Win A Luxury Irish Gourmet Hamper

Irish Gourmet Hampers August Competitions

To celebrate Irish Gourmet having its very own Facebook and Twitter pages we have launched some competitions for our followers.

Twitter Competition

All you have to do to be entered into the draw is:

1. Follow @IrishGourmet

2. Retweet one of our tweets about this 'Artisan' hamper competition

3. Spread the word to your friends & colleagues (optional!)

Facebook Competition

1. Like Irish Gourmet's Facebook Page

2. Tag yourself in a photo in the competition album

3. Share our page with friends & family

Also keep an eye on our page/account for further competition updates, as we may carry out a "Stage 2" step to narrow the entries down.

The winner will win a gift basket from our "Artisan" Hamper Range for delivery anywhere in the UK or Ireland.

Further info and closing date/time will be tweeted over the next few days.

Good Luck!

The IG Team

Irish Gourmet Moving Premises - Delivery Schedule

12-16th July - Irish Gourmet's Change of Scenery

Hi Folks,

Over the past few years Irish Gourmet has been steadily growing
(with a lot of hard work) and we have moved premises a couple of times
 to help improve operations & bring you the best service possible.

We last moved our Headquarters in October 2007 & this July
(12-16th July 2012) we have decided to coincide our move with a public
holiday to minimise disruption to our delivery service. We aren't moving far
(just across town), but gift baskets, hampers, boxes and all the stock take
up a lot of room so it is going to take us a while to pack up here, move
everything & unpack at the other end!

This means that unfortunately there will be no deliveries available on
Friday 13th July & Monday 16th July. There will also be no deliveries
to Northern Ireland on 12th July due to the Public Holiday. We will email
to advise anyone who orders to NI for this date, as unfortunately we can’t
turn it off in the calendar when deliveries to other regions are still OK
on that date.

Please see the delivery schedule below:
Thursday 12th July – No Deliveries to Northern Ireland, IG office closed
Friday 13th July – No Deliveries, IG office closed
Saturday 14th July – No Deliveries
Monday 16th July – No Deliveries, but dispatches resume & IG office open
Tuesday 17th July – Normal Service resumes

As a Thank You

To thank you for your understanding, a complimentary chunky chocolate fudge
will be included with all orders placed during this period & we will also
upgrade all deliveries to the express service for dispatch on Monday 16th July.
We would like to thank you for your continued custom and please just drop us
an email if you have any queries, as we can often still reply with email support.

See you at the other side!

Kind regards,

The IG Team

Irish Gourmet Christmas Review

Hi Folks,

Apologies it has been so long since my last post. There is so much to tell you about!

A fairly recent occasion & the biggest of the gift basket year has just passed, so I thought I would take some time to review it. Yes you guessed it - Christmas Time!

Thank You

The team here at Irish Gourmet would like to say a big thank you to everyone who shopped with us during November & December for Christmas hampers & gift baskets. We hope your friends & family members enjoyed receiving & eating the contents! We know many of you shop with us every year & we really appreciate your continued custom. We have been steadily growing for the past 10 years and keep making improvements to the systems every year. Our aim is to be a well oiled machine! One thing remains constant though; we only offer great quality, local food that we have taste tested & love!

New Irish Products

We are always keen to add new lines to our range, so new products for Christmas 2011 included a new "Chutney For Cheese & Wine" & "Beetroot Blush" from Janet's Country Fayre in Co. Wicklow. Fruity Rice & Oat Crisp Clusters from Mackle Snacks in Dungannon. Skelligs Chocolates were also back for this Christmas after a devastating fire destroyed their factory in Co. Kerry last year. Danucci Chocolates from Co. Louth were also reintroduced back into our gift baskets in 2011. We also stock more fresh meats at Christmas time, so bring in extra Ummera Organic smoked salmon (in various sizes) as well as their bacon rashers, duck breasts & chicken crowns. We also stock Brady Family's carved glazed traditional ham & cooked ham joints at this time of year.

No Snow!

