Are you missing our People’s Park Market? Order on-line at neighbourfood.ie

Are you missing our People’s Park Market?  Order on-line neighbourfood.ie/dunlaoghaire

Neighbourfood.ie is an on-line farmers market that supports a wide range of local produce including stallholders from the weekly People’s Park market and suppliers of the Cali Kitchen, Dún Laoghaire. The Cali Kitchen, run by Steve and Caitríona Roberts got involved with neighbourfood.ie once social distancing measures were introduced and they started to look around for different opportunities that would allow them to adapt to the new reality while keeping true to the essence of The Cali Kitchen in supporting local producers. Their focus is on small artisan Irish suppliers with preference being on free range and/or organic produce. At any one time, there can be up to 33 producers selling close to 1000 products including fruit and veg, bread, pastries, cheese, meat and much more.

The online part of the market is open from Saturday to Wednesday each week, the customer goes onto the website, selects their items and pays for them -  the Cali Kitchen then provides a collection timeslot for the goods on a Friday afternoon which is completely contactless.  The producers all deliver their produce on Friday mornings at staggered delivery times to maintain social distancing standards.

Steve and Caitríona are delighted with the response so far. According to Steve, “feedback for this service has been fantastic, we feel people want to support quality Irish produce without the huge queues that exist in supermarkets currently. Orders from week 1 to week 2 went up 300% and are increasing 15% each week”. It was important to the couple that they not only maintain a presence in the minds of their customers, but also that they get involved with something that was true to their aims in encouraging local small-scale producers”

While, like many others, the café is now open again for take-away business, Steve and Caitríona see Neighbourfood as a long-term initiative and intend to keep it running well into the future.