​ Jenni’s unique porridge melts add flavour to traditional hot breakfast favourite

This passion for porridge led Jenni, from Bangor, to think about adding delicious flavours to the traditional breakfast favourite enjoyed in millions of homes across the United Kingdom, Ireland and further afield.

“I’ve always started the day with a bowl of hot porridge. It’s a healthy breakfast and warming especially when the weather is cold and wet,” Jenni says. “I’ve also added fruit and nuts to the porridge over the years,” she adds.

This practice led Jenni to experiment with ways to make it easier to add different ready-made flavours. Chocolate shells were filled by Jenni, then on leave from school, with various flavourings, including fudge, granola, almond, hazelnuts, raspberry, lotus crumb, Nutella, peanut butter, blueberry, strawberry, chocolate orange and mixed seeds in her home kitchen.

Encouraged by husband Luke, an accountant, Jenni decided to take her experimentation a stage further by setting up Porridge Melts to develop and market the novel breakfast product in her spare time.

“I was advised to seek guidance on the further development, production and packaging the melts from the North West Regional College (NWRC) Foodovation Centre in Derry. I needed expert guidance in particular to speed up production and in developing labelling and packaging,” adds Jenni.

Foodovation helped Jenni to source essential funding for the process through the Department of Economy’s InnovateUs programme.

NWRC Foodovation Technical Consultant Linda McClean provided support in sourcing and costing of ingredients, developing recipes and calculating costings, including chocolate shell sourcing, producing larger production batches and calculating nutritional values and suggested legal labelling.

Jenni says: ‘’InnovateUs was invaluable in helping me develop my food product and small business. Foodovation’s Linda McClean was excellent. She helped me to create new Porridge Melt flavours, calculate nutritional values and labelling. Porridge Melts is beginning to become an established brand due to the continued support from Linda.’’

Jenni: Jenni Brennan of Bangor start-up Porridge Melts has developed new flavours for porridge (including vegan options), using ready-made Belgian chocolate truffle shells.

Melts: Some of the truffle shells from Porridge Melts in Bangor