Cracked Nut, Urban Artisan Au Natural

At the recent AIB Customer’s Christmas Market, we caught up with Dublin’s own Cracked Nut; an urban artisan food market, fresh salad bar and deli located on Camden Street. Speaking to founders and sisters Kelda Clermont and Nikki O'Toole, we chatted about the essence of the Cracked Nut brand, their use of Social Media and what the business is doing to stand out in the market place.

Cracked Nut is absolutely all about natural, healthy food and they specialise in raw, handmade and natural superfoods. Set up two years ago, Cracked Nut won The Irish Times Best Shop Award for best ‘Artisan Food Shop in Ireland’ in 2013. Their specialities include raw natural juices, award winning coffee, matcha green tea, hearty soups, superfood protein balls and much more. Another string to Cracked Nut’s bow is their corporate catering which is proving to be a real hit within Dublin 2 and Dublin 8 and provides artisan food such as breakfast platters, sandwich platters, canapés, salads, quiche and desserts.

The business has grown from two employees to eleven and the concept of Cracked Nut has its roots in Kelda and Nikki’s childhood. Working as a consultant to farmers, natural and wholesome food was introduced to the family by their father from day one. Meringues and other exquisite creations made by their mother were also a staple in the family’s kitchen as she supplied cakes to Cavistons Food Emporium. Since the whole family have been AIB customers for years at the Deansgrange and Cornelscourt branches, Kelda and Nikki decided to continue this relationship based on years of good customer service when starting their business.

Cracked Nut uses Facebook and Twitter as their digital shop front, to create hype and to build their brand which is still relatively new. With an overall strategy of posting daily specials, on-trend products and content surrounding the lifestyle of Cracked Nut’s target audience, they tweet daily and post to Facbeook twice a day. Cracked Nut’s social channels have acted as the company’s primary web presence during the development of their new website. This will include their first online store and is due for launch in early January 2015.

Cracked Nut’s brand of food and drink based social content is continually very popular within online ‘foody’ communities and corresponding blogs. The plan is to link in more and more with these digital communities by expanding their social presence to Pinterest and Instagram in 2015. From a small shop in Camden St., the goal is for the company’s social channels to spread the message and grow the brand locally, nationally and ultimately, internationally.

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