bewiched the beginning

The story behind Bewiched starts somewhere in late 2008, Matt Fountain was working as an area manager for Pizza Hut but had been away to the USA with his brother who had been running his own wholesale business for over 5 years at that point. 

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'Watching someone start something from scratch & see it develop into an amazing business, really resonated with me. I had learned how to operate a multi-site business, but I knew my own business would begin as a single site with an ambition to scale.'

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'I have always said to people that part of the allure of large brands is the trust we place in the consistency of their offer, the caveat being that because as consumers we are often risk adverse & herd driven, our obsession with brands was also a commitment to mediocrity!'

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'Could we (can we) scale a business that maintains elevated, service, product & cleanliness standards? That is certainly our desire everyday in this business'

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Matt had always been interested in trying to get a sandwich shop open, and whilst in the USA, he spotted a brand that he really liked.

 

‘There was a brand called Wichcraft with no T to accentuate the wich part of the sandwich, the best way to describe it was like an upscale subway. From there that became the ambition, could I open up a sandwich shop?’

 

'I started to rack my brains for a name for the business many came and went, I finally settled on the name Bewiched as the actual word means to delight & surprise somebody and obviously allowed me to take the T out to play to our sandwiches’

 

Over the next couple of years, Matt witnessed the beginning of the explosion of the UK coffee market  ‘at this point in time, Costa and Starbucks are scaling in the UK, and we started to see that first shift in consumer habits’ 

 

Matt started to think that maybe his sandwich shop also needed to focus heavily on Coffee.

 

‘I’ve lived in Northamptonshire from an early age & in Northampton I would see people going to Costa for a coffee and then grabbing a roll from Oliver Adams (Bakers) the business plan that started to form for Bewiched, great Coffee and Great sandwiches under one roof’

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'My Dad had been a Bank Manager & advised me on how to format and present a business plan, including all the cash flow and P&L projections, it was a huge bit of work and really got me into the detail'

 

The next question was how to fund this new venture, Matt had been saving for a number of years, but this wasn’t going to cover the fit out of a new coffee shop. 

 

Then fate intervened  ‘I had been on quite the journey with Pizza Hut and worked my way up to Area Manager from the kitchen. But the changes in consumer habits moving towards Coffee & huge levels of competition in the casual dining sector impacted restaurants. I was called to a meeting with my boss and made redundant in December 2009. As I was told the News, I was trying to keep the smile off my face as I knew this was the opportunity to fund this new venture’ 

 

And that’s exactly what he did, Matt still needed to raise funds from a bank but all the work he had put into the business plan paid off.

 

‘My own bank wouldn’t even look at the business plan. Another High Street Bank took two meetings with me and it looked very promising, but they turned me down. 

I then went to the bank where my dad used to work (who knows what influence that had) I managed to get them to part fund the first Site, I put in all of my redundancy payment & they lent me another half on top of that’

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'Whilst I waited for the first site to be completed, I got jobs in two coffee shops as a barista, then when we opened we got training from industry experts, that to this day form the foundation of all of our teams training'​

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There you have it, the foundations of our brand story, years later much has evolved & an exciting journey lies ahead.

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