An Ashby couple have expanded their Sandwich Van company - in a tenth of the time it took to start it originally.

Saffron Sandwich Vans has a turnover of more than £1.2 million, from its creation just two years ago, which is in addition to the multi million pound turnover for Stacey and Carla Garey's Appleby Magna-based Saffron Catering.  

But now they are expanding the business by creating a new hub of their sandwich van business in the Nottingham area, creating even more jobs as a result.

They have taken the model that worked so successfully in the Ashby area expanding it into the East Midlands.

Stacey and Carla Garey

But things have changed noticeably, learning lessons from the original company set up. 

Initially the team were purchasing second hand vans to start the business with and buying in the food, but now Saffron purchases brand new vehicles and has a fleet of 16 sandwich vans and 12 other catering vehicles, and produces their own food, catering for the demands of people in their various destinations, whether it be building sites, factories, offices or business parks.

Carla said: "We wanted to find a new site and the success of this story is very much in the speed in which we did it.' 

"We started the Sandwich Van business two years ago and we've replicated it this time around, within literally two months. We have eight routes in our Swadlincote branch, which is probably the maximum capacity in the Swadlincote-Ashby and surrounding areas, but then we had the idea to start the second hub in the middle of December. 

"Then of course we had our busiest period of the year for Saffron in December and we had a family holiday booked for early January but we didn't want this to stop or slow our progress.  

"We found a really good central point which is located in Bingham, Nottinghamshire, then we expanded the routes out to Mansfield, Newark and Grantham.

"The goal being 10 drivers and nine vehicles in just four months. 

"We opened the hub on February 1, and as we had already recruited and trained the initial raft of drivers, we had started trading by the second week in February. 

"We're just replicating the model which has already proven to be a success. On day one, the team started to leaflet drop to map out their routes and by day three, were each bringing in £250-350 a day. By the end of that first week, they hit £500.

"We've created what will be 10 full-time jobs and we're recruiting as local as possible to help the community. We will also be implementing the Too Good to Go scheme which means people can collect discounted food which has not been sold on the vans that day to save it going to waste."

Carla says the expansion does not come without making more investments.

She added: "The vehicles that we need to buy are £50,000 each, but we will own the vans once the lease agreements are cleared - that shows the levels of investment that you need to start any similar business.  

"We've also increased the salary which we were previously offering our van drivers, bringing both sites in line and we do pay higher than minimum wage for our roles, even factoring in the forthcoming minimum wage increase, which works well for us in terms of raising the profile of the team we want to recruit and retain. 

"Our internal team has also had to adapt and expand, we now have a delivery person solely for that site, and also we have increased the night staff team to increase our capacity and output. Every product is made freshly overnight, and brought to the new hub at 5am each morning, ready for the team to load up and be on their routes by 7.30am.

"We're really proud of this progress and rapid expansion and are excited to see the scalability of this business model."