Our Mission:

To Promote Healthy Lifestyle Awareness in All Children.

 

We have met so many parents who wished there was an easy way to have their children WANT to eat a Healthy Lunch at school. Carambola has found the way!

 

The 2-minute video below gives a tour of our premises where we produce convenient Healthy School Lunches for children all over Ireland. To find out more, watch the video and then click here.

 

 

 

Our History

Carambola was founded in 2003 by Colm O’Brien and his wife, Aideen.

 

 

They left successful careers in Dublin in 1998 for opportunity in Limerick and purchased the Bewley’s Cafe Franchise for Limerick City, operating out of 7,000 square feet of prime retail space on Cruises St, a pedestrian shopping street in the heart of the city.

 

In 2001, the region was devastated by the outbreak of ‘Foot and Mouth’ disease which all but turned off the tourist tap with the effect of the local economy flattening. 9/11 dealt a further blow, ensuring that the American tourist would be slow to travel again through 2002. All of this coupled with a rent review in 2002 (towards the peak of the, now infamous, Celtic Tiger) meant that the Bewley’s large cafe model was outdated. The writing was on the wall. Our cafe business would not survive.

 

Anxious to look for opportunity, they rebranded Bewley’s to ‘Cruises Cafe’ and set about looking to expand that brand of coffee shop, including launching Cruises Cafe Kiosks on the Liffey Boardwalk in Dublin in April 2003. It was on one trip to Dublin around that time that Colm met ‘the man on the train’ who would be the catalyst to change our lives!

 

The man on the train was on business too. They exchanged business cards; he was with Paul Partnership, an organization in Limerick working with Community Services against Social Exclusion… Colm’s card had a strapline: ‘What can I do for you?’ The man asked what did that phrase mean? Colm replied that it could mean something to him and something entirely different to someone else, for example, if in six months time he needed a ladder, perhaps he might call Colm and he would either be in a position to help him out, or if not, put him in touch with somebody else who can. Simple concept.

 

As it happens, six months later Colm heard back. The train man had left the organization, however his boss, Tim Meagher, told Colm he had his card and asked were we interested in tendering for a ‘healthy school lunch pilot project’? We were thrilled! Perhaps this would allow us trade our way out of the cafe difficulties, so Colm said yes!

 

We won the tender! We started supplying 27 kids in Corpus Christi National School in Moyross, an underprivileged area of North Limerick. Today, we are supplying up to 75,000 lunches per week to children in over 100 schools across the Republic of Ireland.

 

 

 

 

In 2012, Carambola Kidz will celebrate serving our 10,000,000th (yes, TEN MILLIONTH) Healthy School lunch.