🚀 Highlights
I’ve decided to switch these updates from weekly to monthly. Weekly was proving too much to keep up with as Otis ramps up, alongside my own job and family life. Monthly feels like the right rhythm, enough time for things to actually happen and for me to reflect on them properly.

The biggest wins this month:

• We completed the NDRC Pre-Accelerator and pitched at their showcase in the PorterShed. It was an amazing chance to sharpen our thinking and really define what Otis should look like in its earliest form.

• We officially launched paid plans and already have our first few paying customers (a surreal moment, honestly). The aim is to hit 10 paying customers by the end of the month, which should be relatively achievable.

• We’re about to apply for PSSF funding with Enterprise Ireland. We’ve been working on this with a consultant from Furthr for weeks, and if successful, it’ll allow Fintan and Hugh to give more of their time to Otis. That’s a huge step for us.

🧠 Customer Discovery & Strategy
One big takeaway from the Pre-Accelerator and from early user calls is this: if we want to win independents, the product has to be effortless. No training, no friction, it needs to work out of the box from day one.

That’s why we’ve chosen a freemium model: free users can get started quickly, and then once they hit their alert limit, they’ll see there are more insights waiting for them if they upgrade. The goal is to move towards a fully self-serve sales model. It’s a bit of an experiment, but we’re confident it’s the right way to reduce barriers and get more people into the product.

🔧 Product Development
Our focus is squarely on making Otis seamless:

1. Direct mailbox integration – the dream is that when a user signs up and connects their inbox, Otis just starts working in the background. No friction, no setup.

2. Lightweight mobile app – so operators can snap clean, high-quality photos of paper receipts. This came up quickly as a real pain point, so we’re moving on it.

3. Accounting integration – longer term, we want to plug Otis into the bookkeeping workflow. If we can embed ourselves there, we become part of a core process for our customers, which is where we see real stickiness.

📢 Content & Comms
Instagram continues to be our growth lever. Every time we post something with a bit of spark, we see new signups. It’s been great validation of the time we’re spending on short-form content. Substack is growing too, so thank you for reading and supporting us this early.

💭 Looking Ahead
Our big milestone is 100 paying customers by next July. That number feels both tiny and massive. Tiny in the sense that it’s a small slice of the market, but massive because 100 customers is no joke, it means the product is working, and people are happy to pay.

Beyond that, our stretch goal is 250 by the end of 2026, which would let us sustainably pay two salaries. It feels ambitious, but that’s exactly the point.

The last few weeks have been a blur of progress, decisions, and learning. Paid plans going live felt like a turning point – Otis is no longer just an idea or a free tool; people are actually paying for it. That gives us real conviction in what we’re building.

Onward.

And as always – follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and check out our website.

As someone running Mad Yolks in Dublin, this isn’t just an academic exercise, egg prices hit my business directly. Understanding these trends is about more than curiosity; it’s about staying ahead of the forces shaping our costs and, by extension, the prices we offer customers.

📊 Sourcing Ireland’s Egg Price Data

For this analysis, I used official data from Ireland’s Central Statistics Office (CSO), which publishes monthly average retail prices for key consumer goods. In our case, I focused on “medium eggs per half dozen”, going back to 2012.

From there, I:

1. Converted prices to per dozen (by simply doubling the CSO’s half-dozen prices).

2. Plotted them in euros, covering the full period from 2012 through 2025.

🥚 Ireland Egg Prices in EUR (2012–2025)

This immediately reveals two big shifts:

1. A significant drop after 2015: Prices eased from around €1.60 per half dozen to closer to €1.40 by 2017. This aligns with EU-level overproduction following earlier market disruptions.

2. A sharp spike in 2022: Much like in the US, Ireland saw egg prices surge during the avian flu outbreak. While less extreme than in the US, prices still rose steeply, echoing the same global supply chain shocks and cost pressures.

💵 Converting to USD: A Global Benchmark

To make this data globally comparable, I then:

• Pulled EUR/USD exchange rate data from 1999–2025 using the Frankfurter API (a free ECB-backed FX feed).

