honey, which is challenging but I’m keeping at it, and we’re looking at a range of cookie ice cream sandwiches, so we’re looking at a few Irish bakers for cookies. Where we can source Irish, that’s the absolute goal – it’s how we stay true to our brand and it’s something we can stand over.”
Janet and Eoin both live and work on their family dairy farms aside from operating their ice cream business.
Support
Janet and Eoin have received great support on their business journey and are grateful to the Geary family, who not only helped them develop their stock and inventory – they also work with a shared service team in their Newcastle West office.
“They’re all ex-colleagues of ours and they’re great people,” Eoin says. “It’s a small team, you’re talking three people, but a very effective one. If you think about the journey from when we started, we were a small bootstrap business.
"When we started getting messages on social media from consumers in the States going, ‘Oh my God, this ice cream is unbelievable,’ we knew we had something we could go to war with. With new flavours in the pipeline, there are so many products we can bring out using different themes – we have a lot more to offer.”
See emeraldicecream.com
Read more
Whimsical desserts
Family business is the (ice) cream of the crop
The average food start-up generally follows a path of product development, financing and brand design before reaching out to potential buyers. Depending on their end goal, they may want to just be stocked in smaller boutique shops or they might try for supermarket listings to enable scaling production. Once established, some might look into export opportunities.
Janet Miley and Eoin Kennedy, who own and operate Emerald Ice Cream, did things a bit differently. The two friends first registered their business in the summer of 2024. By September, they had secured their first-ever listing – and it was a big one.
Filling the gap
Sprouts Farmers Market – a high-end supermarket chain in the United States – loved their product so much, they requested their full line of ice cream (all seven flavours, including Brown Butter, Irish Coffee and Chocolate Salted Caramel) for their 420 stores nationwide.
“We kind of went in reverse,” Janet says, laughing. “Go big or go home.”
Janet and Eoin first met as colleagues while working in food service sales with Sysco (formerly Pallas Foods) and immediately hit it off. Their careers eventually took them in different directions, but they always stayed in touch, and both ended up on dairy farms – Eoin on his family farm in Co Limerick, and Janet moving to her husband’s family farm in Co Kildare.
“I’m married with three kids, Janet is married with four kids; we each have young families and are into sports, so we stayed in touch, we always got on well,” Eoin explains. “A few years back, Janet started making artisanal ice cream. I was travelling around with a frozen food business the Geary family [former owners of Pallas Foods] had invested in and was looking at different business options. With my dairy background, I identified a gap in the premium ice cream market.
“I had experience working in international sales and frozen food logistics, and I knew Janet was making excellent ice cream at home. We got together and initially it was just a thought that we could do something cool together – we have the same work ethic, sense of humour and similar interests.
“We had a conversation about setting up a brand. We started throwing ideas out there and the word ‘Emerald’ came up from a WhatsApp chat – Janet had sent a bunch of potential names and Emerald immediately stuck out to me.”
In the beginning stages, Eoin and Janet were mostly engaged in blue sky thinking. They had no real budget, but plenty of business contacts and a deep understanding of food supply chains. They approached the Condon family in Co Cork, who had just purchased the SilverPail ice cream factory in Fermoy, and they also approached the Geary family, with whom they were both previously employed.
“SilverPail liked our business idea and flavour concepts,” Eoin says. “They said, ‘If you get orders, we’ll make your ice cream.’ Then, Tadgh Geary said, ‘If you get orders, we’ll back you and help you with your inventory.’ So we started making samples and sent our first box out to America. It takes three days for samples to land in the United States, so during that time we were just constantly checking our emails. The samples landed with the Sprouts buyer, Lisa Taylor, who absolutely loved them.”
Janet believes if an ice cream brand doesn't have a great tasting vanilla flavour, they aren't a quality brand.
Eoin and Janet were elated with their success – an order any small start-up would dream of. Then, Eoin says, the full reality of what they were about to take on hit.
