He started off as a college student looking for nutritious snacks to eat in college, and since then, Ballydesmond native Matthew Collins has gone on to develop a very successful company that supplies healthy, delicious snacks to over 400 outlets across Ireland.
The Sibly Food Co. began in 2018, and it originated when Matthew was studying to be a PE and English teacher at University of Limerick. He turned to his parents’ kitchen to create nutritious and healthy snacks that didn’t compromise on taste to bring with him to lectures.
Matthew successfully created a set of bakes, energy balls and treats that tasted great, and they went down a treat with his fellow students. “If you open a bag of snacks around people in college, everyone is going to put their hand in,” he says.
His friends were really impressed by his creations and suggested to Matthew that he should sell them. He kicked off by setting up a stall at a Christmas market in Kanturk in 2018, which went very well.
Encouraged by the positive reaction, Matthew went on to open an office and gather a team of staff around him, and he now supplies hundreds of stores all over the country. Each product is made to provide a balanced source of protein, fibre and flavour that fits into any lifestyle.
“I said I would go fully at it while at home during Covid and then had to do a year of teaching, but we’ve grown it from seven or eight outlets to just over 400,” he says.
His energy balls are stocked by Aldi, after Sibly applied for the ‘Grow with Aldi’ programme in 2022. It was selected as one of five winners of the supplier development programme, which saw the company get mentorship as it scaled its production. It also won a silver medal at the Blas na hÉireann Awards.
Matthew sources his ingredients as locally as he can, and they include Flahavan’s oats and honey sourced in Tipperary. Packaging and transport are all handled by Irish companies.
Another strand of the business is Seventy7, a coffee trailer in the heart of Ballydesmond that serves drinks like coffee and hot chocolate and quality treats, snacks and food.
As the business continues to thrive, the ambitious Matthew intends to grow and develop the range and spread the message of the products’ great taste and nutritional value far and wide.
“The end goal is to feed as many people as possible with the highest quality snacks possible,” he says.
For more information on The Sibly Food Co., see here.
