TRICKY BUSINESS
PROGRAMME 4: NICK WILLOUGHBY
The entrepreneur
Twenty-three-year-old Nick Willoughby is passionate about golf and crêpes. Lured to St Andrews by the golf, he found a job in a bar, and soon noticed that the town lacked a decent crêperie. He set about tackling the problem.
The business
Rather than enrol on a college catering course as his parents suggested, Nick borrowed £6,000 from them and went to France to find out how to make gourmet crêpes. He returned with a French crêpe stand and opened for business.
Nick enjoys the creative side of his business. He loves serving good quality food and will not compromise on standards. He sources his ingredients from France to ensure that they are of the highest quality. He is always experimenting with new recipes – he discovered his trademark canapés whilst filling in time on a rainy day.
However, Nick has difficulty with the administrative side of the business, a problem that may stem from his dyslexia. He ensures that he meets the legal requirements governing street trading and food sales but is less rigorous about other, equally important, organisational tasks. His financial management and book-keeping leave a lot to be desired. He describes himself as disorganised and impatient and is always looking for the shortest, quickest route to achieving what he wants.
The crêpe stand gives Nick a reasonable income but he is ambitious and wants to break into commercial catering. He plans to cater for large parties and events, publicising his services on the website that he is in the process of setting up.
The programme follows Nick as he begins to implement his expansion plans. His journey is marked by peaks and troughs. The peaks occur when he secures large contracts, survives his first foray into a commercial kitchen and receives positive feedback about his food. The troughs happen when he is dealing with the practicalities of running a business. He does little contingency planning, fails to keep track of his finances and makes sloppy mistakes when preparing a quote for a high-profile event. He relies on a friend with 'better business skills' to help him sort things out and later invites him to become a partner in the business.
The mentor
It is not until he meets Gordon Richardson that Nick realises the value of the crêpe stand itself to his future business success. Gordon is managing director of Beanscene, Scotland's fastest growing coffee shop chain.