We were so pleased the snow stayed away this December & no pipes were bursting! It meant we were able to keep dispatching Christmas hampers right up until the 22nd December, for delivery on 23rd December. Some of the couriers even worked the Saturday 24th, Christmas Eve, to get those last few parcels delivered.

We even dispatched baskets on Friday 23rd December & these were delivered as soon as the courier companies reopened again on 28th December. We were then busy again on 28th & 29th December too, dispatching New Year gift baskets & helping to resolve any problems.

After Sales Care

With so many gift baskets being dispatched there are inevitably a few delivery problems, such as the recipient not being home when delivery was first attempted & they need help re-arranging delivery. As a good will gesture we also dispatched some fresh cheese packs to recipients who couldn't get a 2nd delivery attempt rescheduled until after Christmas. We also did very well in terms of few breakages too this year. We bubble wrap individual jars and our boxes are padded inside with air pockets, but occasionally a jar still might arrive broken (if a courier might have been particularly heavy handed with a box for example). When this happens we send out a fresh gift basket or a complimentary hamper to replace any damaged goods. We want the recipients to be delighted with their basket & so work hard to help on those rare occasions something might go wrong. Of course you get the odd chancer who refuses to take any responsibility when incorrect address or telephone numbers have been supplied. Even then we do our best to come up with a suitable resolution, but we do ask for costs to be covered for return to sender, redelivery & restocking fees - never mind the administration time & costs involved.

To Conclude...

So all in all a successful Christmas & New Year was had! January has been busy with VAT receipts & returns (the fun!), but also with updating our gift basket offering. We'll be back in touch soon with all the latest news.

Many thanks,

The Irish Gourmet

Irish Food Products Direct

Fair ye all,

Coming later this month in April 2010 will be the new Irish Gourmet website, which is reverting to its original guise as a showcase for Irish food products.

Its something we always wanted to do, it was our vision nearly 10 years ago to create something like this, but in the intervening period of time, we had to do dull things like build a cash flow, make a profit, establish a customer database, ship out thousands of hampers, little nuisances such as that.

We had to battle all the techological hurdles of internet bandwidth restrictions, hosting issues, overloaded servers.

Throughout this time, we would see rival companies start up and spend phenomenal amounts of money on a market, which simply wasn't big enough. Invariably the pace of change and development online has been so fast that small companies technological investment is outdated very quickly.
Other times we would gasp in astonishment at the sums of money spent on websites which were far inferior than our own small sub brands.

Anyway all is well in the world as The Irish Gourmet paced itself. This new website will be our 4th version of the site since 2004, but this is what we wanted all along and it has been acchieved in record time. This blog post marks the beginning of the design process and we expect to have the complete website in its .co.uk format up and running before the end of April with the .ie site available the following week.

Categories will be:

The Weavers
The Bakery
The Butchery
The Fishmongers
The Patisserie
The Sweetie Shop
The Grocery
The Dairy
The Epicurist
The Winecellar
The Farm
The Hamper Shop

Customers will be able to select the finest artisan, gourmet food products from the shopping sections above. So you can visit the weaver and buy your basket, then visit the Bakery to add your biscuits, the patisserie for your cake, the dairy for a cheese and the epicurist for some hand made specialities.
Or you can just visit the hamper shop and choose from a wide range of our hamper styles.

Essentially this website will be so cool that if you want to buy a hamper in the UK or Ireland, then Irishgourmet will be an essential browse.

Our objective is to build and design the most user friendly Irish Hamper Website in the World.

Let us know if you agree when you're browsing in May

The Irish Gourmet

Easter food gifts

With Mother's Day & St Patricks Day only just over, Easter is now fast approaching! With Good Friday on the 2nd April, Easter Sunday on the 4th & Easter Monday the 5th April.

