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Adwoa, you were a chef at a Ghanaian restaurant before this…

Adwoa: Yeah. I was between courses at university, and dilly-dallying at different jobs, when the opportunity came up at a West African restaurant.

Before I joined they were doing sandwiches – not very authentic – and I introduced a new menu. It was successful for a while after that, but it wasn’t managed very well so it eventually went out of business.

So we decided to do our own thing.

LLOYD

And Lloyd, it was quite a change to go from software engineering to running a food stall…

Lloyd: Well we enjoyed entertaining people, having them round for dinner.

We also wanted to be in control of our destiny – so starting this business brought these two things together.

We tested the water by starting a stall in Hackney, for just one day a week. I was working in Rugby at the time, so I’d just come down for a weekend, just so we could get a feel for if this was something we could do full-time.

We had a really good response, and Adwoa was the first to quit her job.

Adwoa: Before Jollof Pot, it was quite hard to hold a job down. I was an international student paying a lot of fees and I kept on dropping out of my courses.

I worked everywhere, even in McDonalds! I worked in IT recruitment, but it was too cut-throat. You also get micromanaged and I hate people looking over my shoulder all the time.

As soon as this opportunity came along, I went part-time. I remember saying to Lloyd, “Quit your job! Quit your job!” But it wasn’t as easy as that, because for him it meant giving up a career.

Having given up a well-paid career, Lloyd, was it hard making ends meet at first?

Lloyd: We didn’t have savings or anything, but because we started slowly it was a lot smoother than it probably is for most people.

Adwoa: Yeah, Lloyd was still working full-time and I was still part-time, and we didn’t have a mortgage or kids. I would say to people that if you haven’t got those ties, then go for it.

How many people do you employ now?

Lloyd: There are three us. We hire agency people as well when we do large events.

Adwoa: It seems to me that when you are a small business, hiring agency staff is the most affordable way.

ADWOA

We started in Lloyd’s mother’s kitchen, and she brought a bit of authenticity to the business. Now we have an industrial kitchen facility for the prepping.

We are also a catering company and get catering contracts during the week.

How big a proportion of your business is corporate, festival and wedding catering?

Lloyd: It’s a seasonal thing with the festivals: during summer they’re a large percentage of the business.

Adwoa: I think we did about a festival a week for about three months.

Lloyd: But the market stalls tends to provide a steady flow of income, all-year-round. Weddings and business lunches are still substantial as well, but they’re also a bit more sporadic.

Are we seeing the slow demise of the sandwich as the lunch of choice?

Lloyd: The sandwich will always be there, but I think that with people travelling more and seeing different cultures, people are up for trying different types of things.

Adwoa: When we started it was difficult – people couldn’t get into their heads around the idea of full-on hot food at lunchtime. Slowly but surely, though, we have turned people around.

Do you think you would have started Jollof Pot if the restaurant you worked at had kept going?

Adwoa: Definitely.

I just wanted to learn as much as I could, and then do my own thing. I learnt a lot – including how not to run a business!

We also learnt what customers want.

For instance, we do vegetarian options now, even though, traditionally, Ghanaian food would always have meat in it.

Lloyd: We did a bit of research around Hackney and we knew there were tons of vegetarians. So from day one we always had at least one vegetarian option.

Do you experiment with the menu much?

Adwoa: We tend to experiment with special offers, every other day.

We’re thinking about doing a rabbit stew and guinea fowl.

Lloyd: Just to keep it interesting.

Is there much Ghanaian cuisine around in London?

Adwoa: Yes, but it tends to be in Ghanaian areas like Dalston and Tottenham. We wanted to bring Ghanaian food to a wider audience.

Lloyd: People say, “why Ghanaian food? It’s too specific”. People are a bit lazy in their understanding of Africa: they think it’s all the same.

That was a motivation – to do something specifically Ghanaian, to show that there are differences.

I don’t think there are any Ghanaian stalls in London.

So why did you opt for a stall over a restaurant?

Lloyd: It’s the risk factor really. Why bother spending a load of money when we were unsure whether it would work or not?

Adwoa: And the restaurant market in London is too risky. A lot of people start a restaurant without actually doing the proper market research, without getting to know who their customers will be.

After two years on the stall we have a database of clients and a good, solid customer base.

Would you consider getting a restaurant now?

Lloyd: That’s what we are working towards.

Adwoa: It has been the idea from the beginning.

When do you think it might happen?

Adwoa: We’ve tried to get funding, but we do not have any equity. So we’re going to try to put money aside over the next couple of years, then hopefully, we’ll be ready.

Does the stall cost you much in terms of the licence fee?

Lloyd: It’s not particularly expensive, although you need things like public liability insurance as well.

Adwoa: A lot of our friends thought we wouldn’t be able to make a decent living working on a market stall.

We started the business investing only £300 each into it, but every single penny that we make is reinvested.

How many hours do you put in a week?

Lloyd: It varies.

Adwoa: When we started it was a bit ridiculous. For the first year and half we probably put in about 70-odd hours a week.

But when we got back from holiday recently, we decided to work 9:00am to 5:30pm. We felt ground down; there was no work/life balance.

What are the best bits about running your own business?

Lloyd: Having the freedom to be creative, to implement your own ideas without needing permission.

The variety as well. My last job was enjoyable at first, but it very quickly became a routine. We both get bored very quickly, and what we do now varies a lot. We work on the stalls, sometimes we do weddings, some days we might be in the office doing something on the website – there’s always something going on.

Adwoa: It’s a challenge. There’s always something going wrong, so you have to think on your feet.

I like getting my hands dirty as well. I’ve had jobs where the managers don’t do any work, but I like the fact that we work on the stalls. I work in the kitchen as well if I need to and Lloyd scrubs the gazebo on a Friday night! We like to get stuck in.

So you both do a bit of everything?

Adwoa: We’ve tried to split the business into two as much as we can.

Lloyd: I tend to do the finances, the administration side of things.

So what have been the worst bits of running your own business?

Adwoa: Not having enough money; not being paid. For the first two years we were living on nothing. We were prepared for it…but it’s hard.

Lloyd: Another thing – for me anyway – is that you can never really switch off. Even lying in bed at night it’s hard to fully relax as there’s always something to think about – and it’s your responsibility, no matter how many people are working for you.

Adwoa: Managing people as well. It’s getting that balance between getting close enough to your employees so they feel like they can talk to you, while remembering that they have to answer to you as well.

Any advice for new entrepreneurs?

Lloyd: Believe in what you are doing. When we started there were a lot of people saying “Why are you leaving a good job to set up a market stall?” I studied for a long time, so to give that up and step into the unknown…

You need 110% belief in what you are doing – because you could so easily give up.

Adwoa: It’s been three or four times harder than we thought it was going to be. But you get used to it after a while.

Coming from an African background, working in an office environment is much more respectable. Our parents couldn’t see the potential future of the business; they just saw the present – so convincing parents that it was a good thing to do was the hardest part.

Are they OK with it now?

Lloyd: I think people are coming round to the idea. We’ve been doing it for two years and we’re not homeless – so we must be doing something right!