Dragons’ Den appearance leads to a year’s worth of orders in one night

After appearing on BBC’s Dragon’s Den last month, family business Kandy Kitchen Creations has been inundated with orders.

The husband and wife team from Rochdale won the ‘New Business of the Year’ category at the 2019 Rochdale Business Awards for their innovative range of ‘Super Simple’ food products - prepackaged soups, stews, risottos and desserts - and their business has gained in reputation and size each year since.

On the day of the show, the couple were swamped with thousands of orders: their website crashed – twice – with the traffic of 300,000 visitors also taking down a further 80 company websites hosted on the same server. They have since recruited additional staff to aid with the number of orders.

“The hosting company thought we were under a cyber-attack,” director Andy Turner said.  “We were blown away by the response. We received over a year’s worth of orders – 4,000 – in one night. We reacted quickly and put items to ‘out of stock’ on the website to avoid any further delays.

“Our pre-prepared stock was quickly swallowed up and we are working hard to get hundreds of orders out each week. As soon as we can fulfil future orders, we will update the stock situation on our website.

“We thought we were prepared before the show, but nothing could have prepared us for this! Many thanks for the thousands of emails and messages of support, congratulations and for being so understanding regarding the delays in making and getting out orders.”

 

 

Andy and his wife Karen entered the Den last month, seeking a £50,000 investment in exchange for a 20% stake in the company. After deliberations, they were offered the investment as a three-way split.

Switching the manufacturing process from the Turners’ current setup would not have allowed for returns on investment within timescales required, they explained, leading the offer to be withdrawn.

Andy added: “We totally understand this decision and the positive responses we received from the Dragons were amazing. Their feedback and input after the programme was supportive and we parted on amicable terms. The door was left open so you never know what will happen in the future.”

Based in Wardle, Kandy Kitchen Creations was started by Karen and Andy after a holiday to Canada in 2017, where they discovered food products “stacked in layers, sand-art style” at the local markets.

Inspired, they came back and developed their first few packs on the kitchen table.

Today, there are 20 varieties of soup, stews and risottos as well as 11 puddings, all costing £5.