WoW Bites: Cork woman's novel venture to make good food more accessible

In February 2024, Steph Ayres took one giant leap into the unknown, taking over the lease of a grocery store in Ballinspittle.

Shannen Butler-Keane had previously chosen the square in this tiny village as the place to open her Pacific Coast-inspired boutique bakery and café, soon followed by a separate bakery across the way, and completing her trinity with the apothecary-style grocery store, Leafling Mercantile.

The café closed, and then the shop went up for sale.

Quite accidentally, it captured the heart of Steph Ayres.

However, this story of a former customer-turned-shopkeeper is just another twist in the meandering road of Steph’s seemingly unscripted life plan. Some might say that taking on Leafling Mercantile and reimagining it as Gather Community Grocery is exactly what was meant to happen, and at the perfect time.

Born and bred a Plymouth girl in England, Steph grew up with a love of the countryside, watching David Attenborough documentaries and learning the names of every plant and animal.

It created a deeply felt passion for the natural world, influencing her decision to study natural history illustration at university. But on graduating, her dreams of pursuing it as a career were thwarted.

“I realised there was not much of an illustration industry in that anymore,” Steph says. “A year or two after completing my degree, I was trying to figure out where I fit in and explore my illustrative style. But then a graphic design job in Ireland landed in my lap.”

That was in 2014, and while both the romance and job that brought her here ended, Steph has called this corner of Cork her home for the past 12 years.

At the same time, Steph was becoming curious about food; where it comes from, how it’s grown, and how it gets from pot to plate, and studied permaculture for a while in Scotland.

“I was really interested in cooking, getting to the bottom of how to cook from scratch. I grew up believing what you get in the supermarket is all there is and no variety, so my perceptions were blown wide open and ended up in a hyper-focus into authentic cooking.”

Steph’s artistic skill, her love of the natural world, and newfound curiosity for food and cooking all fused while working on branding and packaging graphic design for superfood company, Iswari. But when the contract ended, relying on illustration income alone was impractical, so Steph took a job as a waitress.

“I thought that by having a regular day job, I could get my creative life back and figure out how to do illustration for myself again. But that never worked! I got so wrapped up in the culture of kitchens and restaurants; it’s exhausting work and I didn’t have the juice at the end of the day to devote to being creative.”

Steph began waitressing at O’Herlihy’s Café in Kinsale, and when they “randomly needed a chef, I just stepped in, said I can cook, and they took me on. I really didn’t intend to become a chef; it just happened as a sideline.”

From there, Steph worked for food company My Goodness before travelling to Montreal to study animation illustration, hoping to tap into Ireland’s burgeoning film animation industry. But covid hit, and instead, Steph took a job at The Black Pig in Kinsale.

“I started as a kitchen porter, but very quickly moved to the food side of things and was there for five years. It was a formative time learning how to be in kitchens.”

At every turn, Steph has found herself drawn to people aligned with her own beliefs.

“You just get drawn to the same people. It’s very magnetic, I think.”

Being around food: growing food, cheffing, thinking about food systems, and a curiosity about eating better were all threads slowly being drawn together.

At the time, nothing was working out in the animation space, no matter how much Steph tried to get a foothold.

“I just kept getting rejected. I hadn’t given up, but I was open to other things coming along. So, of course, you take on your own big grocery store business!”

When the lease for what would become Gather Community Grocery became available, it didn’t seem like such a mad idea to take it on.

“As with everything, seemingly, in my life, I just decided to have a go! I’d always hung out in shops like that and thought they’re so lovely. They’re just nice places to be - aesthetically, texturally; just intriguing places.”

Despite the cost of rent feeling “not too risky of a risk” and the business itself having a proven track record, Steph kept getting turned away for funding. Fortunately, the Bank of Mum and Dad stepped in.

“I didn’t think that was even a thing from my family. I didn’t ask for it; they came forward and gave me a bit of my inheritance early, which enabled me to take on the shop. I’m paying it back, and I’m very blessed to have that, but it seemed crazy to not take the opportunity.

“It felt like this big confluence of all my skills and things I’d previously done all wrapped into one.”

