Many of the entrepreneurs we feature in Made In Dublin are rookies, but not Ken Kinsella. The 47-year-old from Blackrock has just opened the first Irish franchise of The Source Bulk Foods – a zero waste grocery store that originated in Australia – in Rathmines.
Ken is no stranger to retail – in the mid 2000s, he decided he wanted to open a juice bar. Unfortunately, without the relevant contacts and with prime shopping centre real estate proving hard to come by he was getting nowhere – until a friend stepped in.
“My friend lived in Belgium and said 'there are no juice bars here’,” he recalls, “so I did a presentation to a management company and they got me into a really good location in Antwerp. I moved over and that was it. Just a bizarre scenario.”
Strange as it may have seemed at the time, the decision paid off. After a few years Ken was in charge of a chain of outlets across Belgium, and after just under a decade he sold the company – it’s still in business with 12 branches.
After a well-earned trip to South America, Ken then spent the next two-and-a-half years figuring out what to do next. “I kept visiting London,” he says, “because if you want to learn about food and new concepts, you'll probably learn more in London than you would in New York, and it's close by.
“I probably made six visits in that period of time and nearly signed up to gym concepts and a couple of coffee franchises but pulled out of all of them.
“On the last visit, I visited The Source in Battersea as somebody had told me about it. I walked in and just said, 'This is it. This is what I want to do'.”
What he found was a grocery store that operates on a zero waste basis – rows of bins and containers dispense rice, pasta and grains, tea and coffee, herbs and spices, cereals, cooking oils, confectionery and household cleaning materials.
The customer comes in, ideally with their own containers (though compostable packaging is available), and simply pays for their items by weight before taking them home.
“The variety and the colour and the fact that there was no plastic packaging – it was so different to a supermarket,” he enthuses. “It made you go back in time – I thought there was something very special about it.”
Ken is starting off with seven employees, with a view to adding three or four more if all goes to plan – though he’s not sure he wants to replicate his experience with Zest and open a multitude of new stores: “I'm not going down that road!” he says.
As for the location, he’s confident that his spot in the heart of Rathmines village will prove to be a success. “I had four locations in mind, and Rathmines was top of the list,” he says. “I reckon that if it doesn't work here, it won't work anywhere in Dublin.
“It's not just [that it’s affluent], it's broad minded and you've got a little bit of everything - the hipsters, the zero waste community seems to be here in large numbers.
“The number of people who have knocked the door and asked us when we're opening, as they know the concept from their travels in Australia, has been incredible.”
Ken doesn’t consider himself as an activist, but sustainability is important to him. He says his awareness of the issues was heightened by his time running Zest, where the business used non-recyclable plastic cups and disposed of large quantities of fruit fibres after juicing.
“I felt guilty to be honest,” he admits. “I'm not knocking the juice bar industry, but it is a bit wasteful.
As for his new venture, “I was interested in this genuinely because there's such a crisis at the moment in the world and no-one seems to be doing anything about it, especially the people in charge.
“So I said, well, if I'm going to get into a business, at least I can have a positive impact.”
