Pizza the action for Portavogie as enterprising Karen brings new jobs

Karen has now set up a small factory near Portavogie harbour for Pizzado, her artisan business, and hired seven people to make her hand stretched and part stone baked pizza bases for Aldi, the Garman retailer’s 140 stores across the Republic of Ireland.

Referring to the contract, her first major retail business for the new pizza bases, with Aldi, Karen says: “This deal is a marvellous breakthrough for us with one of the most successful grocery retailers in the Republic. It is an exciting outcome of our initial trial listing last year on the retailer’s ‘Grow with Aldi’ scheme that offers artisan and smaller food producers in Northern Ireland and the Republic the opportunity to win a longer term contract.

“My pizza bases proved very popular with shoppers because of their quality, provenance and this subsequently resulted in the immensely important contract. I have complete control of the ingredients and production of the bases.”

The bases, she continues, “make it easier than ever to create a delicious pizza at home”.

But the latest business breakthrough presented Karen with a few challenges.

“I realised quickly that I needed bigger premises from those I started with in Portaferry to enable me to handle the volume of orders likely to be placed by Aldi. And I also knew I’d need more staff to help me optimise the tremendous opportunity which will see my small enterprise move to another and very exciting level,” she adds.

She found suitable premises overlooking the small fishing harbour in Portavogie, a village long synonymous with fish and shellfish, especially scampi, landed by dozens of local trawlers. She has also now recruiting seven workers for the business: “It’s an immensely exciting time for us as we seek to build on the new export opportunity in the Republic.”

Karen founded Pizzado in 2013 to manufacture home pizza kits that contained dough balls and offered a range of quality and delicious sauces. It proved a smart business idea that resulted in orders from leading retailers such as Tesco and from Ocado, the UK’s leading online shopping site.

Setting up a small enterprise making unique pizza kits, her first venture in processing, was a logical step for the Portaferry resident.

“I had been selling takeaway pizzas from a shop and was looking for a way to turn this experience and knowledge into something a bit different but authentic. An obvious option was to sell prepared pizza ingredients in pouches for customers to make and cook at home. I really didn’t want to get into the business of producing complete ready-to-cook pizzas in boxes because it’s very competitive. It’s a market dominated by major players, leaving no space especially for a small Northern Ireland busness,” she explains.

“This led me to take a long hard look at the market to see if there was a gap that I could exploit and, of course, make a profit.”

She came up with an idea to produce an innovative frozen kit that made it easier than ever for consumers to create a pizza and enjoy the whole process of doing so.

“I reckoned the frozen kit would appeal in particular to children and teenagers interested in cooking and keen to create their own convenient meals. I believe that more people than ever want to cook again and are keen to know more about what they are eating, especially what their children are consuming, and also about those producing the food,” adds Karen.

She developed an initial kit comprising two dough balls with sachets of mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce and tested the concept on family and friends. The feedback was universally positive: “Everyone found the pizzas easy to make and very tasty. They were also a great way to introduce children to cooking meals.”

Creating a part baked and stone ground base that home cooks could use to make their own pizza was a logical diversification of the existing kit business. She took the plunge in 2018 to start shaping the bases herself for feedback from retailers and other potential customers such as hotels and cafes. Positive responses led Karen to push ahead with the new venture to make bases for filling at home.

While the pizza bases proved popular with smaller stores in particular, the big breakthrough came when Aldi selected Pizzado for its ‘Grow with Aldi’ initiative to assist the growth of smaller and artisan companies across Ireland last year. It was a short-term trial to see how Aldi customers would react. It proved a winner with shoppers and a contract followed.

“I was thrilled and very excited to receive the new contract from Aldi Ireland, now the second biggest retailer in the Republic. It’s given us a tremendous boost at this stage in our development,” she concludes.

The deal will see Pizzado’s bases stocked in 141 Aldi. She joins other smaller food companies from Northern Ireland, such as Bangor’s Clandeboye Estate Yoghurt,

Glastry Farm Ice Cream from Kircubbin, Strathroy Dairies of Omagh, and White’s Oats from Tandragee, in Aldi supermarkets.