Member Article

Crave’s signature marinade on route to supermarket success

Karen’s Spicy Marinade has been used in a number of dishes and has been Crave’s signature dish for over fifteen years. Placement on supermarket shelves is the next goal, which is looking very achievable.

Karen Riley from Crave describes the many challenges she has faced on her long business journey.

Operating from her little Sandwich Shop in the heart of Kirkham, Karen offers a broad range of home-made dishes, as well as an outside catering service to businesses and individuals for a variety of occasions, such as meetings, weddings, birthday parties and anniversaries.

Karen’s ultimate goal though is to introduce her signature spicy marinade to the supermarket shelves. Karen’s lucky customers, both in the shop and outside catering customers, have been enjoying this for many years and Karen believes the marinade is so delicious and versatile that it could be used with many ingredients such as chicken, king prawns and salmon.

Karen commented, “We’ve been making Karen’s Spicy Marinade for over 15 years and are currently in the process of getting it retail ready for supermarkets. It’s not been the easiest of journeys and we’re delighted to have finally reached this stage but have some way to go still. Our major barriers have been getting every aspect of the business ready to move forward … this has taken many years and we are ready now to take it to the next level. Accountancy support was a major issue and three accountancy firms later, we were left feeling incredibly frustrated and bewildered, due to the lack of communication and customer service from one of the organisations. We were honestly ready to give up!”

Karen used to shop at a small newsagent on Woodplumpton Road and was disappointed to see it close down and replaced with an accountancy firm. She did, however, call in one day, and hasn’t looked back since. She could no longer buy her favourite sweets, but she’d found an accountant that was both reliable and extremely competent!

Within six weeks of speaking to MJH Accountants, Karen was provided with comprehensive business advice which then enabled her to get in touch with key retail regulatory and legal businesses, food labelling specialists and food technologists, who provided her with the insight and knowledge she required to move the business forward. Ensuring all these essential elements are in place is critical for the presentations Karen will need to take at “Meet the Buyer” events.

Karen continued, “I couldn’t have done any of this without the support of MJH Accountants. The guidance they have provided is so much more than I have previously experienced with my former accountants. MJH are genuinely interested in my business and continually suggest innovative solutions to help me move forward. They’ve even responded within hours to a query on New Year’s Day, now that’s what I call commitment!”

With encouragement from MJH, Crave is now ready to take the spicy marinade to the retail market.

Karen concludes, “Crave has come so far since we started out and if the accountancy side of things are being dealt with efficiently, I truly believe we can achieve even bigger and better things with Crave. In fact, we’re so confident in our products that we’ve entered some of our dishes into the Great Taste Awards 2016, which is the acknowledged benchmark for fine food and drink in the UK!”

Web: www.cravetoyou.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Zebra Colour .