Food Village €3m investment ‘a huge vote of confidence in Longford’

The creation of 200 jobs and a €3 million investment in a state-of-the-art facility in Longford to serve secondary school meals around the country shows the immense confidence in the county.

That is the view of Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Robert Troy TD who addressed Food Village’s Founder and CEO,Richie Nangle, Business Partner, COO, Joe Kavanagh and the assembled audience at the launch of the service and spoke about why this area was chosen.

"It is a really positive day for you, for your business but it is a really positive day for Longford town, for county Longford and the whole of the Midlands.

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"It's a huge vote of confidence in Longford that you've chosen Longford," the local Fianna Fáil TD added.
Food Village was founded in 2020 with a mission to provide nutritious, hot lunch options for students in post-primary and tertiary education, regardless of their economic means.

The company is the largest provider of tech-enabled secondary school meals in Ireland and there was a lot of positivity as their jobs announcement and plans were unveiled at Mastertech Business Park last Thursday.

Longford-Westmeath TD Deputy Troy said he was walking around the 'hugely impressive' 35,000sq feet facility when he asked Mr Nangle and Mr Kavanagh, 'Was it because of the central location that they chose Longford?'

"They said that was one of the reasons but the most important reason was the availability of talent.

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"The two lads recognise that the most important attribute any company has is their talent and they have acknowledged to me personally and they have acknowledged that very publicly here this evening.

"I want to congratulate all of the people who are working here in Food Village and I have no doubt there will be more people joining it in the years ahead.

"To see where you have come from in the few short years is hugely impressive, your use of technology, your use of innovation to provide this offering that you are, over 200 options on a daily basis," he added.

Food Village currently caters directly to schools via freshly prepared, daily deliveries and Mr Nangle said they are currently serving more than 70,000 users across more than 108 schools nationwide.

"What is booked is 135 schools at the moment, but that could easily go to 150 before next September," he added.

Mr Nangle said currently 8% of secondary school meals are partially subsidised by the Department of Social Protection, as part of the Government’s commitment to eliminating food insecurity and ensuring that every student, regardless of background, has access to healthy, hot meals every school day.

Mr Nangle said Food Village has created 200 new jobs since September.

"The factory is the source of the job but we obviously have 108 multi-sites around Ireland. And you might have mostly one employee in there and then sometimes two.

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"We roughly have around 70 or 80 people that work in the factory and then drive all of the vans. But it's 200 jobs as a basket that Food Village has created," he added.

Food Village has made an investment of more than €3 million into their Longford facilities, as well as a €1 million investment in the company’s impressive technology system and dedicated software team.

Mr Nangle stated the food tech company has grown in two and a half years to in excess of 70,000 customers and they currently have 20,000 new customers in the pipeline for September.

"I would honestly expect that to go to 40,000 before September. So yes, there is at least another 40 jobs that will be coming on between now and then.

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"We are expecting to have lots of CVs in the next year or two."

Mr Nangle said they will be looking to employ mechanics, chefs, factory operatives and employees to work in areas such as transport, HR, accounts and with fertilisers.

Artificial Intelligence

Mr Nangle explained that 75% of their revenue generated comes through AI (Artificial Intelligence) predictive ordering at the moment and Food Village has special kiosks and an app where students can order well in advance.

"So, if AI did not exist in our business, there would be no business and that's therefore why we're calling ourselves a food tech business," he added.

The CEO, who went into greater details about how it works stated AI basically looks at all of the order behaviours that are going on in the database, in the app.

"But it's looking at the unique students within each individual site that we have.

"And it's going, Richie likes a chicken curry on a Thursday.

"You think it's a coincidence when you go into our kiosk or you go onto your app. So, there's a thing called scheduled orders where you order 30 hours in advance," he added.

Mr Nangle stated 75% of their consumption is actual impulse ordering.

"So, I'm hungry now and I want a chicken curry. That had to be made 24 hours in advance from here to be deployed to Donegal.

"Then the kid thinks it's a coincidence. But it's not a coincidence, it's completely predictive." Mr Nangle said it is incredibly accurate and incredibly environmentally friendly.

Feed Croke Park

Mr Nangle said they wanted to provide a wide range of healthy choices to students and feed thousands of them quickly and in an environmentally friendly way as opposed to the three to four options a day.

"We went about creating something like a delivery where Uber eats at a fraction of the cost. That was one problem that we perceived.”

Mr Nangle said the second problem they wanted to solve was the efficiency of trying to get through a thousand students within 15 minutes.

"It simply wasn't possible before Food Village came along. "But with our technology that we developed, we were able to extrapolate out our kiosks and we were literally able to feed Croke Park on All Ireland Day in 15 minutes, but we would just have hundreds of kiosks," he added.

Mr Nangle said that is the innovative technology that they have built.

"The third most compelling thing is the massive underbelly in the secondary school market with utility.

"So, a 36 kilowatt combi oven actually uses the same electricity as two four-bedroom houses, but no one actually realised it.

"So, we developed a proprietary oven that uses less electricity than a hairdryer and there is no need for a commercial kitchen in the school.

"So, you're saving on space, you're saving on human labour and you're centralising it all into one productive facility."

It is in the programme for government that all secondary school students will be fed a free school lunch by 2030 so Food Village believes there is ample opportunity to roll out the service nationwide and they have ambitions to do so internationally.