FULL OF BEANS!

Mobile coffee trucks and food vendors have popped up all over the county in recent years, much to the delight of coffee lover GEMMA GOOD who is always chasing that perfect java hit. She spoke to a few traders to get the inside track on how this relatively new business trend is brewing in the Breffni county...

On a wet and windy autumn day, The Little Spoon coffee truck is stationed at Killygarry church.

Sat behind the counter wearing heavy coats is owner Lorraine Keane and Eimear Gannon, who have worked at the coffee truck since its inception in May 2023.

The pair watch as traffic whirr past, some pulling in for their morning dose of caffeine. On this particular day, heavy rain batters against the blue steel of the Citroën HY, creating a heavy clunking sound that will become all too familiar in the coming few months. Brown bunting flurries in the wind. The weather begs the question, how is it being a portable coffee vendor coming into the winter?

“Most of the regulars will stop regardless of the weather, of course on the very bad days with more high wind or frost I wouldn’t bring the van out.

“I wouldn’t risk it,” said Lorraine, adding that business can be “a little bit slower” in bad weather.

Having successfully got her business through one winter, Lorraine says “it’s been fine.”

“It would be nicer if it was a warmer country,” she laughed.

The day’s weather makes Lorraine consider her choice of moving home from Australia, having lived there for seven years previously. That coupled with the fact she has just landed back in Ireland from a holiday in Greece really makes her feel every single degree of the outsiode chill.

She moved to Oz “just to try it” and “loved it”.

“I do miss it, I’ve been back a few times since I've moved home and I have two brothers and a sister still living over there.

“It’s amazing, the only bad thing is the distance.”

The Killygarry woman decided she was “ready” to move home and be closer to her family.

“I can always go back, no one's ever stuck anywhere,” she muses.

While living ‘Down Under’, she found the coffee scene was “massive”, something she then missed after moving back. Eimear pondered the idea of setting up her own truck “for a while” and eventually made “the jump”.

“I did think of getting an actual building but then I liked the idea of being able to move around and go to different places.

“I just thought yeah, I’ll go that route.”

“I’d seen them [coffee trucks] over there, I just thought it would be a really nice idea.”

So far, Lorraine describes the journey as “really nice”- between getting to know regular customers and having a chat while serving up their favourite beverage.

“It would be nice if there was a plug here to plug into instead of bringing a generator but, apart from that, I do like it.

“Like that, we go to different places,” she said, listing spots like Farnadolly Milk Barn, Annagh Lake, Killykeen and to other local fairs.

“You can get a change of scenery if you want to,” she said, adding that there is “loads of room” for trucks like hers here in Cavan.

For now, Lorraine is happy to move around.

“I like it the way it is at the minute, if you get into getting an actual property the rents and rates are very high in Cavan,” she said.

Lorraine would like to see more supports for small local businesses such as mobile vendors like herself.

“If there was more assistance, it would be perhaps something I’d look at but I quite like that it’s mobile.”

The coffee enthusiast enjoys the “community” feeling of working with other local businesses such as Farnadolly.

“We like to support each other,” she said, adding that she also works alongside ÁMC - Áine & Martins Creations coffee truck, trading events that they are unable to attend.

“It’s nice, some of those small businesses like that working together and helping each other out, it’s a nice little community.

“It would be nicer for the council to support things like that better,” she suggested.

“It’s also nice to work for yourself.”

Packing up and travelling west of Cavan town, The Pigs Tale is stationed in the beautiful environs of Killykeen Forest Park.

The cabin-like cafe opened four months ago and is the first stationary business owned by Karen Fannin, who also runs other two coffee trucks.

“I always wanted to open a coffee shop,” Karen explained of her idea which became reality in 2020.

“Covid happened and I just said I’d get a mobile trailer.”

“It just went from strength to strength,” she comments.

All produce sold at Karen’s trucks and cafe are home cooked with no preservatives. The goods are affordable, of quality, and local. So much is her commitment to endearing the taste buds that she is up at 3am every morning preparing cakes, her famous sausage rolls, cookies, brownies, flapjacks, scones, soda bread and more.

“I don’t get up with a plan any morning, whatever I feel like making that morning is what I do,” she humbly explained.

Mairead Sheridan from Drumbess works at the Killykeen cafe and gave customer feedback on her “trademark” sausage rolls.