• Converted all Irish prices into USD per dozen.

Here’s what it looks like:

You can clearly see the same 2015 drop and 2022 spike, directly mirroring the US pattern. Both events were driven by avian flu outbreaks, first in the EU, then later in the US causing massive supply shocks.

🇮🇪 vs 🇺🇸: How Ireland Compares to the US

Finally, I overlaid Ireland’s egg prices (in USD) against the US data, and this is where it gets interesting:

This is where things get interesting.

• Historically higher in Ireland: For most of the past decade, eggs were consistently more expensive in Ireland than in the US, even after accounting for exchange rates.

• Greater US volatility: While Irish prices have stayed relatively stable with only modest spikes, the US data is far more erratic, dominated by disease outbreaks and sharper supply shocks.

• A historic crossover: For the first time, during the 2022–2023 avian flu crisis, US egg prices actually surpassed Ireland’s, highlighting how severe that outbreak was and how sensitive the US market can be compared to Europe’s more regulated system.

🔑 Takeaways

• Ireland’s egg market is steadier: Thanks to EU agricultural systems and supply management, we’ve avoided some of the more extreme swings seen in the US.

• Global shocks still bite: The 2022 spike proves that Ireland isn’t insulated from wider commodity pressures: feed, energy, and disease risk all ripple across borders.

• The US is a cautionary tale: Its egg market shows how vulnerable a leaner, more consolidated production system can be to sudden disease shocks.

For Irish consumers (and businesses like mine), this is a reminder: while we may pay more consistently, our prices are less likely to double overnight, unless we face a severe local outbreak.

🥚 Why This Matters Going Forward

Eggs remain a fascinating proxy for both food inflation and global economic trends. For me at Mad Yolks, this isn’t just theory, it’s part of daily operations. Keeping an eye on these trends helps us anticipate costs, spot risks early, and think more strategically about pricing.

Next, I’ll be expanding this Global Egg Price Index (GEPI) further:

• Adding data from more EU countries (France, Germany, Spain).

• Bringing in emerging markets (Brazil, India) for a fuller global picture.

• Comparing prices against local wages to measure true affordability.

If eggs really are the perfect economic lens, we’re only just getting started.

As it turns out, quite a lot.

Why Eggs Are an Economic Bellwether

Eggs might be one of the purest indicators of purchasing power. They’re globally consumed, nutritionally essential, and relatively uniform in quality across countries.

This makes eggs an excellent lens for comparing cost of living and inflation across borders. Economists have long used benchmarks like the Big Mac Index to measure purchasing power, but I think eggs might be an even cleaner measure: they’re universal, simple, and a staple for nearly every household.

For me personally, this hits even closer to home. Running Mad Yolks means I live and breathe egg prices. Every cent counts when you’re buying in bulk. Watching prices fluctuate not only affects my bottom line but has made me increasingly curious about how eggs track with global economic trends.

The Plan: Building the Global Egg Price Index (GEPI)

Here’s what I’m setting out to do:

• Collect egg price data from as many countries as possible, using official sources like the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Eurostat, FAO, and national statistics offices.

• Normalise the data (price per dozen, converted to USD) and adjust for inflation where appropriate.

• Compare internationally, layering in measures of local purchasing power to see how affordability changes from country to country.

The goal? A single, easy-to-understand index tracking the price of eggs globally over time, a kind of "Egg CPI" that we can use to visualise cost of living, inflation pressures, and even political undercurrents.

Starting Point: The Price of Eggs in the USA

I decided to start with the United States, partly because BLS data is comprehensive and easy to work with, but also because egg prices there have become politically symbolic.

In fact, during the peak of inflation in 2022–2023, egg prices were everywhere in the news. They became a kind of shorthand for household cost-of-living pain and even a talking point during political debates. Many argue that the “egg price crisis” was one of the nails in the coffin of Joe Biden’s re-election hopes.

