On a Sunday afternoon in May 2015, Niall Maloney bought an ice cream maker in Lidl. The idea was to trial a low-fat, low-sugar, high-protein healthy dessert that had alluded the health-food market and eager sweet-teeth athletes alike.

Fast-forward 300 recipe trials later, constant innovation and relentless hard graft, Maloney finds his product perched on numerous supermarket shelves nationwide.

But how did Pow Cow and Maloney find themselves commanding shelf space alongside the biggest players in the industry?

Early career and background

Day to day, the workload to get the company off the ground, surviving and holding its own has been enormous. However, Moloney’s impressive pre-Pow Cow CV would suggest he has always been busy.

A Mayo native, Moloney began his third-level education in UL, studying food science and health before transferring to the University of Hertfordshire to study nutrition and dietetics after a year in UL.

Qualifying as a registered dietitian, the Mayo man returned to Ireland at the height of the recession in 2010, taking up a job with Aramark in their nutrition and dietetics department.

At the same time, he studied a part-time masters in sports exercise and nutrition in Coventry. As Maloney developed his CV at Aramark, he began working with athletes within Connaught Rugby, as well as GAA players and endurance athletes.

This led to his appointment as the lead catering dietitian at the London Olympics back in 2012, at the age of 21. It was his final position at Nutricia (the medical division of Danone) as a sales manager – along with the combination of skills learned in the industry over the previous five years – that equipped Maloney to take on breaking one of the toughest markets.

Pow Cow’s creation

“As I worked with athletes, one of the most common things I kept hearing was lack of healthy desserts on the market. I mean, there are only so many times I can suggest an apple when I get asked what my recommendations are for a sweet snack.

“As well as this, I used to constantly tell athletes to get in their protein requirements. There came a stage where the rugby players would say to me: ‘If you suggest I eat another chicken breast I will slap you across the face with it.’ When a 6’3 rugby player starts to say that to you, you know you need to come up with a suitable solution.”

And so the idea of Pow Cow rose its head. What ensued after Maloney bought the ice-cream maker in Lidl on that Sunday afternoon was months of attempting to re-shape conventional thought on how ice cream should and could be produced.

“Fat and sugar give ice cream various properties, such as taste and freezing point. For me to make a healthy product, I had to largely remove these while keeping other properties,” he explains.

Maloney re-invented the wheel, to a certain degree. In his attempt to get a healthy frozen yoghurt to the market, he had to learn the science behind making ice cream and re-work it.

What he created was a low-fat, low-sugar Greek-style strained yoghurt. With less than 110 calories and 15g of protein per serving, the 28-year-old has brought to the market a product that offers the healthy sweet option that those in his previous jobs once hounded him for. Market research done well, I think we can agree.

Onto the shelves

May 2017 saw Maloney introduce Pow Cow onto the shelves. Up to the present, its growth across Ireland has been as impressive as it has been rapid. Firstly appearing in SuperValus across Ireland, it now sits in 200 Lidl stores too. Something the Mayo man finds hard to grasp: “Seeing them on the shelves is incredible. When you have big contracts like SuperValu and Lidl, it is surreal,” he explains.

“Originally, we were one of 30 companies put in Lidl stores back in September 2017, as part of their Best of Irish Kickstart Programme. We were given a two-week trial and we had the majority of our stock sold out after five days. That is when Lidl saw the potential in the product,” he said.

Being an entrepreneur

It would be disingenuous to indicate that it has been plain sailing for Maloney. The stress and pressure on a start-up in a pressurised marketplace can be restrictive. Irish Country Living asked him if there were ever moments of doubt or fear in his decision to start an agri-food business.

“Literally every day. Not a day goes by that you don’t. You think about it all the time. As a business owner, when things go well you are always conscious of what might be around the corner. From the start, you think: ‘How will I get this recipe right?’; ‘Where will I get it made?’; ‘Will supermarkets take it?’ Then when you get to the shelves, you have a whole host of other challenges. As a businessman, you are always aware of what could go wrong – and that is what drives me on.”

Coinciding with stocking on Lidl’s shelves, Pow Cow also got accepted on the Food-X programme, which picks the top-10 food companies in the world with the greatest opportunity of breaking into the American market. Maloney has resided stateside since the end of last year, attempting to bring the product to the American customer. From trialling 300 recipes in his kitchen, to producing Pow Cow in a small factory in Offaly, to being in 200 Lidls around Ireland, to now living in Boston attempting to sell the product stateside – Maloney’s journey as an agri-food entrepreneur has moved at 100 miles an hour. He is used to it by now. CL