“They’re [customers] hearing about it and they’re coming here [saying], ‘we’ve heard about these sausage rolls',” she said of the bacon cheese and caramelised onion roll.

“Word is getting out there now and, come twelve o'clock in the day, they’ll be gone.

“I’ve people coming to me when they’re going for their walk, paying for them and reserving them, so that when they come back from their walk they’ll be there.”

Karen modestly takes the praise.

“I don’t really think about it,” she says.

“When people come to me and say ‘that’s really nice’, that’s all I want to hear.”

“I always baked and cooked and I always loved it,” she explains.

As well as becoming well known in foodie circles, the Crosserlough native is also well known among the farming community. When she is not baking, Karen buys and sells pigs for a living.

“From I was fifteen I bought and sold pigs, my father George always bought and sold them and I took over from him.

“I said if I was opening a coffee shop I would call it The Pig’s Tale, it’s the story, I always could cook but that’s what I did for a living, the pigs.”

“It’s a reality now.

“All I want to do is have people enjoy my stuff.”

The women plan to grow their premises in Killykeen by covering the seating area with shelter and have ambitions of introducing more hot food and are “eagerly lobbying” for a playground for the park.

“We want to bring to Cavan what we see in other parks similar to us,” states Mairead.

The Pig’s Tale also caters for private parties and events, they have one truck open at Virginia Rugby Club and their cafe in Killykeen is open on Saturday from 9am to 4pm.

“This is just all I ever wanted to do,” Karen finishes.

The final stop is Luso Casual Dining in Cavan town. Owned by Paula McQuillan and Ciaran McMahon, the pair were preparing for a busy weekend when The Anglo-Celt called.

“We have to get the oven on a couple of hours in advance, especially on a Thursday because it’s been off all week,” Ciaran explained.

“It takes that extra bit of time to get heated up,” he said, explaining that all day on Thursday is spent preparing for 5pm opening that evening.

In the kitchen, Ciaran, Paula and their team at Luso’s have to think ahead, especially when it comes to sourdough.

“The dough starts three days before we open,” he explains, detailing how dough preparation begins on Monday or Tuesday, while by Thursday he is already preparing dough for the weekend.

“It takes two days of fermenting,” he said.

When prepping to get that well rested soft crusted and doughy base, it can be hard to judge how many pizzas will sell that weekend.

“The dough we use, we have to throw it out. There’s no way of holding it over,” he explained, whereas on the flip side they need to make enough to cater for all orders and bookings that weekend.

“We just look at the reservations we’re doing,” he described.

“It is quite labour intensive, the way we do the pizzas.”

“With the exception of desserts, which we buy in, everything is made to order whether it be burgers or sides or our pizzas.”

The Belturbet native says pizza is something he thought “was missing” from Cavan.

“It’s probably my favourite food personally and since Barducci’s closed three or four years ago there wasn’t really a good pizza in Cavan, certainly no Neapolitan pizza in Cavan.”

“It’s just something that I thought was missing and myself and my wife thought, if we were to choose what would open, what we would like to see open, it would be this.”

This for Ciaran and his wife Paula is “somewhere a little bit more casual” and a place to go “without having to get fully dressed up” to eat quality food.

The vision for the pair began as a food truck bought from Co Meath which was “ready to go” in terms of facilities.

“They had had enough and were getting out of it and we basically parked it up at the side of Blessings,” he explains.

They remained there for five months from May until September last year.

“It was a great way to dip the toe without too much outlay, it didn’t cost a lot.”

“It was good, kind of a baptism of fire but we developed a good base of regular customers, a lot of whom have transferred across for us.”

The only issue was that it took “a couple of car loads” to get everything into the truck on a Thursday and out on a Sunday.

“There is a positive and a negative to the mobile, it’s a good way to try it without too much risk and without having to pay for electricity or too much insurance but you’re definitely adding to your work,” he says.

With more experience now working with food, social media and marketing the couple decided to take their business to the next level.

“We had always in the back of our minds the hope that we would open a restaurant,” he said, explaining that the trailer venture happened “with a view” to getting where they are now.

“Where we are now came up and it’s a good size for us, a good location so we thought we’d go for it.

“It’s a riskier proposition doing a restaurant because you do have to put money into to it to make it work.

“It’s enjoyable, it’s definitely more work than what we thought it would be but we’re still enjoying it, we’re still having a bit of craic with it.”