Here’s what the data shows:

🥚 Egg Prices in the USA: 1980 to Today

From 1980 up until around 2022, egg prices have steadily risen in line with general inflation, but with a few dramatic spikes along the way. For decades, prices largely followed a predictable upward trend, punctuated by seasonal fluctuations.

The first major deviation from this trend came in 2015–2016, when a severe outbreak of avian flu in the US led to the culling of tens of millions of hens. This drove a sharp increase in prices, briefly pushing eggs to levels far above their historical range. However, the spike was short-lived: as flocks were replenished and supply normalised, prices fell back sharply, returning to levels not seen since the early 2000s.

Over the next few years, egg prices fluctuated but remained relatively stable within the historical range until 2022, when they skyrocketed. This surge dwarfed the 2016 spike, marking one of the steepest and most sustained price increases in the history of US egg pricing.

🥚 Egg Prices in the USA: 2020 to Today

Zooming in on the period from 2020 to 2025, the spike becomes even clearer.

• 2020–2022: Prices were relatively stable during the pandemic’s early phase, despite wider supply chain disruptions. Eggs remained affordable, with only modest increases tied to general inflation and shifting consumer demand.

• 2022–2023: Then came the eggflation (sorry!) period. A devastating avian flu outbreak, the worst on record, wiped out more than 40 million laying hens in the US. Combined with already strained supply chains and rising input costs (feed, energy, transport), this created the perfect storm. Prices more than doubled in less than a year, making eggs a headline item in discussions about inflation and cost of living.

• 2024–2025: Since the peak, prices have eased somewhat as flocks were replenished and supply stabilised, but they remain elevated compared to pre-2022 levels. There is little evidence to suggest a return to the prices we saw in the late 2010s any time soon.

Why? Because even though the immediate avian flu crisis has passed, structural factors remain in place:

• Higher baseline costs for feed and energy.

• Persistent labour shortages in agriculture and distribution.

• Greater sensitivity to disease outbreaks, with biosecurity costs baked in.

In short, while prices have cooled from their peak, the likelihood of returning to the “cheap egg” era of the 2000s and 2010s is slim unless there are major productivity gains or policy shifts.

This creates an interesting dynamic: eggs, long seen as one of the most affordable protein staples, may now sit in a permanently higher price band, reshaping how both consumers and businesses (like restaurants) think about them.

Why This Matters for Ireland and the EU

So why does this matter for us here in Ireland? Well, commodity markets are global. While eggs aren’t as heavily traded internationally as wheat or oil, disruptions in one major producer country can ripple outwards.

Ireland and the wider EU are not immune to the same pressures:

• Disease risk (avian flu) could cause sudden local supply shortages.

• Feed and energy costs, which make up a large part of egg production, are tied to global prices.

• Consumer sensitivity to food price inflation means even small jumps hit hard.

Understanding how egg prices move elsewhere might help us anticipate what’s coming here.

Next Up: Ireland’s Egg Prices

Next week (hopefully), I’ll be diving into Ireland’s historical egg price data to see if the same trends appear here. Are we tracking closely with the US? Or is the EU’s agricultural system cushioning us from the volatility?

Stay tuned, and in the meantime, enjoy the charts above. If nothing else, they’re a reminder that even something as simple as an egg can reveal an awful lot about the world we live in.

🚀 Highlights

• We have an interview with the NDRC Pre-Accelerator next week. Getting on this programme would be huge for refining our GTM strategy and sales pipeline.

• Got accepted to the Web Summit 2025 | ALPHA startup programme in Lisbon this November! Hoping we can make it over, it’s a great chance to showcase Otis and meet investors and partners.

• Started prepping for a PSSF funding application through Enterprise Ireland. This will take a few weeks, but it’s a key step for future support.

• More new users joined this week, again driven by an Instagram video. Definitely seeing a strong ROI from this content push.

🧠 Customer Discovery

• Had two in-depth calls with restaurant owners this week, digging into their biggest operational pain points and how Otis could help.

• We’re honing in on a core hypothesis: most B2B hospitality tools fail because their onboarding is awful. This friction is a major barrier to adoption.

