The Better Market is a newly launched online marketplace for healthy, organic groceries that its founder, Ian Rafferty, says will cost roughly 20 per cent less than the recommended retail price for the same products from main street stores.
Rafferty spent almost 20 years working in the distribution of health foods and natural products, and while consumer interest in better quality and more sustainable products has grown in this time, so too has people’s frustration with how expensive these products can be.
“The cost was making it difficult for a lot of families to buy the better products all of the time, and this led me to question if there was another way of getting quality products to consumers at more accessible prices,” Ian Rafferty says.
“Better products often pass through several layers of margin before reaching the consumer, and of course traditional retail also carries the cost of physical stores, high staff costs and other significant overheads.
“Changing this was going to require a completely different approach and this is where the idea for a membership model came in. Our members pay €60 a year to use the platform, but in return they get access to around 2,000 products across grocery, household, beauty care and supplements at significantly lower prices.
“A member spending €100 per month with us, and this isn’t a huge basket, would have a net saving of around €240 per year,” Rafferty adds. “An example is Pukka tea. It normally retails at around €4.65. We sell it at €3.70. Over a year at three cups a day, that’s a saving of €63. That covers the membership fee with just one product.
“By operating online, keeping the model lean and using membership income to support the business rather than relying entirely on product margin, we can pass our efficiencies on to our customers,” Rafferty says. “I also wanted to take products that can sometimes feel niche or premium and make them a more realistic part of the everyday grocery shop. With Better Market customers can do their entire non-fresh shop in one place, whenever it suits them.”
Rafferty set up the Better Market in January, but the idea had been kicking around in his head for a while before that. However, he took his time with the planning and was quite strategic when it came to shaping his career for what he hoped would be the entrepreneurial path ahead.
Having studied hotel management in Shannon, followed by a BComm at Galway University, Rafferty worked in catering before joining what was then the fledgling distribution company Independent Irish Health Foods. He spent almost a decade with the company, including five years as head of sales. By then he knew the natural products sector inside out, but rather than jumping straight into starting his own business, he took three formative detours.
There is a real disconnect between supermarkets promoting their healthy eating credentials and what shoppers encounter in-store
Ian Rafferty
The first was a year spent studying full-time for an MBA at the UCD Smurfit School. The second was to join food and beverage distributor Richmond Marketing as national sales manager, and the third was to become sales director at young Irish start-up Strong Roots, which was subsequently acquired by the giant frozen foods company McCain.
“At Independent Irish Health Foods, the management team were all from similar backgrounds, and after a while the decisions became similar too, and you end up immersed in one sector, and it’s easy to become quite insular,” Rafferty says. “I felt I had lost touch with mainstream business, having spent 10 years in a health foods bubble, so it was time to move.
“My MBA class was international, and I suddenly found myself solving problems with people from totally different backgrounds, cultures and countries with diverse experience, and there was also the excitement of learning about new management thinking and practices across many different industries. It was a really great year and one well spent.”
Rafferty joined Richmond Marketing after his MBA, and while the Richmond name won’t mean much to most people, its brands will, as they include Red Bull, Fulfil, Ritter Sport and Fever Tree.
“It was quite a culture shock to go from health foods to high-profile international brands, but I wanted the experience of working with a company that was internationally renowned for its marketing, product development, operations and field sales,” Rafferty says.
“In Richmond I spread my time across multiple brands, so it was a real luxury to then join Strong Roots and to dig deep into a single brand,” he adds. “McCain had bought a small share of Strong Roots at this time, and it was really interesting to see how the company was being structured for future capacity, with particular emphasis on the US market.”
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Rafferty rejoined Independent Health Foods in 2023 as commercial director following its acquisition by Bellingham Capital, and he remained with the company for almost three years before resigning to set up the Better Market.
“I don’t want the Better Market to be a niche health food website aimed only at people who already shop this way. The bigger opportunity is the mainstream grocery shopper who wants to make better choices but is put off by price, doesn’t live near a specialist retailer or simply doesn’t know where to start,” Rafferty says.
“There is a real disconnect between supermarkets promoting their healthy eating credentials and what shoppers encounter in-store where prime shelf space and huge promotional displays are often dominated by the biggest food companies with the deepest marketing budgets and often the unhealthiest foods.”
Rafferty is aiming to attract a healthy portion of new members from the estimated 1.64 million grocery shopping households in Ireland.
The Better Market has been family funded. Rafferty estimates the start-up costs so far at around €150,000 which has gone into stock, warehousing, branding, marketing, customer acquisition and building the ecommerce platform. The company is using Shopify at the front end with bespoke back-end and user-experience development.
“We’re not trying to put health food shops out of business as they’re a vital part of Irish retail, but anyone who shops in them regularly will have noticed that their food offering has been going down while the amount of supplements they’re selling has been going up as supermarkets have become more active in the health foods space. But the big issue still remains price,” Rafferty says.
The Irish support system for start-ups is generally considered good, but it’s heavily weighted towards tech, services and exports, which leaves new businesses that don’t fall under these headings out on a limb, as Rafferty discovered.
“There is something of a gap when it comes to financial support for a retail business like ours,” he says. “As an ecommerce retailer, we don’t fit neatly into or are excluded from many LEO grant categories, while many of the Enterprise Ireland supports are geared towards businesses focused on exporting and employment growth. We are innovating primarily through our business model and route to market, and I think there is scope for a support system that recognises this type of innovation more strongly.”