Cork food company Sage 2GO has expanded its listing with Tesco Ireland to bring its premium eat-at-home meals to more regions across the country.
The Midleton-based company’s condiments, which includes a roasted-garlic aioli and a red-chilli chimichurri hot sauce, are already widely stocked in over 70 Tesco stores nationwide.
According to the retailer, now – due to the local success of its take-home service – its gastro ready meals have launched into 14 of Tesco’s large stores nationwide.
Sage began as a restaurant in Midleton in 2008, and in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic restricted hospitality operations, it began offering a takeaway service, with the option of ‘heat at home’ gastro meals.
This service has proved hugely successful, and, two years on, Sage has moved into a new production facility, where it creates a wide range of products, including dips, sauces, condiments, meal pots, and a selection of bakes and pies.
‘Covid Baby’
Sage owner and nationally acclaimed head chef Kevin Aherne describes the business as a ‘Covid baby’.
“We started off just serving hot takeaway food during Covid, but we were seeing more and more customers requesting items that they could heat up later, conveniently,” Aherne said.
“We had a cafe, as well as the restaurant. We subsequently turned the cafe into a food store, where we could sell all our prepared dishes, and we then started supplying local shops and grew from there.”
According to Tesco, Aherne is passionate about the products that the company creates and insists on the highest-quality produce going into all its dishes.
All the meat and dairy used in the meals is sourced locally, in Cork, while the vegetables and potatoes come from the south-east of Ireland.
‘Restaurant-Quality Meals’
John Brennan, category director, fresh food, Tesco Ireland, commented, “This range offers premium, restaurant-quality meals and condiments to our ever-improving range of Irish ready meals and sauces. We are proud to have another quality Irish-made product from a local producer in our range.”
Sage employs 16 people locally, and – having just moved into its new production facility – plans are in place to bring its range of products to growing numbers of customers across the country.
Tesco has operated in the Irish retail market since 1997 and has 166 stores nationwide.
It works with over 500 Irish food and drink suppliers, which, in turn, support almost 13,000 farming families, supporting 45,000 jobs directly and indirectly.
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