The Easter holidays are generally a time for family get-togethers, be it a family picnic, barbeque or sit down dinner. This is why a food hamper is an increasingly popular Easter present. Our new spring range of hampers are perfect for a family feed, as they contain a mixture of sweet & savoury gourmet items, fresh meats such as ham & salmon and pressed apple juice. http://www.irishgourmet.co.uk/spring-summer-hampers.html



Irish Gourmet is also pleased to introduce some special Easter-themed gift baskets this year, to compliment our existing good food hampers. Our Easter gifts baskets are perfect presents for children & contain cute stuffed animals such as bunnies & chicks, chocolate easter eggs as well as lollies & candies. You can also add extra items to a basket if it is for more than 1 child to enjoy!



Our Easter presents can be delivered directly to the lucky recipients, across Ireland & the UK for only £3.99. Courier companies will not be delivering on Good Friday & Easter Monday, so we suggest picking a delivery date of the 1st April at the latest. So why not send your kids, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, godchild or family an Easter gift basket today & they can enjoy it together over the holiday period.

Irish food - Perfect for St. Patricks Day

This Wednesday, the 17th March is St. Patricks Day! What better way to celebrate than enjoying some delicious Irish food from Irish Gourmet. The vast majority of the gourmet food items in our gift baskets are of Irish origin.

For example:

Fivemiletown & Causeway cheeses, which are produced in Northern Ireland.
Our Offbeat chutneys & marmalades are also produced in Bangor, Co. Down.
Cottage Pride jam's, Barnhill fruit juices & Forest Feast snacks & tropical fruit mixes are all from Co. Armagh.
Baked goods like the biscuits, fruit cakes & oatcakes we include are by Ditty's, Grace's and Corn Dolly bakeries & they are all located in Co. Down.
Our recently introduced Ashers Bakery fresh cakes & buns are from Newtownabbery, Co. Antrim.
The Whitewater Brewery who produce the Ale in our gift baskets, is nestled in the Mourne Mountains.
Melting Pot Fudge is also produced in Co. Down
SD Bells Tea headquarters are located in Belfast.

The Organic Salmon in our gifts baskets is from Co. Cork, Ireland
Bradys Air-Dried Ham is Irish pork, from Co. Kildare.
Mileeven Honey, based in Co. Kilkenny
Butlers Chocolates, from Dublin.
Lily O'Briens Chocolates, from Co. Kildare
Skelligs handmande Chocolates, from Co. Kerry
Wicklow Fine Foods Chocolates & Biscuits, from Co. Wicklow
Filligans Chutneys & Relishes are from Co. Donegal
Or toast the occasion with some world famous Jameson's Irish Whiskey!

We can ship our hampers directly to you, or to the lucky recipient(s). Next day delivery is available to the UK & Ireland, so you still have time to order. Good luck!

Send a gift basket for Mother's Day (Sun 14th March)

Mums spend most of their time looking after us, and everyone else for that matter. Some mums don't make much time for themselves, so why not send her a hamper full of yummy treats so she can put her feet up and indulge this Mother's Day.

Whether she prefers tea & biscuits, wine & cheese or is a bit of a chocoholic, we have gift baskets to suit all tastes.

We will also be including a cute Mother's Day balloon & gift card, with all orders quoting "Happy Mother's Day" in the gift card message.(*While stocks last). So you can pick a gift hamper from any of the sections on our website.

Please get ordering ASAP to ensure you avail of this offer. Mother's Day in the UK & Ireland is on Sunday 14th March, so we are aiming to deliver all Mother's Day gifts on Thursday 11th or Friday 12th March. We will also include a note on the outside of the box, so your mum is aware the contents are strictly for Mother's Day!

Valentine's Day Gifts to Ireland & UK

Well The Irish Gourmet has finally gone all romantic and designed a few Valentine-themed gift baskets for our customers. They are still full of gorgeous gourmet food & drink items, but may include a silk red rose, Valentine gift card or red ribbon to mark the occasion! Our all year round range also make popular Valentine's presents, such as our Champagne & Chocolates gift baskets, and arrive beautifully gift-wrapped.

Valentine's Day is on Sunday 14th February this year, 2010. There is still time to order your gourmet gift basket for delivery on Thursday or Friday though. A gift basket is an excellent choice, as hopefully you will get share too! Or if you are apart from your Valentine this year we can deliver it directly to the lucky recipient, along with your personalised message, and surprise them for you. The contents are sure to make them smile & can also be enjoyed for longer than flowers!

