Artisan, hand-made and local – when is it true and when not?

Artisan implies made by hand by a skilled craftsperson, artisan implies a small outfit with dedicated people producing good food, crafts or art. Artisan is also one of the most abused terms of our time as anyone and everyone in the advertising industry clambers on the band wagon of “local”, “artisan”, “hand made”, “hand cut”, “hand roasted” and “hand everything”. So be a bit alert out there and find and support your real small, local  producers. You don’t have to, of course, you can buy and eat whatever you like but just be aware that not everything with Glen in the title and with a friendly face on the picture is actually real. 

Summer is the time for  food festivals and shows, the time when small producers try and get more sales space, more advertising and more exposure and every year it is the time we find we cannot compete with the larger companies that have jumped on the wagon and that can so easily afford the inflated stall fees which for us quite often turn an expected increased profit into an advertising venture. 

Before I became a small food producers, I used to organize small craft fairs. When the celtic tiger roared, fees for festivals could be exorbitant and the small artists and crafts people could barely afford to attend. As one of the crafter came back after 3 days in Waterford, he coined the now famous quote: “ I should have been selling f***** rice balloons”. As so often, everyone paid the same stall fee and good, Irish made crafts found themselves beside cheap imports- unable to compete and unable to sell to the -  sometimes so sadly - undiscerning consumer. 

We still don’t sell rice balloons but try and sell bread and somehow deal with the costs of doing so, especially this year where for no known reason stall fees have gone up across the board. Like many other producers, we do not buy in any of our breads. We make what we sell that morning and therefore what we can sell on any given day is limited. Because we do make everything by hand we need at least two bakers, sometimes three. Because we start at 1 am, we also need sellers that are more awake and can relieve us by lunchtime when even the most upbeat and enthusiastic baker is getting tired. So, when we are faced with stall fees of well over  €100 per day or €365 for two days – plus staff costs, transport and ingredients, a sales day very soon does not make any sense at all. And that would be the good days where you actually sell what you make, when many of you good customers come out and buy and appreciate the bread. Other days, when the weather turns Irish and the customers fickle, you’re looking at a full days work ( after, in our case, a full nights work) and a loss in the bargain. Some days you not only get cold and wet and disheartened, you also take a gust of wind to the gazebo that can cost you €50 in replacement parts or at  worst €500 for a new one. 

We all know these days and we cater for them. We know they are part of market trading and we factor them in. All I ask it that you don’t forget them either and that you know how much we appreciate a kind word and how much a good sales day has to factor in bad sales days 

Without wanting to blow our own trumpet – too much - we are good. Every city, every town has its own amazing food producers, some tiny, some a little bit bigger and some getting into a league where things finally begin to make sense. Every town could set up its own unique style of market, support it’s own producers and supply its own people with these really local, really handmade, really good crafts and foods. That is what food festivals and markets are for and if you price us off the market and instead open your spaces to the big guys than each food festival becomes a copy of the next as the same celebrity chefs do the same demonstrations and the same stalls sell the same produce as they travel the country. It is a very sad day when so many local Kilkenny producers are debating whether they can afford to take a stall at SAVOUR and when the Iverk show loses old established stalls for the same reason. The Iverk show is the first market we ever did – only four years ago. It was the most bread we ever produced in one morning and a great feeling of achievement. We won best novelty bread with our Stromboli that year and we love the Iverk show. This year there is no sense in going and our margins do not allow nostalgia just yet. 

After the bread round would suggest local producers involved in local shows, would like guidelines as to handmade, artisan and local and other ideas to bring the best of the local producers to the local shows.

All just thoughts as we trade happily in Kilkenny, Carlow and Carrick on Suir on regular weekly markets and consider joininga Dublin market in Herbert Park every Sundays. After the bread round checked it out last Sunday and already met the local cake bakery. They are called “Take a cake” and their carrot cake is divine and certainly the reason why the daughter volunteered for the first day selling. Speltbakers are looking forward to another nice market community – and might give the festivals a miss this year.