Women In The Food Industry interview our founder Anishya Kumar
To mark the start of British Sandwich Week, Co-founder of Women In the Food Industry, Mecca Ibrahim, chatted with our founder Anishya Kumar about sandwiches, start ups and selling to supermarkets.
The sandwich is one of Britain’s greatest inventions & is the largest part of the food to go market – each year we spend £3 billion on sandwiches!
Moving from her own kitchen and from selling through local convenience store to supplying to Tesco was a big move and must have come with many challenges. It’s a journey that most people wanting to go big will be interested in.
How did she find scaling up for their orders? “First I had to make a decision as to whether we would manufacture ourselves or let another factory take over. The soft option was to get a sandwich manufacturer to make the fillings and put them in our base. But I would have lost control of all of the ingredients that went into it. I wanted to streamline the systems myself. When I started with the convenience stores I was making about 10 cases of each flavour of wrap a day, but I had to scale up to producing 30 to 40 cases a day of each flavour with the first Tesco order. Then orders doubled within two weeks and trebled shortly after that.”
Ingredients are extremely important to Anishya who explains her position on trans fats, palm oil and additives and preservatives. “I don’t think it’s normal for a tortilla to have a 6 to 12 month shelf life. We’re all bit critical now and look at additives that are in our food and there’s a clear move to eating more naturally. Why should this be any different with the carriers of our sandwiches or wraps?”
You can read the full interview with our founder & MD Anishya Kumar, on Women In the Food Industry’s site.