TAKE TWO GIRLS
Tuesday 02 August 2011
Although they didn’t meet until College in Limerick when they were 17, Lorraine Heskin and Lorraine Byrne not only share the same Christian names, both are from the West of Ireland, with Lorraine Heskin’s dad having come from Lorraine Byrne’s home village in Mayo. Both are very tall with blonde hair, both are 34 years old, and both have a great love for Spain, which has been a major influence in their lives. They are best friends and business partners with their highly successful Gourmet Food Parlour, chain now in four locations, and which celebrates its fifth birthday this week.
Lorraine Heskin is from Barna Village in Galway but her father is from The Neale beside Cong, Co. Mayo, from where Lorraine Byrne hails. Neither of them knew of this until they met in the University of Limerick in 1994 and became friends and then best friends. Both, needless to say in this pattern of links, were studying Spanish and Economics. When they left college they went their separate ways to pursue their careers but, after a spell working with IBM, Lorraine Heskin went to Southern Spain, to a little village called Salana de los Barros near the Portuguese border, which she said was a fabulous experience. “It was very cultural, they really welcomed me into their lives, I learned so much.” Needless to say, Lorraine Byrne turned out to be in Madrid at the same time. They met up, renewed their friendship, and checked out all the food and the tapas bars. “It was one of the things we had in common, even when we were in college, with the measily little bit of money we had, we would try and make up dishes. We are not qualified chefs but we have a big big interest in food.”
After Spain, Lorraine Heskin went to New York for four years. “I was offered a job by IBM in the States but I didn’t take it because I knew that sitting at a desk from 9 – 5pm wasn’t for me, I knew that there was something else that I just had to try and find. I got a job with Irish Food Distributors, who are the biggest importers of Irish and English food in the U.S., and started walking the streets of Manhattan as a rep selling Irish food to supermarkets, delis, you name it. I worked my way up and became a Manager, working with them for two years, involved in all the Fancy Food Festivals, travelling all over America.” Heskin was then approached by a consultancy brokerage company, not something we have here in Ireland, but who represent different food manufacturers to supermarkets. “I would present the foods to the buyers on their behalf and market and promote their products on the East Coast of the U.S.A. I was 25/26 and had the dream job travelling also from Boston to California, eating with clients in fabulous restaurants, so I learned such a lot. It made me the person I am today without a doubt.” Lorraine then felt she had to decide whether or not she stayed in America for good or came home. She came home and got a job with Jacobs Biscuits who were taken over three months later by Fruitfield, so she became Group Export Manager for Jacobs Fruitfield Food Group travelling all over Europe to Trade Shows.
Lorraine Byrne meantime having left college went to work with an Insurance Company in Blackrock. “It was not something I had a great interest in but after that I went to work with IATA, the Air Transport Association dealing with travel agencies, flights, and that sort of thing. Over the years Lorraine and I had always talked about having our own little place. I was getting married in 2006 and we were shopping for my wedding dress, we’d had a few glasses of champagne, and we decided let’s just do it, we’ll pack in our jobs and go for it!” Byrne’s husband, Tom Lynch, is in Insurance and they now have baby daughter Sophia aged six months, whilst Heskin is married to Tipperary man, Alan Quirke, and they have one son, Jamie, aged fifteen months.
The girls opened their first Gourmet Food Parlour in Dun Laoghaire in 2006 and it proved a pretty well instant success. They attribute a lot of this to the fact that people could see that what they were preparing daily was just good fresh food. “When we opened five years ago some of the combinations we were using were a bit different, really nice Serrano ham with Brie, or a really nice red pesto, and our lovely breads, tomato and fennel, posh sandwiches, antipasti boards which you can assemble yourself, gorgeous cakes and scones. We did a small wine list, but it was a really good wine list worked out very closely with two wine suppliers. I think when people came in they thought, this is different, I can have breakfast here, I can have lunch here, get something in the afternoon, and five years ago that wasn’t as common. Still to this day we get deliveries every single morning, we only buy in enough food for that day’s business, and 99% of our food is homemade on site each day. Most of our staff are fantastic, they care, we are very lucky, we love our staff, it’s part of our character, our staff. We all get on well together, you have to enjoy what you are doing, there is work to be done, but we can enjoy it. I remember meeting someone a few years ago and he hated going to work and I never want it to be like that. We have learned so much in the last five years. What we always say to each other is because we are best friends and get on so well we can talk to each other about everything, bounce things off one another, and we always say ‘yesterday’s over, today is the start of a new day’. We never allow ourselves to get complacent and we are always trying to see what we can add and improve on.”
When they were starting out five years ago, aged 29, they looked at lots of premises in Dun Laoghaire before they managed to get one, as people seemed to think they were too young and had no business behind them. They knew they had to prove themselves and now, of course, it is the other way around and they get plenty of people asking them to come to their premises. In 2008 they opened in Swords with a 36 seater GFP. This, of course, was the year when the world changed for us all. The GFP food repertoire has increased enormously and they have made their prices affordable with the recession – they also added tapas to their range – and there are great fun tapas evenings with plenty of music and cava or coffee whatever is your choice. Swords was followed on by a GFP café and wine bar at the Grange Gallery in Ballyboughal in North County Dublin, which has a gift store and beautiful gardens to sit out in or to walk around. Their latest GFP is in Malahide on the Coast Road at MU Gym with fantastic sea views as far as the eye can see and the GFP girls have long vision.
Is feider linn is very clearly in the Lorraines’ vocabulary.
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www.lucindaosullivan.com
FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ON JULY 31, 2011.