Former Caterforce managing director Nick Redford has been named Start-Up Entrepreneur of the Year for the Northwest at the 2021 Great British Entrepreneur Awards for his work as Strategy Director at Zest Food Partners.
The Great British Entrepreneur Awards launched in 2012 to celebrate the best of British enterprise, inviting founders from across the UK to apply with their entrepreneurial success stories.
The judging panel said that Nick was a worthy winner: “Zest Food Partners is a fantastic business. We were completely blown away by this application – amazing stuff! We wish them the best of luck going forward.”
Nick Redford comments “After a career on the procurement side it was clear there was a need to create an efficient service that would help ambitious food and drink brands accelerate growth in the foodservice market. It is a complex and highly fragmented channel where huge parts of it are often overlooked. It is also frustratingly undermanned, and Zest gives its clients an instant visibility of the bigger picture and runs complex profiling to ensure the biggest opportunities are explored and secured.
The success of Zest has very much been a team effort and although we knew that starting a new business would have its challenges, little did we know that our first and biggest challenge to face would be Covid-19. The foodservice and hospitality industry has had a torrid time, and this has made us more determined to offer support and contribute to rebuilding foodservice.”
Francesca James, founder of the Great British Entrepreneur Awards, spoke highly of the entrepreneurial talent coming out of this year’s cohort: “It was fantastic to hear so many inspiring business stories after a difficult few years, and even better to have been able to invite all of our finalists to the in-person ceremony and celebrate together.”
