A New LifeClaire O'Connell talks to Joe Fitzmaurice about his latest in a long line of ways to make dough
When it comes to unusual careers, Joe Fitzmaurice has had more than most. To earn a crust he has gone from mapping the seabed to painting theatre sets, and now he runs a thriving organic bakery.
Growing up on Dublin's north coast, Fitzmaurice was a member of the sea-scouts and longed to work offshore. So in 1988 he travelled across the water to do maritime studies at Liverpool polytechnic. "I decided to see if I could be captain of a ship," he says. "But when I went to Liverpool I found out I was colour blind, so I couldn't train to be a ship's master."
Undeterred, he shifted his attention beneath the ocean's surface and became a hydrographic surveyor. "You basically draw maps of the seabed and do the positioning on a survey ship," he says. "It would be used for looking for oil or gas or for moving oil rigs around the place."
Two years of life on the waves allowed Fitzmaurice to explore exotic places. "I worked in the North Sea, around the Arabian Gulf, in Thailand and Vietnam, North Africa and Yemen," he says. "It's great when you are young, going around the world and earning loads of money."
But as his responsibilities grew within the surveying company, he had to determine whether this was a long-term career. "I decided that in 20 years' time I didn't want to be still working offshore," he says. "So I left."
Fitzmaurice came back to Ireland and waited tables for a couple of years before moving into theatre studies, which led him to design sets for operas and pantomimes. "It was great fun," he says. "But if I was going to stay at it as a career it would take me 10 years to get anywhere."
So when his sisters Pam and Lorraine asked him to join them in setting up a wholefood delicatessen, he jumped aboard and the Blazing Salads Food Company was born.
Food had always been a common interest for the Fitzmaurice siblings, who grew up living a macrobiotic lifestyle. In the 1970s, their parents ran a wholefood restaurant in Dublin's city centre, and the children pitched in.
"We'd be in there washing pots and we used to sprout beans under our beds to make our pocket money," he recalls.
"My mother used to keep us under control in the kitchen at home by having us make little dough knots, because it's quite easy when you are making bread to give kids a little bit of dough, and then they can bake and eat it."
Being steeped in this environment gave him an appreciation of food. "Because my mother made everything from scratch at home it was always fantastic food and you got to see what went into it, and it was always good homely cooking."
And he says that it didn't feel odd to be bringing seaweed rolls to school, because it was what they were used to.
"Back then everyone just did whatever they did, there weren't the same pressures to conform that there are now."
So in the late 1990s when the deli opportunity arose with his sisters, Fitzmaurice reconnected with the skills he had learned as a child and taught himself how to bake organic bread for the venture. His loaves proved so popular that he soon found himself cycling around Dublin to supply other outlets.
"But I realised I was working far too many hours and getting paid far too little to be doing it. The business wasn't designed that way as a bakery, so we cut back on that and just concentrated the breads on the deli."
Still, the demands kept coming in. "So I looked into doing it commercially. We did a big business plan and worked it all out and said yeah, it can be done," he says.
And with his siblings as co-directors, Martin set up the Blazing Salads Bread Company, opening a bakery in Artane in 2004.
At first the going was tough. "I was working ridiculous hours, 12-14 hour days, and having to sleep here at the bakery - I'd be sleeping on the sacks," says Fitzmaurice, who shared the load with one other baker while he managed sales and deliveries.
"I'd get my head down for a few hours and then wake up and start baking bread all over again," he says.
But as the business grew, the company could afford to take on more bakers, says Fitzmaurice, who now lives in Dublin city with his wife, dance artist Julie Lockett, and their young child.
And the bakery's custom continues to expand - it supplies around 30 shops in Dublin with sourdough and yeasted breads made with a range of organic grains, and they are attracting interest from larger retailers.
So what is it like working cheek by jowl with the family?
"It works out very well," says Fitzmaurice. "We might blow up at each other but then because we know each other so well we understand, and also it's easy just to slot into the roles."
He also points out the advantage of starting a business with the full support of your loved ones. "We can trust each other," he says. "No one's going to pull the plug underneath you. You know that if it goes wrong, those people are still going to be there and support you all the way and that's great encouragement."
And the business hasn't gone wrong.
"It's flying," says Fitzmaurice happily, with the air of a man who is planning for the longer term.
"It's a big company now and because this is our own company we can run it as we want. We can mould it into whatever way we want the business to be. So I think this is it for a good while."