Edwina Donnellan built her family’s Centra into a pillar of the local Ennis community.
‘I’ve had some very deep conversations on the shop floor with customers’: Edwina Donnellan, CEO of Donnellan’s Centra in Ennis In this article, in collaboration with The Currency, the winner of the Family Business category in the IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year Awards 2024 talks to Alice Chambers about having an €11m turnover; the power of local business and the broader challenges of the retail sector in Ireland.
While a lot of tourists and holidaymakers stop by on their way to Lahinch or Doolin, many more shoppers are from the area.“We have our local farmers coming in, doing the full basket shop, coming in for the chat,” says Donnellan. “Neighbours always meet, they’d be talking for ages outside. They nearly have a chat more here than they would at mass.”
“It has to be your local area, your local schools and your customer base,” she said, “you’ll have your budget, and you have to stick within that… otherwise, it would get totally out of hand.” Donnellan particularly stresses how useful it has been to get access to additional training through Musgraves. She went straight from school into the family business. “I didn’t really get the chance to do third-level education, because I was here, and it was a baptism of fire.”
Donnellan’s sells, on average, over 1,900 cups of coffee a day , such a high volume that the shop has been chosen for trial to sell iced coffee and are now testing that. But it’s obviously working for her. About half of Donnellan’s staff have been there for more than 10 years, and many of the others are college students who stay with Donnellan’s Centra their whole four years before moving on after their degrees finish.
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