Food-to-go in Ireland: five key features

Gavin Rothwell
Sep 23, 2025
3 min read

In our view, exploring the food-to-go landscape in Ireland should be a critical part of the development journey for anyone involved in food-to-go. It's been seminal for us, in the development of our food-to-go insights provision for our clients and our safaris, and it continues to be a key global reference point. Ahead of our Dublin food-to-go safari on November 13, here are some of the key standout features that have shaped the market.

Retailer commitment to food-to-go is very strong

Food-to-go has long been a longstanding feature of convenience stores, roadside forecourts and supermarkets, driven historically by the deli, the in-store sandwich bar. This has driven expectations around being able to get quality food-to-go in a wide range of locations, and given many retailers the confidence that they can deliver an effective and profitable offer. And chains such as Fresh the Good Food Market (below) have taken this even further, with a focus on breadth of food-to-go offer leading their overall store environments.

2. Strongly driven by a fresh first approach

Fresh led propositions have long been the mainstay of the food-to-go sector in Ireland, and there are some outstanding propositions in this space. Specialists such as Sprout & Co continue to drive this on, while a strong fresh focus has been maintained across most retailers operating in this space. Rising labour costs have however forced some reimagination of how this works in-store, with the hybrid deli at Centra Drumcondra being perhaps the most prominent example of this.

3. Retailers innovate in many ways - including building sub brands

Retailers have been keen to build on their success to take the food-to-go proposition into new areas. Key features of this have been a willingness and prioritisation on the part of retailers and retail support businesses to develop new proposition and evolve them. Of course, in this way, not everything will work, but there have been several notable success stories not least around coffee to go development. Musgrave's Frank & Honest is probably the pioneering success here, but others have also developed their own unique coffee sub brands and propositions, including Braeburn Coffee from Applegreen and Rosa Coffee from Maxol. In the past few months, BWG, which supports SPAR stores in Ireland, has launched its own Brevato coffee brand, both as an in-store bean to cup offer and also as a standalone coffee shop in Dublin.

Away from coffee, there's extensive broader format innovation under way, the refurbished original Donnybrook Fair store being a great example of this.

4. Getting the right balance between made in-store and delivered-in is a focus

Another feature of the market is how the delivered in solutions are evolving - and have become very strong propositions. Around Noon and Deli Lites are two key players here who have built successful operations outside of Ireland in addition to their local market activities. The rising cost of labour has driven in many retailers to reassess how they produce and range in-store, creating a bigger role for delivered in solutions as well as those prepared in-store

5. There's a varied selection of food-to-go specialists to take inspiration from

A great example here is Sprout & Co, the salad and bowl specialist, which has built its own farm as part of its broader sourcing strategy, with its founders also doing some great things around inspiring healthier meals through a wide range of recipe videos. At the same time, there is also good inspiration to take from the likes Griolladh, Cool Hand Coffee, Bread 41 and CARVED.