The Salad Project runs five salad bars across London. Florian de Chezelles met his friend and co-founder James Dare whilst studying hospitality management at university. The pair founded The Salad Project with a mission to bring healthy and quick food to customers living and working in the City. The duo launched their first site in Spitalfields Market in May 2021, and has since expanded its presence, with five restaurants across London. To support its growth, the business has partnered with recognised chefs, such as Deliciously Ella and Max La Manna, to introduce curated salad offerings. The company has raised £2.7m in equity investment, which it has reinvested into product offerings, people, and expansion. The investment helped boost sales from £600k in 2021 to £5m in 2023.
The more success we have, the harder it gets…
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Dragons’ Den’s Jenny Campbell: “If people lack self-belief, energy and attitude, you won’t believe in them.”
Jenny Campbell does not do negative. If you fancy a moan about the weather, go elsewhere. If your toast landed butter-side down this morning, keep schtum. With Jenny, you’ll do well to keep it positive and energetic. Future Dragons’ Den contestants beware…
‘The reality of being a founder…you make it up as you go along!’
Passenger Clothing sells durable outdoor clothing and accessories directly to the consumer. Based in the New Forest, it prides itself on being a responsible brand rooted in nature, connection and wellbeing. The company promises to plant a tree for every order and uses lower footprint materials like recycled cotton, hemp, recycled plastic and organics. In addition, its headquarters is powered by UK-generated renewable electricity.
How to launch a business during a crisis
Alexia Inge co-founded Cult Beauty with no funding, during a deep global recession. Today, they employ over 130 people and turn over £104m. With coronavirus creating such huge uncertainty, we thought we’d sit down with Alexia to hear more about how savvy entrepreneurs can find opportunities at the unlikeliest of times…
We turned £3,000 savings into a multi-million pound clothing brand
Founded by Samantha and Stephanie Frost in 2013, Pretty Lavish started their company in their Hertfordshire living room, aiming to fill a market gap for affordable, high-quality clothing. Gaining popularity, the company opened its first store in 2017 and thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic by focusing on knitwear and lounge attire. Leveraging Instagram and TikTok, […]
FRIVE: Growing a £75M Food Brand from Rock Bottom
George Taylor, founder of FRIVE, joins us to share how he went from addiction and chaos in East London… to building one of the UK’s fastest-growing healthy food brands. This isn’t just a meal prep business. It’s a company built around a much bigger mission: Fixing Britain’s relationship with food. At 23, George was at […]
“We started out with one cow”
Business origin stories are often intriguing and inspiring, but that of free-range meat-box supplier field&flower is even better – it’s sublime. Because co-founders James Mansfield and James Flower launched their £13m food business in 2012 not with a glitzy website or fancy app, but with a single cow. The two James’s (we’ll stick to surnames from now on for clarity) met at agricultural college, but this wasn’t your typical farmer-farmer friendship. Mansfield is a South London lad who somehow ended up studying agriculture: