If her first recipe for success in business hadn't worked out, Katherine Carroll need not have worried; she had dozens more to fall back on. The truth is, this Wexford woman, whose home-made cakes, salad dressings, chutneys, conserves and sauces are in increasing demand, didn't mean to go into business at all. But what started as a hobby took an unexpected turn following an off-the-cuff inquiry from a health-food-shop owner in Wexford town.
"I used to bake scones and cakes for friends, for their freezers. They used to give me bulk orders, but at the time a bulk order was a couple of dozen scones," she says, sitting where it all began - the kitchen of her home near the village of Broadway on the south Wexford coast.
Then one day she was "nabbed" by Gerald Colfer, the owner of Only Natural, the shop where she bought her organic flour. "He wanted to know what I was using the flour for, so when I told him he asked me would I supply a few bits and pieces to his shop. That's how it started really; I just built from there."
Five years later, Katherine looks out from her house to a new bakery, employing 12 staff, where her products are hand-made for sale in niche food-outlets throughout Ireland and England.
The bakery, built at a cost of £100,000, stands close to an elegant, 18th-century thatched farmhouse which is home to her aunt, Kitty Keating, from whom she inherited the adjoining mixed-enterprise farm. Katherine had intended to farm full-time and still keeps some horses and sheep.
Once her cakes and chutneys went on sale, however, her career was going in one direction only. "It was all by word of mouth, really. We didn't actually look for business anywhere. The owner of one shop might see our stuff in another shop and we'd get a phone call asking could we supply them as well."
She moved from the kitchen, built an extension to her house and in 1995 established Stable Diet, the company name she now trades under. A neighbouring farmer, Vincent Power, came in later as co-director to manage the financial side of the business. Her son, Ross, assists with marketing, and the men also claim some expertise in the area of tasting new products, of which there have been many, from flapjacks to brandy butter.
"We began with bread, scones and carrot cake, but after a while we began to extend the range," says Katherine. She began taking on part-time staff but it soon became clear that, even with the new kitchen, she couldn't meet the rapidly increasing demand for her products and an even bigger premises would be required. The 1,800-square foot new bakery was opened in October.
Last year An Bord Bia suggested she enter some of her creations in the prestigious Great Taste Awards in Britain, otherwise known as the food industry Oscars. The results were spectacular: a gold medal for her apricot chutney, a silver for the wholegrain honey and bronze for both the apricot conserve and Wexford fruitcake.
The company now has about 40 products. "The cakes would be our big sellers, they are our mainstay really." The mouth waters as she rattles off the names: carrot, lemon syrup, coffee and walnut, Wexford fruit, apple with almond, chocolate fudge and ginger bread. Sometimes she works from existing recipes, adding touches of her own. Others are entirely improvised, occasionally as a result of necessity. "Our lemon cake, for example, came from the fact that when we were making all those carrot cakes, I only used the zest and never the juice.
"I was in despair with all this lemon juice, trying to encourage people to try some home-made lemonade - just to give it away. Then one evening I had people coming for a meal; I was in a hurry and I just ran off a Madeira mix and poured some hot lemonade over it and it was absolutely brilliant. Hence the lemon cake was born and it became one of our best sellers."
It was a similar story with the chutneys, which she began making during Christmas of 1996 when somebody brought her a load of apples - and she didn't have time to make tarts.
There is room, she believes, for further expansion of the business, but she knows it is not limitless. Niche products, by their nature, cannot be mass-produced. "Outside Wexford, in the smaller towns at least, we would limit ourselves to one hand-picked outlet in each town," says Vincent.
Nevertheless, the word about Stable Diet is out. Those recipes, however, will no doubt remain a secret between Katherine and her staff.