“We thought, ‘Oh sweet Jesus; this is going to be huge,’” he recalls, laughing. “We got straight to work. We had registered our business in the summer of 2024, received our first order by September and would have to have the orders in place by the following March.”
Aside from Sprouts Farmers Market, Emerald Ice Cream is also currently listed in other high end American supermarkets like Lowes Foods, Wegmans, Shaw’s and Haggen.
Uncompromising quality
Janet and Eoin were smart to have their supply chain secured in advance of these first orders, but it was Janet’s recipe – the creamy, delicious Irish-made ice cream – which made buyers truly excited.
She first developed the product because she felt most ice creams weren’t offering the quality she was personally looking for in an indulgent treat.
“Over COVID and in between having babies, I was making ice cream here on our farm,” she explains. “I had gone through the good, the bad, and the ugly of what I wanted and what I didn’t.
“I started the SuperValu Food Academy programme and quickly realised that to do anything like this on your own would be really tough, but then when Eoin approached me, I had all the product development work done. I knew what I wanted in the recipe, and that’s where the expertise from SilverPail came in; they were able to scale it without losing any of the goodness.
“The beauty of our product is that there is so little in it. Because it’s frozen, it naturally has a long shelf life – there is no need for preservatives or additives.
The Emerald Ice Cream line currently features seven flavours, but there are more in the pipeline.
“A lot of consumers are conscious about what they’re eating and are generally willing to pay more for a quality product,” she continues. “People might think I’m boring, but I’ll always try a vanilla ice cream first because if you have a really good vanilla, you know you have a good brand. You can add inclusions [like brownie bits], but sometimes that just hides a bad ice cream.”
Eoin and Janet always try to keep things fun with their business despite the many challenges they face working in frozen food export.
“We’ve been on the current American administration’s rollercoaster, so that’s been one thing, but you just have to keep going,” Janet says. “If you stopped every time there was a challenge, you’d never get off the ground. Having really good, solid supply chain in place is so important, and we’re lucky to have that.”
“We have a lot of combined experience – Janet on the food side and myself on the business side, and together we’re able to deal with any problems quickly, calmly and effectively,” Eoin adds.
Their business started in America, but Eoin and Janet never took domestic support or the Irish market for granted. You can find a variety of their flavours in Tesco, Dunnes Stores and select SuperValus (they plan to go nationwide with SuperValu in April) with their tubs retailing for approximately €7. When it comes to ingredient provenance, they are passionate about sourcing Irish wherever possible.
“Our milk comes from Clóna and our cream comes from Carbery,” Eoin says. “In the longer term, we’d like to be able to use the milk from our own farms. But we’re thrilled to be supporting Irish farmers.”
“When it comes to flavours, our whiskey comes from Cork Distillery, the salt we use is Oriel Sea Salt and our eggs are from Ready Eggs – free range Irish eggs,” Janet adds. “Everything is sourced from the island of Ireland. In an upcoming product, we’ll be using Wexford strawberries.
“We’re in the process of sourcing an Irish honey, which is challenging but I’m keeping at it, and we’re looking at a range of cookie ice cream sandwiches, so we’re looking at a few Irish bakers for cookies. Where we can source Irish, that’s the absolute goal – it’s how we stay true to our brand and it’s something we can stand over.”
Janet and Eoin both live and work on their family dairy farms aside from operating their ice cream business.
Support
Janet and Eoin have received great support on their business journey and are grateful to the Geary family, who not only helped them develop their stock and inventory – they also work with a shared service team in their Newcastle West office.
“They’re all ex-colleagues of ours and they’re great people,” Eoin says. “It’s a small team, you’re talking three people, but a very effective one. If you think about the journey from when we started, we were a small bootstrap business.
"When we started getting messages on social media from consumers in the States going, ‘Oh my God, this ice cream is unbelievable,’ we knew we had something we could go to war with. With new flavours in the pipeline, there are so many products we can bring out using different themes – we have a lot more to offer.”
See emeraldicecream.com
Read more
Whimsical desserts
Family business is the (ice) cream of the crop
SHARING OPTIONS