You can view our Valentine range by clicking on the title of this post.

So go on, send your love with a romantic gift basket today!

Christmas Hampers to Ireland

Happy Christmas to all our readers and customers.

With only 15 days to go until Christmas Day, hundreds of Irish Gourmet hampers are being dispatched. This year we have a selection of over 60 baskets, but the selection will gradually reduce as varieties sell out.

Heavy sales of Battle of the Biscuits means it will be withdrawn shortly. There is also heavy pressure on Great Taste Award Winner Silver edition, Christmas Wine Celebration and 100% Alcohol Free.

In spite of this Irish Gourmet has never emailed a customer with a week remaining before Christmas to advise them that they are unable to fulfil their customers order. Invariably we are the company that people in NI and the ROI find when they are let down by others.

We advise customers to order as early as possible as this gives us time to adjust inventory and if you are reading this and can only see a reduced selection, there is a reason for this and we hope you'll visit us again in the future.

Irish Gourmet.

Exciting New Irish Gourmet Website

The Irish Gourmet is thrilled to annouce that our fab new website was recently launched, just in time for the busy Christmas period.

The old website served us well over the years, but we thought a Spring (or Autumn) clean was in order. The new site has the look & feel of a traditional Irish Shop, selling wonderful Irish artisan produce. As well as this attractive new look we have also amended the categories to make searching even easier for our customers. A bit like re-arranging the layout of a shop! There is also an improved search facilty, if you would like to see all gift baskets containing 'brie cheese' or 'dark chocolate' for example.

A lot of our customers send our gift baskets to friends & family abroad, so the decision was made to arrange out baskets according to where they can be shipped to.

1) Great Britain & Ireland
2) USA, Canada & International
3) Germany, France & Europe

These sections are further sub-divided into 'Christmas', 'All Year Round Hampers' (i.e - birthday, get well, thank you gifts, and 'Shop by Price'.

As well as making browsing easier for our customers, there have also been improvements behind the scenes. These improvements will help us improve automation, like stock management and order processing.

We know a lot of our customers are repeat customers, who had previously created accounts with Irish Gourmet. As we have moved platforms, unfortunately your email address & log in details will no longer be recognised as a returning customer. Please don't think you are doing anything wrong. We have records of all past orders though, if you would like to check what gift basket you ordered last year. Creating a new account is quick & easy, and your billing & shipping addresses will be stored for future orders again. Other shopping cart improvements include the calender & the ability to input multiple shipping addresses under 1 order, is shortly being introduced.

We hope you enjoy shopping on the new Irish Gourmet site. Please let us know your thoughts or suggestions. Our Christmas 2009 hampers and gift baskets are available to buy now & we look forward to helping you with your Christmas gifts.

The IG Team

Christmas Presents in Dublin Ireland

The proliferation of cross border traffic over the past few years due to the rising difference in the cost of living between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic has presented the Irish consumer with a fantastic opportunity when it comes to sourcing Christmas presents and gifts within Ireland.

By no stretch of the imagination can Irish Gourmet be considered a large company, but we are located in Northern Ireland and as a result can take advantage of All Ireland Courier rates.

The advantages of an Irish Gourmet Hamper as a Christmas Gift or present are numerous.
1) The value and quality of our hampers are the best in Europe. But don't just take our word for that, take some time to look around other companies within Europe delivering to Dublin.

2) We only do hampers as presents. Nothing else, so as a result the attention to detail and what goes in them is of absolute importance to us. A recent enquiry from England wanted us to do their Irish deliveries, but compared us to a traditional English hamper company. They counted items and weights and said we needed to do better. Unfortunately this is not our ethos. You cannot compare a Christmas Pudding baked by Ireland's Master Baker and a low cost volume brand made for the British supermarkets.

3) Sales tax in the north is 15%, whilst in the republic it is 21%. Minimum wage in the south is 50% higher than in the North.