• Our north star: consumer-level onboarding simplicity so restaurants can self-serve from sign-up to value without hand-holding. Still work to do, but this is where we’re headed.

🔧 Product Development

• Major improvements to our alerting system:

  • Added a screening process for alerts above certain thresholds

  • Improved overall alerting logic for higher quality notifications

• Started implementing a new sign-in vendor so users can now register with more email domains (not just Gmail).

• Submitted our CRO documents, so we should be officially approved as a limited company within 1–2 weeks.

📢 Content & Comms

• Instagram videos continue to drive signups, confirming this is a growth lever worth leaning into.

• Continuing to build out our Substack audience (if you’re reading this there, thanks for being early!).

💭 Looking Ahead

• Onboarding needs work: user activation is slower than we’d like, a clear sign of friction. This is a key focus for the coming weeks.

• With better onboarding, high-quality alerts, and strong discovery calls under our belt, we’re getting clearer on where to aim Otis.

• Plenty to do, but more conviction each week that we’re on the right track.

And as always - Follow us on instagram, tiktok and check out our website

First things first - Follow us on instagram, tiktok and check out our website

🚀 Highlights

• Soft-launched Otis with an Instagram video last week. We didn’t expect much but it actually more than doubled our beta user base (it was low to begin with, but still!)

• Over half the new sign-ups were people we had no connection with

• Some were industry contacts (restaurant + café owners), but most were totally new

• Also applied to the NDRC Pre-Accelerator. Hoping it’ll help with GTM strategy and getting tighter with the Irish tech ecosystem. Fingers crossed

🧠 Customer Discovery

• Had product feedback calls with two early trial users (will now be referred to as Cohort 1). Valuable input on pricing, usage, and roadmap

• Spoke with someone leading a large hospitality franchise group to test the waters for bigger operators

• Started onboarding Cohort 2 - the new wave of trial users who signed up post insta video

🔧 Product Development

• Made major improvements to our data ingestion pipeline:

  • Added auditing tools and human-in-the-loop checks to improve data quality

• Building out weekly customer reports with:

  • Aggregated alert views

  • Suggested preferred suppliers based on pricing

• The goal is to make alerts more actionable, less “here’s a data point” and more “here’s a clear next step”

📢 Content & Comms

• Planning to push more content on Instagram and TikTok , based off that first video it seems like it will be worth the effort

• Got some early subscribers on Substack (if you're reading this, thank you!)

• The long term plan is to use the content to increase awareness, credibility and eventually, sales

💭 Looking Ahead

• The early signs are very encouraging. We’re getting the right signals, real users, and valuable feedback

• Next priority is to make onboarding as frictionless and self-serve as possible

  • Ideally, a restaurant owner could completely self serve from sign up to alerts and reports with no interaction from us whatsoever

• Excited to keep building and sharing. More to come.
  

And dont forget - follow us on instagram, tiktok and check out the website

This week it emerged that the long-rumoured VAT reduction for hospitality, the one we were told might arrive in Budget 2025, is now likely delayed until mid-2026.

It’s being spun as a cost-saving decision, a halfway introduction in July 2026 would cost “only” €350 million vs a full-year hit of €715 million. That frees up room for other tax cuts in the Budget.

Sure.

But let’s call this what it is: classic government short-sightedness.

What They Don’t Get

In my last post, I talked about the bigger picture, about how closures like Fade Street Social and the loss of 2,100 pubs since 2005 aren’t just isolated stories. They’re data points. Signals. Warnings.

And here’s the truth: this VAT reduction isn’t about passing savings onto customers, it’s about helping the sector survive.

That’s the gravity of it. And it’s being missed entirely.

In a radio interview this week Fianna Fail minister Niall Collins said there’s “little to no evidence” the VAT cut was passed on to customers the last time. That might be true, but it also completely misses the point.

The lower VAT rate isn’t a customer discount scheme. It’s not meant to be some feel-good election bribe. It’s a lifeline for operators who are battling 13.5% VAT, rising wages, spiking energy costs, and every other headwind under the sun.

