Clitheroe-based barbecue wholesaler Que Fresco has increased turnover, gained new customers and appointed a full time sales manager after taking part in Edge Hill University’s fully-funded Innovation Sprint Programme , available through Boost.
The firm is wholesalers of high-quality barbecue brands to the retail trade and employs four people. Its managing director Paul Yates entered the Innovation Sprint Programme, based at Edge Hill’s Productivity and Innovation Centre, to formulate a market development strategy for growth, based on the ability to scale their business by increasing their sales and demand underpinned by recruiting a new sales manager.
Paul’s objective was to increase Que Fresco’s turnover to £1.5m in the next three years. In order to do this, Paul needed to define the market opportunity, customer profiles and routes to market and have the infrastructure in place to do this. He said: "The programme has exceeded all our expectations and allowed us to build repeatable business processes to successfully scale-up our business.
We have gone from strength to strength with our new sales manager supporting us in onboarding a new pipeline of customers, allowing us to increase our turnover 31 per cent." The Innovation Sprint Programme is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund to provide innovation support and advisory services to Lancashire SMEs. Throughout the programme, Paul was able to map out his existing roles and responsibilities and then define roles and responsibilities for a new sales role and explore the feasibility of reaching those markets. Several changes were identified in the business model to achieve scalability. Firstly, key internal business processes needed to be made more systematic and repeatable. New employment opportunities were also going to be fundamental in uplifting and managing the customer base and effectively meeting customer needs.
During the workshops, Paul developed a plan to increase his sales pipeline using financial data to categorise customers by spend as well as create an ideal customer profile for a new sales manager to target. Que Fresco used the latter stages of the programme to devise its action plan for embedding the business model changes and planning the new role.
As a direct result of the programme, Que Fresco increased turnover by 31 per cent and orders in the pipeline have shown an uplift of a further 61 per cent. Recruiting a full time sales manager has also been a key priority to meet this sales demand generated. The fully-funded programme has given Que Fresco the plan and the infrastructure to achieve real scale allowing it to drive up revenue, create new jobs and ensure profitability. The Innovation Sprint programmes includes 50 hours of scale-up strategy, working on your business plus six intensive online workshops delivered over four weeks. It also involves market research and rich data collection to aid decision making and access to world-class rapid innovation tools and frameworks. The programme is backed by Boost; Lancashire’s Business Growth Hub.
Would you like to see your business grow? So would we. To speak to someone from the Growth Hub about business support, contact Boost online or call 0800 488 0057.
The website uses cookies.
Some are used for statistical purposes and others are set up by third party services. By clicking 'Accept all & close', you accept the use of cookies. For more information on how we use and manage cookies, please read our Cookie Policy.
