The Skinny Food Co sells low-calorie products such as ketchup, beef jerky, low-carb rice and ‘100% Pure Cookie Dough Skinny Peanut Butter’. It sells online through its website and via the likes of Morrisons, Spar, B&M, and Holland & Barrett. Wayne Starkey and James Whiting co-founded the Nottingham-based company in 2018 with £3,000. The pair were inspired by diabetic family members and wanted to provide healthier, less calorie-dense alternatives to well-known foods. The Skinny Food Co stocks more than 500 products and generated sales of £17.2m last year.
‘How we’re building a £200m business’
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The story you are about to read contains a particularly pure and intoxicating brand of entrepreneurial spirit. High-proof and triple-distilled, it warms the soul, inducing feelings of optimism and inspiration. If you were to ask – Siri, what is entrepreneurial spirit? – Apple’s virtual assistant could do worse than read you this…
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Until last year, Wayne Starkey still filed his own VAT returns. Many co-founders of four-year-old companies do – old habits die hard and it saves a few quid in accountancy fees. What VAT-DIYers don’t do, however, is turn down £85m buy-out bids. Ever. Yet that’s the jaw-dropping offer Wayne and co-founder James Whiting rejected just a few months ago. Those facts indicate how far and how fast The Skinny Food Co has come since its 2018 launch. They also reveal how down-to-earth yet ambitious these two entrepreneurs are.
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