award winners special
Monday February 4 2019 THE NATIONAL MOTORCYCLE MUSEUM, BIRMINGHAM
Dublin duo’s delight at win
Kate Masterson, joint manager/buyer of The Kitchen Whisk, reflects on her win in The Housewares Innovation Awards 2018 Mum and I have always loved food, cooking,
kitchens and interiors, so a cookshop combined all of those interests into one. We both always wanted to run our own business too, so we decided to do it together. We have over 30 different suppliers and
more than 50 different brands. We offer a wide selection at a range of prices for different kinds of customers. Everyone’s interested in food and cooking these days, and it’s important to us that we cater to them all. We try to stock new, different products that
you won’t find in other housewares shops or department stores, from mini raclettes and banneton baskets to kombucha making kits.
W
e were completely surprised to win the Best Rising Star category of The Housewares Innovation
Awards 2018. We never expected to be nominated for anything in our first year of business, so we’re absolutely delighted. It was also great to be able to take the
trophy back to our five fantastic part-time staff, to show them what all their hard work had gotten us. My mum Mary and I opened The Kitchen Whisk on February 22 2017. We are joint managers and buyers of the shop, which is 1,500sq ft spread out over two floors. We’re lucky to be located on Wicklow Street in Dublin. Right in the city centre, it’s a lovely street with lots of other independent shops. I worked in retail for two years before we
opened The Kitchen Whisk and prior to that did a three month cookery course in Ballymaloe Cookery School [at Shanagarry in County Cork].
We go to trade shows at Frankfurt
(Ambiente), Paris (Mason & Objet) and of course Spring Fair in Birmingham. When selecting goods, we consider the quality, price, how the product looks - and if we would like it in our own kitchen. Our current top five best sellers are Poachies egg poaching bags (€4.95), Kuhn Rikon Stay Clean scrubbers (€7.50), Kilo Crystal bottle
stopper (€5), CKS Zeal Silicone Hot Grab hand mitt (€10.95) and Cole & Mason Self-Watering Herb Keeper (€38.95). We’ve already run some initiatives in-store including a tasting evening of our gourmet food range of jams, pestos, olive oils and chocolate spreads; and a product demonstration for the KitchenAid mixer. We’ve also introduced a knife sharpening service (€4 per blade) and a number cake tin rental service. Our latest project has been getting our ecommerce website up and running, which went live in mid-May. Online shopping is such a huge thing and is so important to have. It can be looked on negatively but luckily for us, it’s a great opportunity. Next on the agenda is in-store cake decorating demonstrations. In late May, customers were shown how to decorate a complete three-tiered ‘unicorn’ themed cake. Unicorns are very popular at the moment: we get a lot of mums in looking for cake decorating products and ideas for unicorn cakes, so we thought we'd start with that. We’ll be doing wedding cake demonstrations as well. We’re lucky to have a very talented member of staff who does incredible cakes!
AT A GLANCE
The Kitchen Whisk 28 Wicklow Street Dublin 2 Dublin Ireland
L-R: The Housewares Innovation Awards 2018 co-presenters Joe Fattorini and Jeremy Pang, winners Kate Masterson and Mary Masterson of The Kitchen Whisk, Matthew Canwell of sponsor KitchenCraft
+353 1 675 3722
info@thekitchenwhisk.ie www.thekitchenwhisk.ie @thekitchenwhisk
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