4) Technically speaking the most Irish Hamper company in the world is Irish Gourmet. We buy organic salmon from Cork, chocolates from Galway, sweet gourmet items from Wicklow and cooked ham from Donegal. We combine with Northern Irish product likes to create a 100% Irish product, excluding the wicker basket of course.

So when you are searching for a Christmas gift to send to friends or relatives in Dublin, take a look at what www.irishgourmet.co.uk has to offer and be pleasantly surprised at the low cost, high value present you will be able to send.

Irish Gourmet

Irish Gourmet hasn't had time to do much blogging recently over the Summertime. With extensive logistical preparations for Christmas, a premises re-organisation, a brief trip to the Ardeche region of France and the annual visit to the Speciality Food Fair in London to tell you all about over the next month, the poor fellow has neglected his blogging duties.

We will post shortly with news about what's new and what is out of the 2009 Irish Gourmet Hamper Range.

IG

Mr Gourmet has a meeting tomorrow with the representatives of Frank Design, which is a fancy design company in Ireland. They are going to tell us everything that is wrong with the web-site and create a new vision for the company.

However, we have a clear direction where we want to take the Irish Gourmet website and we think customers are going to really love it. It will be like no other web site in Ireland. It will be an artistic masterpiece. It will be everything you could ever want. It will be the finest hamper company website in Northern Ireland. All we need is a little time to roll it out.

Functionality will be massively improved with new javascript shopping carts and navigational array. Alongside this, we have completely new photography.

Information wise, we'll provide all the information you need to make a purchasing decision. There will be discussions with the artisan manufacturers. We'll even compare our products to competitors within Ireland.

Basically our objective is that if you're a looking for a hamper delivered within Northern Ireland or originating from the Emerald Isle, then it will be impossible to look beyond Irish Gourmet Hampers.

In the meantime, Irish Gourmet has a summer-time slant to it. By the Autumn or Fall, it will be transformed and ready to create the Ultimate Christmas Hamper of our customers dreams.

Mr I Gourmet

We're doing our Independence Day and Canada Day range of hampers to celebrate the 4th of July and 1st of July respectively. We are aware of a few gatherings across Ireland for the celebrations. In Belfast there is an Independence Day Party at the US Consulate, whilst in Groomsport there is the Eagle Wing festival.

The following is taken from www.groomsportvillage.co.uk There are some great pictures on tyhe site of last years parade with the big American cars and the strange sight of so many star spangled banners flying in a small coastal village.

The Eagle Wing

The Eagle Wing Festival celebrates our links with America during the 4th of July celebrations. In 1636 an emigration ship called Eagle Wing sailed out of Groomsport taking 140 Presbyterians in search of a new life in the New World.

Although they did not reach their destination and were forced to return home after two months at sea, the Eagle Wing was the spark that lit the flame of emigration to the New World. Since then several million people have left these shores, taking with them their culture and traditions. We have become familiar with American Culture, but in Groomsport there is special reason to celebrate it.

The Festival aims to foster good Community Relations between neighbours, whether they live next door or 3,000 miles away in America. The event includes open-air concerts, a carnival parade, talks and workshops and much more.

The 2009 party starts at 7pm in Groomsport.

Canada Day or Dominion Day is on Wednesday 1st July. Obviously with a much smaller population, there are fewer of their citizens in the UK and Ireland. Get togethers to celebrate the Day appear to be at house parties or bars.

Happy Independence Day and Canada Day to all our cousins and relatives in the States and Canada.

The Irish Gourmet

Northern Ireland Hamper

We've been asked by a number of people to put together a Northern Ireland Hamper. Obviously as the top Gourmet Hamper company in Northern Ireland they approached Irish Gourmet.

To be honest we are finding it quite difficult to assemble a hamper made of exclusively Northern Irish products. The main difficulty we are experiencing is in the chocolate department. The reason for this is that we buy most of our chocolate from the Irish Republic.

