Entrepreneur plans to deliver your dinner by drone

Journalist Emmet Ryan has a great interview with serial entrepreneur Bobby Healy in the September 2019 issue of The Sunday Business Post’s Connected Magazine.

In an in-depth interview, serial entrepreneur Bobby Healy tells The Sunday Business Post about his latest venture, Manna.aero, a company using drones to transform home deliveries of fast food, cutting costs for businesses while improving the customer experience. Healy says the goal is for Manna’s drones “to be properly airborne, delivering takeaways, by either the end of this year or in early 2020”.

Earlier this year, the Irish Times reported on Manna’s plans to give customers access to more than 1,000 restaurants across Ireland and allow them to select “drone delivery” when ordering food through apps and websites. It will be interesting to watch developments over the coming months and to see whether other businesses follow Healy’s lead in looking to drones for efficiency and customer service enhancement.

Currently, Manna’s team is mostly based in Monmouth, Wales which Healy told the Sunday Business Post is a good location, partly due to its proximity both to Airbus at Newport and the University of Bristol. He said Monmouth compares favourably to Dublin where the cost of rent and getting around has become increasingly expensive.

Rising rents in the capital is a problem that Eolas Recruitment is all too well aware of. We would like to greater profile and support for companies locating outside Dublin because they can give candidates a better quality of life as well as supporting the rural economy.

Another current problem in the capital and elsewhere is the shortage of skilled workers. This is pushing up salaries beyond what some indigenous businesses can afford. Data released by the Central Statistics Office in August 2019 shows that information and communication workers now have the highest average weekly earnings at €1,215—well above the overall average for all sectors of €771.

At the same time, however, the market for IT workers is highly competitive — not just in Ireland but globally — which means Irish employers must keep pace with their international peers when it comes to salaries and relocation packages for senior IT developers.

Our experience is that employers who are willing to meet salary expectations, offer relocation packages, and provide non-financial benefits such as training, mentoring, flexible working, health screening and wellness programmes are more likely to be successful when competing for top tech talent in the current market.

While the multinationals tend to grab the headlines when new jobs are announced, we see opportunities across all sectors of the economy and across all regions of Ireland. For both candidates and employers, the best way to keep abreast of evolving trends is to have a good relationship with a specialist IT recruiter.

Our team at Eolas Recruitment has many years’ experience supporting indigenous and multinational tech businesses so we have an excellent understanding of the skills needed for various roles and, importantly, we can advise candidates — from both tech and non-tech backgrounds— on the best skills to acquire to stay relevant in our rapidly changing economy. For more information and details of how we can help, please contact a member of our team.