Success is on the Menu For Husband and Wife Takeaway Owners

31/01/19

A husband and wife team are tasting success with their Thai takeaway business, after Business In Focus supported them in securing a £25,000 start-up loan from the Start Up Loans Company.

Chris and April Napier set up Bangkok Express, in Swansea, after the exotic lunches April cooked for her husband caused a stir among his workmates in the office. The couple then decided to trade in their day jobs in sales and administration, for the heat of the kitchen and their first year has proved to be a runaway success.

Chris says: “Our first year in the business has been better for us than we could have imagined and we are very glad we took the opportunity and decided to go into business together.

“We had been thinking about it for a while and both April and I were at the point in our careers where we had done all we wanted, as far as working for other people was concerned, and we knew if we didn’t set up the business now, we never would.

“Perhaps naively, I was always confident that it would work for us. April’s food is so good and she has her own style of cooking authentic Thai dishes, the way people cook them at home in Thailand. I used to take my lunch into work and my colleagues would all ask to taste it. So, then April started to sell her cooked lunches to my colleagues. We just knew we had to do this as a business.”

Chris came to Business In Focus with a proposal and a business plan and, he says, his business advisor Steve Hammond, made the whole funding process very easy.

“We were not in a position to fund the business ourselves and some online research brought us to Business In Focus. I went to Steve with a business plan, which he refined and simplified. It took a just a couple of months – or perhaps less – for the loan to come through and then we were in business. Of course, the first year of any business has its stresses and working with your partner can be stressful too, but April and I are disciplined about leaving the stresses of the kitchen at the door and not bringing them home with us.  The whole process of getting a start up loan was remarkably worry-free, thanks to Steve, and thanks to Hywell Bassett, a Business Advisor at Business In Focus who has given us ongoing support. We should have done this years ago.”