Final Thoughts

If anything, this slow-walked VAT reduction is just more proof that those setting policy aren’t talking to the people living the outcome.

And that’s a problem. Because eventually, the closures won’t just be pub #2,101 or restaurant #492. It'll be your local. Your favourite. Your own.

We don’t need more dithering or “wait and see” from policymakers. We need action. And we need it now.

Not in July 2026.

But then there are the businesses that break through. The ones that become part of the fabric of the city. The establishments. These places seem to outlast the trends, the ups and downs, the endless churn of openings and closings.

So when news hits that these kinds of businesses are under pressure, or, in the case of Fade Street Social, facing examinership, that’s when you know it’s time to pay attention. That’s when you dig a little deeper into what is going on.

To add to this, a recent report commissioned by the Drinks Industry Group Ireland that shows over 2,100 pubs have permanently closed in Ireland since 2005.

Full report here for those who are interested

That is a staggering number when you think about it.

Both stories were covered as standalone pieces. But if you zoom out even slightly, you start to see a pattern. One that’s been forming for years. And it's worth digging into.

Part 1: The Fade Street Fallout

Let’s start with the examinership.

Last month, Fade Street Social, a well-known Dublin restaurant, filed for examinership.

On paper, it’s post covid recovery is a success story. Turnover bounced from €1.47 million in 2021 to over €5 million (Ooft!) in each of the past two years. It’s busy, it’s central, and it has a strong reputation. But none of that could shield it from reality: €1.74 million owed to Revenue, mostly warehoused VAT and PAYE from the Covid era.

Just six days before filing, Revenue came knocking with a final demand for payment.

So how does a profitable restaurant end up insolvent?

A few familiar reasons:

• 13.5 percent VAT

• Minimum wage hikes (costing €171,902 in extra labour alone)

• Rising supply prices

• A spike in rent after the premises was sold by a related company

• And nearly €2 million in unrepaid intercompany loans to other businesses

While some might shout mismanagement (maybe a little to be fair) there is no denying that this is a business that was caught in the squeeze. Policy changes meant to protect workers and boost tax revenue are unintentionally pushing even strong operators to the edge.

Part 2: 2,100 Pubs Lost (And Counting)

Earlier this month, the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland confirmed what most of us in hospitality already know:

Pubs are closing. Not just here and there, but everywhere, and steadily, for nearly 20 years.

2,119 pubs shut their doors between 2005 and 2024

That’s 112 closures a year, every year, for nearly two decades.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Rural Ireland has taken the biggest hit:

• Limerick: -37.2%

• Offaly: -34.1%

• Cork: -32.7%

• Roscommon: -32.3%

And Dublin? Only a 1.7% dip in the capital while entire counties are losing one-third of their pubs.

This isn’t just a business story, it’s a community crisis. Pubs are more than pints. In rural towns, they’re the social glue, the local therapist, the warm room on a cold Tuesday night. When they go, so does a lot more than just the Guinness tap.

Sure, some closures are natural. Habits change. People drink at home. Disposable income’s tighter. But this isn’t just evolution, it’s attrition. A slow, grinding erosion fuelled by VAT hikes, staffing costs, insurance premiums, and low margins.

The same story again and again and again and again.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

You might look at the Fade Street story and the pub closure trend and think they’re relatively unrelated. Big city vs rural. Multi-million euro groups vs family-owned bars.

But I think they’re two sides of the same coin.

Both are dealing with:

Mounting cost pressures (labour, tax, energy, insurance)

A customer base that’s becoming more price-sensitive

And most of all a government policy environment that is both out of touch and slow to respond

What we’re seeing now might just be the beginning of a second wave of post-pandemic fallout. One that’s less about health and more about solvency.

What Happens Next?

I don’t have a silver bullet here. But if we want to stop seeing headlines like this every week, we need to start talking more honestly about:

• Whether VAT at 13.5 percent is sustainable for food-based businesses (I’ll give you a hint; its not!)