Steph views Gather Community Grocer as serving her community, providing a place where people can gather, connect, share stories and recipes.

“The first year of listening to people and seeing what they needed from the shop was helpful. I had all sorts of ideas to get cool, wacky stuff in, but I don’t think the market’s here necessarily,” says Steph. However, the intention is very much for Gather to be a one-stop-shop where everything you need for a good, nourishing, staple meal is under one roof.

“I can never find groceries and specialist items in good measure together. I’d have to go to a few places to put together a meal, but then you’d get decision fatigue from sourcing everything. It becomes such a huge thing, especially if you don’t cook for yourself or if you’re trying to learn to cook. It takes a long time to tell yourself you don’t have to make a production out of dinner every night; that I don’t have to make this incredible three-course meal or one-pot dish. I can have beans on toast and that’s fine!

“My intention is to try and have the base ingredients from different cuisines and to build on that; to introduce people to things slowly, and to educate as we all go along together by sharing recipes and stories, asking what someone is cooking today, or have they tried this because it’s great. It’s about trying to be more responsive.”

Steph says she owes a lot to her predecessors for building a great foundation for the business.

“It wouldn’t be half the shop it is without that,” she says. “I would have really struggled if it hadn’t been that to begin with. Adding a few additional bits to that great foundation fleshed it all out and made it possible.

“I’m also continually trying to improve my sourcing. My main thing is food miles: as local as possible, small growers and good produce. I try to buy Irish where possible; European after that.

“There are very few things that come from further afield, and I just try and limit that.”

Steph says her goal is for Gather to sustain her.

“I’d like it to sustain myself, sustain a couple of people to work here, and for it to pay its own self. Ultimately, I feel there’s not enough places like this to get good quality foods and whole foods - I think that’s it! There are pockets of places where there’s no shop at all or just a supermarket, so how are you expected to regularly feed yourself in a way that is good for you and the environment?

“I think the way forward is having small shops in little places.”

To that end, Gather is about to enter another chapter with its first mobile grocery van aimed at serving small communities that don’t have access to anything more than the basics in a shop, or maybe no shop at all.

A former food trailer emblazoned in the same sunshine yellow as the Ballinspittle store-front, this mobile community grocery is a pioneering way to bring fresh, locally grown produce and whole foods to people and places that otherwise would have no access.

“It’s basically a small version of here,” says Steph. “We’re trying to do everything beyond the basics of a small shop; anywhere that really doesn’t have anything else or places that have a lot of people but no shop. Locations that maybe can’t sustain a shop full-time but would benefit from us coming around one morning or afternoon a week, or for a day. We’ll do as much of the refills as we can, fresh produce, provisions – things like that.”

A full timetable of where and when the little yellow mobile grocery store will pitch is still in development, but the plans are to be on the road from this month, all going well.

But why do something like this?

“It’s still this passion of mine to make good food accessible and realising that, when there isn’t something like this, what is on offer is very minimal. I think there are a lot of places like that, unfortunately.

“When I was younger, my gran used to have the fish van come round to her house, veg van, milkman - whatever else came around to her door. That impressed on me the importance of accessibility – it’s convenience in a different way. While we wouldn’t be going to people’s doorsteps, hopefully it’ll be close enough to be worthwhile.”

Even where there is a small shop in a village or town, Steph’s ambition is not about stepping on the toes of other businesses.

“I see this as a service. We’re not looking to take business away from anyone; we’re looking to work in tandem with other businesses by adding to it and addressing a need to supply fresh and whole foods to places where there isn’t currently a provision.

“There’s such a disconnect with small communities that don’t have access to these things. Maybe people in those communities want to eat more locally or more sustainably, but the offerings in the place where they live don’t reflect that.”

From Plymouth to Ballinspittle, from illustrator to shopkeeper, Steph’s journey has been anything but straightforward.

“It surprises me how everything has pretty much fed into this, and it’s not been intentional. It really speaks to it being a core belief and tells me more about me than I probably realised. It’s still evolving; maybe I don’t want to do this forever, but maybe I do! Maybe that is the way that I find community.”

See www.gathercommunitygrocery.eutarget="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> or www.instagram.com/gather_communitygrocery