Christina and Derek Thompson
Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
(NIV – John Ch 6 v 35 )
Who are Gluten Free Ireland?
On the island of Ireland there are two main Coeliac charities, Coeliac Society of Ireland (CSoI) in the Republic and Coeliac UK (CUK) in Northern Ireland where we live.
Both are funded mainly by membership fees and information is largely only available to their paid up Members. (My wife is Coeliac and is a member of CUK.)
However, CUK has had practically no input into Northern Ireland so we started our website, Gluten Free Ireland, to help support local Coeliacs and then found that many Coeliacs from the Republic started to follow making us an “all island” source of information.
We work with the Foods Standards Agency in Northern Ireland (FSA) and Safefood in Cork which acts as an umbrella for our FSA and the Food Safety Authority in the Republic.
In 2018 we were invited by Safefood and the FSA in Belfast to join them in speaking to all the Catering Colleges in Northern Ireland about Allergens in general and Coeliac Disease in particular.
We have also been on the annual judging panel for the Dublin based Irish Free From Food Awards since it started six years ago.
Over the past few years we have established good working relationships with the Coeliac Society of Ireland and Coeliac UK.
Coeliac Awareness has improved greatly but current and newly diagnosed Coeliacs still find eating out and purchasing suitable Gluten Free products two of their biggest challenges and our advice is freely available to anyone with an internet link as almost all our income comes from Gluten Free food producers.
To work with us a company needs to join the Suppliers Page of our Website where the basic cost is just £120.00 a year (Sterling) or Euro equivalent – (that’s roughly one cup of decent coffee a week)! – You can see who we already work with here – http://www.glutenfreeireland.com
Once a business has joined as a Supplier and provided all the contact details and a bit of background information they can then give us any news about their products, stockists etc and we will relay it to our Followers who come from across the island of Ireland, Great Britain and even further afield.
(We have also run very popular Facebook competitions on behalf of advertisers so that’s something to consider and we do have a few spaces on the website for larger adverts.)
As well as our website our main interaction is on Social Media where we currently have 11,900 + Followers on Facebook, over 3,800 on Twitter, over 1,000 on Instagram and we also produce an occasional Newsletter.
Joining us is a useful way to bring your products in front of potential customers for a very low investment.
I must emphasise, we are not a “high powered” marketing company. We are simply a family trying to assist the Coeliac community live the gluten free lifestyle as easily as possible and at the same time help promote companies, like yours, which have set out to provide gluten free options for Coeliac sufferers!
I don’t assume you’ll join us but if you are interested we would be delighted to have you on board.
I can be reached by email at – derek@glutenfreeireland.com