Tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
My name’s Simon Llewellyn and I opened a restaurant called The Sausage Revolution and I also run another company called Hot Diggidy Dog which makes sauces for the restaurant.
How did The Sausage Revolution get started?
We always wanted to open a restaurant, we always knew we wanted to open a restaurant but we didn’t know how it was going to look.
After Dragons Den we didn’t get any investment but we were invited to make a very hot sauce we now call Diablo and that’s blended into scotch eggs and you can find Dragons eggs pretty much all over the country.
I gave that same sauce to local butchers who then made sausages, Diablo sausages and I advertised them on Saturday morning. I got 100 sausages, who wants some sausages and that was it, people bought them and they flew out and I thought, there’s lots of pizzas, lots of burgers, lots of chicken chains but no one does gourmet sausages as far as I was aware in this area so the Sausage Revolution was born.
Why did you need funding?
We needed funding to grow the restaurant to open the restaurant. We also found ourselves in a position a month after opening the restaurant, we had to move the Hot Diggidy Dog factory. We were told by the landlord we had to be out so I needed more money to set that company up.
Why was it that you chose Cubefunder?
Cubefunder was introduced to me through an agency, they were just brilliant, straight away they didn’t just dismiss us, it was a case let’s have a look at it and build on it based on its merit.
Cubefunder was pretty much the only lender that would lend to us. When I first started Hot Diggidy Dog 10 years ago, I went to the bank with a business plan and a request for £35,000. They said you are a nuclear submarine engineer whos going to make hot sauces and sell them to Tesco, I said yes, and they said no.
How did you find the funding process at Cubefunder?
The process with Cubefunder was very, very easy. Once we got the initial contact with Gary, he came down to actually see what we were doing and he could see it was a viable business. Obviously, we had to do the due diligence of going through the accounts and making sure the numbers worked.
Initially, we had to pay our penance I guess, and the interest rates were quite high. We were a risky business, we had to take that risk. It was a new start-up business, Gary didn’t know us, so obviously there has to be some compensation for that. But now, 18 months down the line we work in a good relationship to the point where it’s a lot cheaper money now, which we paid our penance for but if we hadn’t had that, we would be here now.
How long have you been with Cubefunder?
I’ve been with Cubefunder now for 18 months, as I said, tough to begin with but easy to work with now. Gary and I have built up a good relationship and we can have a laugh, he knows me now and I know him. I know if I need money I can pick the phone up for various business ideas and run with it.
How did you find the rest of the team at Cubefunder?
Dealing with Cubefunder is brilliant, the guys in the office are very easy to deal with. If for some reason my bank decides not to pay a payment on a daily basis they are straight on the phone and we can iron out that issue straight away. Sometimes the card payments don’t go through and within minutes we can get it sorted, they are very on the ball.
Would you recommend Cubefunder to others?
I’d highly recommend Cubefunder, it’s tough to start, but with risk comes payment. They’ve lent us the money and allowed us to be where we are and we’re still working with them to grow the company. Extended the restaurant, building another bar. We’ve now got the funding for the next two restaurants from Cubefunder so it’s allowed us to grow very very quickly into what people thought would never work.