• How realistic is it to expect hospitality operators to shoulder the combined weight of increased minimum wage and auto-enrolment pensions all while battling the ongoing pressures of high inflation

• And whether the current structure of excise and employer PRSI is supporting the sector or slowly crushing it

A few thousand euro in grant funding will not fix this.

A rates rebate will not fix this.

What we need is real, targeted policy change.

Well thought out, long-term, and actually informed by how the industry works on the ground. Because without it, Ireland won’t just lose more pubs and restaurants. We’ll lose a massive part of what makes our towns and cities feel alive.

And once it's gone, we won’t get it back.

Final Thoughts

Hospitality isn’t dying. But parts of it are under severe strain, and the data is telling us as much, loud and clear.

This won’t be the last examinership we hear about. And those 2,100 closed pubs? That number is going to rise unless something changes.

As always, if you’ve thoughts on this, or if you’ve seen similar stories playing out where you are, hit reply or leave a comment. Would love to hear from others in the trenches.

Eoin

So this is my first in hopefully many weekly updates for Otis.

There are many reasons I wanted to document this journey, not least of which is accountability, but I think tracking progress is probably the main reason for now.

I’ll keep this brief and to the point. However, seeing as this is the first update, I’ll give a quick summary of the progress made to date and will start the regular weekly updates from next week.

What is Otis?

Otis is an AI-powered web app that helps restaurants keep on top of their supplier pricing. It works by automatically normalising product names and prices, making it easy to compare similar items across different suppliers. The app includes a real-time alerts engine that notifies users when prices change, helping them react quickly. Once we’ve released a stable V1, we’ll be adding price benchmarking reports so restaurants can see how their prices stack up in the wider market.

Week 0: Progress to Date

To summarise the last few months of Otis in a paragraph: we have developed and launched an MVP, which is now in use with four trial customers (one of which is, of course, Mad Yolks).
(Check out our beautiful landing page here)

We’ve also addressed many of the initial bugs and are close to having a stable product, with what we hope will be a V1.0 release expected within the next 2 to 3 weeks.

On the commercial side, we’ve completed some key legal and structural work, including a founders agreement and company constitution, and we plan to submit our company registration application to the CRO this week.

Looking Forward

Once we get the formalities of setting up the business out of the way, a quick Stripe integration is all that’s standing in the way of converting one of our trial customers into our first paying customer, with hopefully many more to follow.

With that only around the corner, we’re starting to think about our GTM strategy, i.e. how the hell are we going to get more customers?

Thankfully, with a combined 30 odd years of hospitality experience under the belt, myself and one of my co-founders (and also my brother!) Hugh have some contacts we can hit up as early customers. The cold calling can wait for another day... for now.

I have spent the better part of the last two decades working in hospitality, from bars to nightclubs, cafes to restaurants, front of house to back of house, I’ve worn nearly every hat the industry has to offer.

These days, I’m only part-time in hospitality, but its never far away from the mind.

In 2018, myself and my brother started Mad Yolks in a gazebo in St Anne’s Park, and for the following 6 years we ran it together, eventually opening two restaurants in Dublin. I have since left the industry to pursue my other passion; data analytics.

(I jest, of course. Nobody dreams of dashboards at night.)

But here’s the thing, as boring as the world of data may sound, it’s given me a new way of thinking. A belief that correlations, trends, and patterns are everywhere. That probabilities come into play on a daily basis and that in every business, especially in hospitality, data should be revered.

Hospitality as a business is as old as time, but the times are changing and only those that can adapt will survive.

This has never been more true than today. In the world of AI, data is king, and hospitality is no exception.

Why This Newsletter?

That’s why I’ve started this newsletter, to merge my two worlds: hospitality and data analytics, told from the perspective of someone who’s lived both.

This is the newsletter absolutely nobody asked for, but I’m hoping some of you will find it as interesting as I do.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Data-led industry analysis: Pricing trends, food cost analysis, VAT, hospitality closures and more

• Weekly hospitality news roundups from Ireland

• Thoughts on tech, automation, and AI in the sector

• Updates on my side project, Otis, a data platform built specifically for hospitality operators (named after my dog, of course)

More on that soon.