Ireland’s Rich List – Personal grocery shopping founder tipped for future list

Ireland’s Rich List – Personal grocery shopping founder tipped for future list
Devan Hughes of Buymie

The creator of a personal grocery shopping business could hit Ireland’s Rich List in the future – according to an RTE programme which looked at future high earners.

Devan Hughes set up Buymie – a personal grocery shopping service based in Dublin – just as the service became essential for so many in 2020.The CEO and co-founder of Ireland-based Buymie, an app offering same-day grocery delivery, is an unlikely business mogul after four failed start-ups – but with Buymie, it was a case of ‘right place, right time’.

Like most great ideas, it started over a pint in the pub – but what followed was detailed and methodical research.

Although the idea for Buymie was conceived “over a pint of Guinness in an Irish pub,” Hughes was anything but flippant about his “methodical” research. “Ideas are a dime-a-dozen,” he explained, “execution is everything”.

One of the sector’s main attractions was the reality that leading supermarkets struggle to make a profit from online orders. Necessary infrastructure for deliveries, including warehouses and dispatch vehicles, require capital and often shops subsidise delivery costs to attract customers. Hughes saw an opportunity to get stuck in.

Buymie now has partnerships with Lidl and Co-op, and is  now expanding into the UK.

Other entrepreneurs driving forward towards the Rich List are Norman Crowley, CEO of the Cool Planet Group and Studio AVA. He is head of a team who are designing and building electric cars in Ireland (in fact, the first new car to be made in Ireland since the DeLorean). Norman Crowley says: “These ‘hyperclassic’ cars have hypercar performance, they’re very, very, very fast, but they’re classic in their looks and styling. These cars will range in price from a cool €1.2 million to €2 million.”

Ireland’s Rich List is ranked by how much wealth grew in 2020. So while processed meat mogul Larry Goodman is worth €32 billion, he ends up behind Four Star Pizza magnate Michael Holland with his pizza empire worth a cool €98 million.