Who is Behind This
A group of Irish food producers and grocers organised the Blas na hÉireann National Irish Food Awards to bring increased attention to the high quality of Irish foods, especially to the Irish public. The awards have been made possible with the assistance of Údaras na Gaeltachta , BIM , Bord Bia & Kerry Enterprise Board .
The Judging
The judging of the awards will be supervised by U.C.C.'s food department and the judges will include journalists, chefs, producers, and grocers from around the country. The tasting will be blind and rated using sensory analysis.
UCC STATEMENT
The scientific element of the Blas na hÉireann National Irish Food Awards is managed, co-ordinated and implemented by the Food Packaging Group, led by Dr Joe Kerry, in the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University College Cork. The group is involved in the logistics of food intake and logging, food handling, sampling and preparation, and in the sensory training of judges and evaluation of score results The group has very strong research ties with the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and this is demonstrated through the active participation of Professor Derek Byrne who is deputy head of sensory science at Copenhagen University and leader of the FoodUnique Network, who contributed significantly to the development of the sensory science element for these awards.
The Food Packaging Group was requested to participate in the National Irish Food Awards via industrial contacts who formed part of the organising committee for the awards. The Food Packaging Group at UCC works closely with the Irish food industry on issues relating to; product development, shelf-life evaluation, quality assessment and sensory evaluation of foods and on all issues pertaining to food packaging. The group’s participation in these awards is an endorsement of the group’s reputation in these areas.
The School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at UCC provides high caliber graduates for the national and international food industry and competitive businesses, food research and teaching careers. As well as its long-established commitment to undergraduate teaching, the range of postgraduate degree courses available further illustrates the commitment of the School to student education to Masters and Ph.D level.
Medals and Prizes
Each category will have a gold, silver and bronze medal. In addition, there will be a Grand Champion a Best of Gaeltacht winner and a Best Irish Artisan producer.
A Word from the Producers
The Just Food Company
Winning at Blas na hEireann has been of enormous benefit to us. The following points highlight this:
We won two medals in the soup category for two years in a row - the cumulative effect has contributed to these soups now being our best sellers.
We have been accepted into several SV stores, in part due to our award winning range.
This year we have sought and achieved local listings with Dunnes, SQ and Tesco: winning the Blas na hEireann awards was a core part of our presentations to each client, and I have no doubt these awards helped us secure all of the listings.
I personally do in store tastings on a very regular basis and new customers more often than not tend to choose the product varieties that have award stickers displayed - the stickers are definitely positively received.
We won two medals in the soup category for two years in a row - the cumulative effect has contributed to these soups now being our best sellers.
We have been accepted into several SV stores, in part due to our award winning range.
This year we have sought and achieved local listings with Dunnes, SQ and Tesco: winning the Blas na hEireann awards was a core part of our presentations to each client, and I have no doubt these awards helped us secure all of the listings.
I personally do in store tastings on a very regular basis and new customers more often than not tend to choose the product varieties that have award stickers displayed - the stickers are definitely positively received.
Jack Mc Carthys
In 2009 The McCarthys were thrilled to be the highest placed Black Pudding entrant in the Blas na Eireann Awards. They have received international awards for their black pudding, but there is something special about receiving an award on your own turf, especially in ireland where the standard of competition in black pudding is so high.
Irish Yoghurts
After stickering the product a couple of months after gaining the award we saw substantial double digit growth of the award winning products.
After stickering the product a couple of months after gaining the award we saw substantial double digit growth of the award winning products.
We therefore advertised the products more to show we had received this award which leads to more people coming into the stores.
An overall positive effect has been gained by receiving this award.”
Foods of Athenry
In the inaugural year of the Blas na hEireann awards 2008 , The Foods of Athenry came away with 3 awards . In 2009 – 4 .
Because of the high level of interest nationally in the Irish food Awards , featuring well has brought us to the attention of customers and opened some doors , where potentially we may have had to have knocked for considerably longer !
Winning the awards has given us the confidence to go further afield with the products as it is fantastic to have independent affirmation of what we already felt to be true – that we had great tasting products . !
Bombay Pantry
We are delighted to have won 2 GOLD medals at the 2009 awards. It has enabled us to promote the 2 products within our range as award winning, both on pack and on shelf. As a staff development tool, it has been a great motivator for our NPD chefs, to excite them and encourage them to develop new tastes and dishes which will go on to hopefully winning more awards in the future!
The Apple Farm
The award had a great psychological effect, because as it was a new product launch, we felt vindicated in the amount of development work that we had done to get the product market-ready. When going out with our new juice, the fact that it had just won an award was also a great help in accessing new customers.
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