Meat match: Armagh convenience meal firm secures deal with Irish butchers for its Dublin and online customer base

Kerrigan’s, which was founded in 1973 as a traditional high street butcher shop, has transformed and expanded its business in recent years by offering a broader range of foods, including healthy convenience meals, as well as online shopping and an island-wide delivery service.

Managing director, Barry Kerrigan, said: “To continue to succeed, we need to adapt as consumers’ needs and preferences change. Convenience meals continue to appeal to our customers and is a growing category. We will never compromise on providing the best quality produce, so we’re delighted to have partnered with Karri Kitchen to offer a new local premium food experience whilst also continuing to bring the flavour, freshness and nourishment our customers have come to expect when they shop with us.”

The Karri Kitchen range will be available across Kerrigan’s three main stores and online, with meal bundles and individual meals available. The Karri Kitchen range includes various authentic Asian recipes.

Shera McAloran founded Karri Kitchen in 2019 and explains that her recipes are picked out of her Indonesian family’s recipe archive and tweaked to support people to lead balanced diet and make healthy choices whilst also enjoying convenience.

She explained: “It’s wonderful that Kerrigan’s has recognised the difference in our range and will support us as we continue to grow our customer base and brand presence across the island. The Karri Kitchen way is more than just a healthy meal, it’s a way of life. It’s about mindful or intuitive eating and helping people to listen to their bodies. We believe that eating less processed food will help us to thrive, so we make everything from scratch and source all our ingredients locally, from the meat to our fresh herbs and vegetables.

“People love a good sauce but sauces can be high in calories with very little nutritional value, but we focus on using high-protein sources and creating meals that are around 500 calories so they’re suitable for people who lead busy lives and don’t have the time to invest in cooking healthily. Asian food is the cleanest you can have so I’m really proud to share and celebrate my heritage in a way that helps people.”

Shera’s love of cooking can be traced back to her upbringing in Indonesia. In fact, the business name ‘karri’ is a play on ‘kari’ which means curry in her native language. She recently invested in a 15,000 sq ft, purpose-built premises in Carn Industrial Estate to support continued growth in stockists which have grown from three in her first year to 100+ in 2023. The business now employs 25 staff across its operations.

Barry concluded: “Karri Kitchen is a really impressive business, and one that aligns to our values in that it is local, doing things differently and focusing on quality ingredients first. It’s a partnership that makes sense! Shera’s product range is supporting us to continue to provide the best quality convenience meals, whilst we’re supporting her business to continue to increase its distribution network.”