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Published 00:10 20 Dec 2016 GMT
I started this site because I love Dublin. Hence the name. I think something remarkable is bubbling up here after the recession and tech and food are at the heart of the recovery. The city has a new life and a new identity that is starting to catch up with Berlin, SF and NY. I didn't start writing here with any great vision and only wanted to focus on stuffing my face and eating out more. I was pretty stunned when more than my granny and my 2 dogs started reading it it so I decided to add in some "no bullshit" recipes. With just 20,000 visitors a month in early 2013 it was only really a side hobby. A labour of love. Then the fecking thing started growing faster than I could ever imagine to the point where we have 200,000 visitors every month with 90% of them coming from Dublin today. I had to hire the wonderful Nicola to manage the ever growing community and we launched new features including a visual search engine for restaurants. I'd love to say there was some super detailed business plan that had all this mapped out but there wasn't. In the last 2 months I started thinking about how to make it a little bigger than just me and there are a bunch of new things coming throughout Feb and 2014 in general but the first is 2 newbies you'll be seeing here. A couple of random conversations led to these people joining the team and the one thing that shines out for me was their love of Dublin and their shared vision of what this site could become. They just got the vision even better than I did for the site and I got inspired talking to them...
Jamie is passionate about food and tech and found Lovin Dublin via social media. We sat down and talked about it informally a couple of times and he is jumping in as "chief friend of the site" and will be contributing some content as we grow. We shared the same passionate outlook for great design, wonderful products and content that is remarkable. You'll probably all know Jamie from the rugby side of things but his passion for Dublin and the tech sector will also shine through.
Caroline is just finishing up as Senior editor at entertainment.ie and joining the team here full time in March. She'll be in charge of all content and making sure we only create remarkable stuff. She has also promised to fix my spelling and Grammar. Here is what Caroline had to say about joining the site..
As a dedicated home-bird and devoted foodie, Lovin Dublin is about as dreamlike a career move as I could hope to achieve. To work for a publication that deals predominantly with with our love for food (hold up, you don't live for your next meal? What's wrong with you!) and one that's based in Dublin and centered around all that's happening in my favourite city, well, you can't get much more appetite-whetting than that.For the past few months, I've watched with wide eyes as all that Lovin Dublin has to offer spread through the various social media channels, turning the heads of the countless Dublin folk who can't get enough of their grub; if there's one thing we who reside in the pale are after, it's where and what to eat.
I'm beyond excited to get started at Lovin Dublin, where we hope to build an already fantastic blog into a must-read website featuring all that you could wish to know about food, life in Dublin and plenty more.
Watch this space, and while you're at it, fetch me some fat pants.
I'm a firm believer that most online content is a race to the bottom at the moment. Cheap copies of large international sites like Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post and Business Insider litter all local markets. Stick up a load of Gifs, do some growth hacking and then sell banner ads is a model that won't last forever. We want to do something completely different here and create a site that will become the go to spot for Dubliners. You'll never see banner ads flashing in your face but we will offer beautiful integrated content for brands where we see a fit. While the food is 100% food focused at the moment you can expect it to branch out in new directions with our team mirroring our own passions. We've been kicking some ideas around and all loves sites like Highsnobiety, GQ and The Verge. We don't know what it will look like until March as we work away in the background but you can expect the site and all the ways in which you access it to feature beautiful design.
The site to date has always been about food and that will be where I continue to add reviews and recipes. What I've discovered though is that by eating out more I've come to love Dublin more as a city. Food is an important part of our lifestyle but there are many more elements that are important to Dubliners. The overall vision with LovinDublin is to offer people a better lifestyle in their own city. Help them discover things they never knew existed be it shops, bars, clubs, sports or tech. As I said there are one or two more surprises coming down the tracks but thats a couple of good ones to get you started for the week. As they say in the business....fuck yeah!
