The Smooday self-serve smoothie machine in Ballindine.
Picture yourself on a Friday evening. College is done for the week and you’re heading back home to the local backwater to spend the weekend behind the bar in your old local just to make ends meet. Every fibre of your body aches from a gym session and a pitch session within two days, while every fibre of your head also aches as the beer from last night catches up with your brain. Now you’re faced with sitting in the Galway traffic as everyone has the same idea, followed by the monotonous road home.
And, until now, all you had to look forward on the way home was the tumultuous choice between a coffee and a soft drink while pulling in to fill the car with fuel.
But times are changing. A north Galway based initiative is building a brand among students, athletes, and anyone else that finds themselves unable to resist their product. Meet Smooday, Ireland’s first self-serve smoothie machine provider, whose fruity goodness seeks to transcend the gap between refreshment and nutrition.
Smooday is a European first, using pre-prepared cups of frozen fruit, blended in front of your eyes into an ice-cold smoothie. The brand has adapted to cover five signature flavours to meet wide pallet demands, whether it’s the charmingly alliterated Peach Passion or Tropical Treat, the evocative imagery of Acai Kick and Raspberry Heaven, or the flagship Strawbananza.
Smooday’s co-founder, Jack Kirrane, told me about the origins of the venture.
“About two years ago now myself and Cathal [Kelly] sat down. We went to primary and secondary school together, and we just had a chat one day and decided we’d like to start something,” Jack said. “At the time I was working in Dublin and spending a good bit of time on the road. We were both into sport, health and fitness and we noticed that there was no real healthy options available for consumers.”
The process behind making your Smooday is straightforward. Simply take the cup of frozen fruit from the adjacent freezer, remove the seal and place it into the machine. From here the technology adds a shot of apple juice for the consistency and blends it into a perfect liquid in just 60 seconds.
Jack and his business partner, Cathal Kelly, hail from Milltown in North Galway. Their opposite backgrounds, Cathal in engineering and Jack in food, allowed them to ideally complement each other in the founding of Smooday.
“I studied food and agribusiness in college, and we put our two heads together and came up with this idea,” Jack continued. “We saw it abroad originally, the concept originated in Japan, and we thought it’d be a good option for consumers in Ireland, especially the health-conscious consumer.
“We had a chat about the retail industry with a local business owner Danny McHugh, owner of McHugh’s Spar in Ballindine, just to get a bit of advice as we didn’t know anything about the industry, and he said we could try it here if we want!”
Since launching in early 2025, the brand has grown exponentially, carving out a niche in the nationwide market for a quick, easy, nutritious drink while making a pit stop at a petrol station. After the success of their pilot machine in Ballindine, Co Mayo, the lads began setting up stations with their tasty fruit and signature cups at other locations.
“We’re not just sending the machines in, we’re also producing the cups and it takes a bit of thinking I suppose. We produce the cups in-house in Athenry. It took months and months of planning to get our first machine operating and then we just started to roll them out. I think last summer we had about five machines operating and now we have 27 of them.”
No doubt that the Smooday has emerged as a viable alternative for those on their travels, in particularly commuters, athletes and students. Some notably athletes within GAA circles have endorsed the product, including Westmeath’s Luke Loughlin, Roscommon’s Enda Smith and Mayo’s all-Ireland winning captain Jack Coyne, each seeing it as a source of fuel and a healthier product than the regulars. Jack explained to me the health benefits of a Smooday.
“I suppose you’re getting 150 grammes of fruit in each cup. The Food Safety Authority recommendation is five portions of fruit and veg a day and that’s two of them, with no additives or preservatives compared to other drink products in the fridge. And the vitamins you’d get off it would be a lot better. Some people especially in this day and age can get sick of coffee and drinking two or three cups a day, it’s nice to have a different option.”
Of the 27 locations Smooday has nationwide, many are in proximity for commuting students in Galway. The brand has outlets in Ballindine, Tuam, Athlone, Roscommon and Galway. More recently they’ve even moved away from petrol stations, adding machines in the food court at ATU Sligo and the departure lounge at Ireland West Airport Knock to the arsenal. It seems fitting that just when coffee and soft drinks develop a monopoly of sorts over this particular market, an alternative such as Smooday can appear.
So on your next long, hungover commute home, think of the tagline on each Smooday machine: “Live each day the smooth way!”
Sonny McGreevy is SIN’s Deputy Editor and co-Sports Editor for 2026/2027. He is a final year student of English, Creative Writing and History. He has written for SIN for 3 years, mainly around sports and occasional politics. When he’s not presenting his Gaelic football show on Flirt FM or peering over a fence at a local GAA pitch, he's slicing a golf ball into the nearest pond or propping up a Sult table letting everyone know he's from Roscommon.