We have found chocolate to be one of those difficult products to judge. For instance when does a gourmet product stop being a gourmet product and become a retail product.
Naturally we want to showcase Irish and Northern Irish products, but if those products are too expensive without having a clear quality advantage, then it is difficult to sanction their inclusion solely on regional bias.

We'd like to hear from companies in Ulster which produce chocolates and lollipops. In the past we have encountered certain Irish companies produce such high quality and imaginative products that their products simply demand inclusion in our hampers. The companies which spring to mind are Wicklow Fine Foods and Skelligs Chocolates.

Both these companies packaging is not great, but the product quality is astounding. We keep on using them because customers who recieve them often write to us expresssing their surprise that such a high quality product was included in their hamper.

The problem is when too much money is spent on packaging and the product moves out of a particular price bracket. In the Irish Gourmet's opinion companies must consider packaging to be an advertising cost and not a product cost for at least the first 2 years as the main advantage to pretty packaging is its ability to position a product in anticipation of future sales.

The other difficult thing to source is Irish wine. We've had the obvious suggestions such as Irish owned vineyards in France or Australia. But we have never gone down that route. In our opinion everybody knows that the Irish and British can't make decent wine at a competitive price, so we use New World Wine from places like Margaret River or the Adelaide Hills. Places which we know make great wine and we don't need to pay a taste testing panel of wine experts to confirm it. Are we making some seriously wrong assumptions?

We'd love to hear from any chocolate producers or wine producers in the UK, Ireland and especially Northern Ireland who can dispel our opinions and hope that somebody reading this can prove that we are clearly mistaken in our beliefs.

The Irish Gourmet

Balmoral Show May 2009

Irish Gourmet Hampers were presented to two members of the Northern Ireland Assembly at the recent Balmoral Show held in Belfast. Pictured below is Michelle Shirlow of NI Good Food presenting a Taste of Northern Ireland to Michelle Gildernew of Sinn Fein (MP, MLA) who is the Minister for Agriculture & Rural Development in Northern Ireland.
















Also receiving a Hamper was Arlene Foster MLA of the Democratic Unionist Party, who is the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment.

We hope that both minister enjoy their hampers which include award winning products made in Ulster. If you wish to read more about NIgoodfood at the Balmoral Show, please visit www.nigoodfood.com

Update on New Irish Gourmet

Hello, we recently found the password for this little blog and decided to resurrect it. Exciting things are happening with this little company as the brand is due to be revamped over the next few months.

Irish Gourmet was set up to compliment our very first web-site which was Basketsgalore. Originally the site was meant to be the create-your-own food hamper division. Thus when people wanted to change our hampers and baskets on Basketsgalore, we would direct them towards Irish Gourmet and they would select their own items.

The concept proved successful and the website grew enormously in popularity.

Over the past 2 years it became increasingly difficult to maintain such a complex website. So many products needed to be updated with regards to imagery and pricing. The Euro/Sterling exchange was in a state of constant fluctuation and the group's priorities lay elsewhere.

However, the site has continued to gradually grow in popularity over the past 2 years, it now fills a niche in the market catering for a mostly domestic clientelle. Existing customers keep returning to us and new ones join our client list through word of mouth recommendation.

We're keen to modernise the experience and offer ever increasing value, so we'll be launching a new version of IrishGourmet shortly and look forwrad to hearing what our customers think.

IG

Thought the following information might be useful to our customers. It is the Consumer opinions Research Paper conducted in 2006. Source for this information is
www.agriaware.ie
It is a website designed to promote Agricultural Awareness in Ireland.


Two out of every five (40.2%) consumers rated quality as the most important factor when purchasing food. Price was the second most important factor (33%). Only 3% rated convenience as the most important factor for them when purchasing food.
In the eyes of consumers, the retailers (supermarkets/shops) benefit most financially from the retail price of food and the producers (farmers) benefit the least.

Four out of every five (81%) of the consumers surveyed try to buy Irish food when shopping. Women were more likely to do so than men. The older consumers (over 65 years) were also most likely to but Irish and the younger consumers (under 25 years) least likely to do so.


