Questions for a Founder Who Sells Cold

Priya Vennelle started Coldframe Provisions in a converted bakery on the east side of Halvering four years ago. It delivers chilled food to restaurants, hospital kitchens and a handful of corner shops. It has nine vans, thirty-one employees and a reputation for turning up. This is an edited conversation. All figures are as given by Ms Vennelle and are invented for this demonstration.

The sums

What does it cost you to deliver one crate?

About HM 1.90, all in. Fuel is a third of that. Wages are half. The rest is refrigeration, which is the part that people forget until it breaks.

What do you charge?

HM 2.60 on average. So you can do the sum. The margin looks fat until you remember the vans spend a third of the day empty.

What goes wrong?

Spoilage. Every business like ours lives or dies on it. When a van's compressor fails on a hot afternoon, you lose the load and the customer's trust in the same hour. Last August we lost HM 14,000 of product in a week. It took a year to earn that back.

The offer

Did you consider outside money?

An investor offered HM 600,000 last winter for a fifth of the company. I said no.

Why?

Because the money came with a growth plan, and the plan assumed we'd add a depot in the north. I've driven that route. It's ninety minutes each way on a good day. We'd have grown revenue and lost margin, and the investor would have called that a success.

How do you hire drivers?

I ask them to do a shift in the cold room first. If they come out saying it was fine, I thank them and don't call. If they come out saying it was horrible but they could do it, they're hired.

What comes next

What worries you now?

The Authority's cold-store occupancy. It's at 87 percent. That means the warehouses are full, which means pallets are queuing, which means my customers' deliveries are late. We looked at that number last month.

What would you tell a founder starting out?

Count spoilage weekly. Not monthly. Weekly. By the time it shows up in a monthly figure, it's already a habit.

Where do you want to be in five years?

Smaller than people expect. Eleven vans. Forty staff. A profit I can explain to my mother. If we get there, I'd call it a good business.

Names, places and events in this demo are fictional.