CAROL Savage set up mydish.co.uk because she simply wanted to make sure that some of her late mother-in-law’s recipes were not forgotten.
After initially struggling to get finance for the recipe-sharing site from the banks, she pitched for £50,000 on the Dragons’ Den TV series last year and was offered £100,000 by Deborah Meaden.
Carol, 44, of Spitalfields, east London, has since signed sponsorship deals with Twinings, Maltesers and Coca-Cola.
Mydish, set up in 2008, now gets 10,000 visitors a day. It can be accessed direct or through Tesco’s website.
As well as the sponsorships, Carol is profiting by selling personalised calendars and cookbooks, with a percentage of profits going to support Great Ormond Street Hospital.
The business, which employs four full-time staff and a further four part time, is set for a turnover of £250,000 for this year, with a predicted doubling in 2011.
Carol, who has three children, says: ‘I am not a cook. The idea for the website started because my husband’s mother died and he had a handful of her recipes that he wanted to preserve.
‘Through the site we can keep recipes alive and pass them down to others.
‘It is great that after years of hard work this is beginning to pay off.
‘We now have 10,000 recipes online and increasingly we are the place where people come.’
Tags: Deborah Meaden, Dragons' Den, Enterprise Zone, SMEs, startups, success stories
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November 7th, 2010 at 11:58 amWe're in the news | MyDish.co.uk Cooking News says:
[...] have been interviewed by The Mailon Sunday which was a great piece talking about how at MyDish you can preserve all your treasured [...]