Some 87.3% of consumers stated that the country of origin was important, however, it was only rated as the sixth most important factor when purchasing food.

The vast majority (98.6%) of consumers favour the introduction of a 'green label' to identify food as Irish.

In the region of nine out of ten consumers consider Irish food to be of a higher quality than food produced in Eastern Europe, Asia or South America. Three quarters consider Irish food to be of a higher quality than that produced in the rest of the EU and half consider Irish food to be better than Australian and New Zealand produce. Therefore, the greatest competitor on quality in the eyes of the Irish consumer is produce from Australia and New Zealand.

Some 62.4% of consumers considered that there was not enough information provided on the labels of meat products. For those consumers who stated that there was not enough information provided, the majority wanted more details on the country of origin.·

While consumers are concerned about the price of food, a high quality product is the most important factor when they go shopping. This was evident in the fact that when given the direct choice between quality and price, consumers choose quality.

I particularly liked the thoughts of the Irish consumer regarding their perception of the quality of Irish food. The Irish consider their greatest competitor to be the two countries directly on the other side of the world. This puts them at a major logistical disadvantage. Other interesting points were the desire for a Green Irish label to denote source of the products. Personally the Irish Gourmet has found it difficult to get our producers to put their Great Taste Award Winning Stickers on their products such is their lack of time, so a Green label will probably remain on the ideas table.

The site is worth a look as it contains useful information about the quality of Irish food and if you want to comment on any of the findings then feel free to drop me a note.

Regards,

The Irish Gourmet

Irish Hampers: Self Perception and Reality at Christmas Time

What sort of hamper or gift basket are you sending this Christmas?

A quick glance around the internet can be very revealing in terms of the marketing straplines of the Irish Hamper companies at Christmas time.
There are claims of being the most luxurious, there is a claim to be Ireland's Largest Hamper Company. Others suggest they are the cheapest and offer free delivery. However, generally the market revolves around high quality gourmet food assembled together offered at a number of price points.

Years ago there was a company called Gourmet Ireland, which capitalised on the Paul Rankin name. Their food was branded Gourmet Ireland and they used local Irish producers. Unfortunately they overestimated the size of the market and exited. I hasten to add that unlike the ridiculous situation with Farepak Hampers in England that Gourmet Ireland did not let any of their customers down.

Retail stores have a propensity towards offering a lot of alcohol without much food since it is easier to manage. Some of the major players such as Fortnum and Masons or Harrods obviously can capitalise on their brand identity. With them the message you are sending is quality and history.

However with a BasketsGalore Hamper the claim is that your hamper or Basket will be "The Best." Quite an audacious claim, but backed up by a welter of testimonials. Irish Gourmet is a subsidiary of the Basketsgalore Group and the emphasis on Irish food is totally unsurpassed anywhere on the island.

This Christmas Irish Gourmet hampers are almost exclusively Irish in origin. The quality of the producers is exceptional. So this Christmas we want all our customers to ask one simple question of the people that they send a Christmas Hamper or Gift Basket to this Christmas.
Was it the best Christmas Hamper they have ever received?
Let me know!

The Irish Gourmet

Irish Hampers... When an Irish Hamper is not really an Irish Hamper

Recently the Irish Gourmet has received a plethora of Christmas brochures from around the UK and Ireland. We get them from the likes of Harvey Nichols, Harrods, Fortnum & Masons and a few other top regional companies. There are a few companies in Ireland, and on the high street I always cast my eye over the range of hampers in Belfast and Dublin's leading delicatessens.

What I'm seeing is very little in the way of Irish products in their hampers and baskets. Now I understand that the IrishGourmet is unique in that it offers Luxury Irish food within the United Kingdom and relies very little on the local population. However, if its a genuine taste of Ireland that you wish to send, then the irony is that the only place you can expect to order this is in the UK province of Northern Ireland where it will then be re-exported back to the Republic of Ireland.

High Street Delis in Ireland and the North contain "luxury" food products from around Europe on the basis that they can achieve higher margins. So for those looking to support the small local Irish food producers, the Irish Gourmet is the only commpany to use.