School lunch company creating 20 jobs at new Athlone HQ

A school lunch company, which has grown significantly since it started out by first supplying lunches to children from Coosan NS, is to create 20 new jobs in Athlone after recently setting up its headquarters in the town.

The Lunch Bag, whose Managing Director is Athlone woman Ger Killian, has established its headquarters above Thyme restaurant in Custume Place.

The lunches which the company provides to over 200 primary schools nationally are produced at a facility in Nenagh, but all of its marketing, sales, IT and customer service is now being managed from Athlone.

Speaking to the Westmeath Independent on Monday, Ms Killian said the company currently had 14 staff in Athlone and was expecting to see this grow to 20 by the end of September, with the hope of expanding further as the year goes on.

The Auburn Drive resident explained that she had set up her own marketing consultancy a few years ago and it was through this she came into contact with The Lunch Bag's CEO, Ray Nangle.

Mr Nangle had ten years of experience supplying fresh food to DEIS schools, attended by children from disadvantaged communities, but the idea for The Lunch Bag stemmed from the absence of such of an option for parents in non-DEIS schools.

“We started meeting in coffee shops in Athlone, dreaming up the idea and graduating to our first hire in August 2019, with Coosan in Athlone being our first school.

"Two years later, and despite a pandemic, we now have a 22,500 sq ft facility in Nenagh, with over 90 staff, serving over 200 schools nationwide.

"We have just rolled out a very successful graduate programme and are delighted to be bringing 20 jobs to Athlone," said Mr Nangle, who is a Wexford native.

As a parent whose son had previously attended Coosan NS, Ms Killian said it was decided to approach the school's principal Tom Flahive with the idea of providing The Lunch Bag service there in 2019.

"When we were trying to test things out phase one was building our app, and putting together the marketing material, and then we had to test the idea of the service in a school.

"We held a launch day in Coosan and the take-up was absolutely phenomenal. We weren't expecting it at all. It was on the back of how well it went that we realised we were onto a winner, so we went and started hiring people," she said.

The Lunch Bag now supplies lunches to a large number of schools in the Athlone area, including Cloonakilla NS, Cornafulla NS, Baylin NS, and several others.

Ms Killian attributed the success of the company to the freshness, variety and value of the lunches it provides.

"More often than not, children are taking the same ham sandwich lunch to school every day, with parents taking expensive mid-week trips to the shop to top up their stock.

"Repetitive lunches can result in so much wasted food and money, not to mention dietary limitations. With The Lunch Bag, families can take the time to order their lunch through our easy-to-use app, aware of the nutritional content of each item," she said.

The pandemic arrived the year after The Lunch Bag was established, but Ms Killian said this had an unexpected benefit for the company.

"We thought that it would really affect us, but actually more schools were coming to us because they wanted lunches coming from sterile kitchens, and not lunchboxes coming in from home."

She added that the company's goal was to expand from the 200 schools it was supplying at the end of June to 800 schools across the country by this time next year.

In addition to its sales and marketing team in Athlone, The Lunch Bag is offering a graduate programme that will see 10 graduates take part in a two-year training initiative in all aspects of the business.

"The Lunch Bag is very much a good news story, and we have no doubt that, with the staff around us, we are on target to not only create a new industry in Ireland but to successfully establish ourselves as a household name nationwide," said Mr Nangle.