Hey, my name is Aisling O’Halloran and I’m a final year student in BSc Food Marketing & Entrepreneurship (FME) at Cork University Business School (CUBS) at University College Cork (UCC). I originally chose this course as I took Biology and Business during my Leaving Cert, and I simply couldn’t pick which avenue I wanted to pursue a career in. I felt that this course would provide me with both aspects of Food Science and Business and that way I could keep both doors open for the future. I’m so grateful I put this 1st on my CAO for multiple reasons; the skills I’ve acquired, the confidence I’ve gained, the friendships I’ve created and the connections I’ve made already within the food industry this early into my career.
A key element of the FME undergraduate programme is the 6-month work placement you complete from March to August in 3rd year. It’s a great opportunity to bring all the learnings and skills you’ve learned from lectures and apply them in real-life scenarios and workplaces. Similarly, you gain many skills and insights throughout this time that you can feed back into college just in time to complete your Final Year Project. Placement can offer you both personal and professional growth!
I was fortunate enough to complete my 6 months in Musgrave here in Cork. Here, I was a Design Intern working with the Own Brand Team to help design Supervalu and Centra Own Brand products. This placement was particularly rewarding as I saw the products and their designs on shelves in the following months which in my opinion can be more rewarding than any first-class honours (within reason!).
I acquired many skills and knowledge from the modules and extra-curricular activities I completed across my first 3 years in UCC, and this undoubtedly set me up accordingly when I began this internship. I was able to apply learnings from my modules particularly with Dr. Lana Repar and Dr. Joe Bogue which included; ‘Introduction to Food Marketing’, ‘Digital Food Marketing and Branding’ and ‘Market-oriented New Food Product Innovation’. In these classes I learned the key elements of strategic branding and how a design should differ depending on who your target market is. Here we looked at many case studies and analysed what these brands did right and what others did wrong! Throughout my time in Musgrave, I worked on 5 different brands across both stores which included; Signature Taste, Supervalu, Daily Basics, Centra, and Inspired By Centra. When researching designs for the Top Tier brands I understood that this design should be more premium and appeal to a more niche market compared to the Value Range designs.
Of course, with ‘Marketing’ there comes ‘Pitching’ which we were exposed to since 1st year and thanks to this my presentation skills came easy to me while on my placement. Additionally, the PowerPoint, Excel, and Report skills I learned in college were applied but also improved in Musgrave. For many college assignments there is an element of desk research which includes reading reports, journals and surfing the web for reliable resources and references. I put these research skills to use when I completed a ‘2024 Design Trends Report’ which I then presented to the Own Brand Team where they can hopefully take inspiration from.
Finally, as basic as it sounds – my note taking skills that I developed here in college were used on a daily basis in Musgrave. Any amendments to the design I had to take down quickly and ensure we followed up on them after the meeting. I learnt that it’s very easy to forget something if it’s not written down!
Lastly, working in Musgrave was a full circle moment for me as I was involved in the Musgrave Food Academy Programme since 1st year. Through this I worked with other FME students and Irish Entrepreneurs to help improve any element of their business they briefed us with. Here, I experienced a real-life project within the food industry as well as beginning to grow my network in Musgrave already. As a result, the company wasn’t a stranger to me when it came to placement, and it made my onboarding process less daunting.