Student entrepreneur’s flair for flavours key to business success
Stephen Bond launched Panda's Kitchen during an enterprise placement year and hopes that his flair for flavours will expand the market for a unique and exotic range of liqueurs.
Mon, 16 Mar 2015 13:35:00 GMT
Panda’s Kitchen finds the niche in the liqueurs market
UNIVERSITY of Huddersfield student Stephen Bond has already tasted success with his new business, and now hopes that his flair for flavours will expand the market for a unique and exotic range of liqueurs.
During an enterprise placement year during his advertising design degree course at the University, Stephen launched Panda’s Kitchen, which devises, blends, bottles and sells the liqueurs. So far he has sold his products at events such as craft and food fairs, but in May – after his coursework is completed – he is due to open his own outlet, in Huddersfield’s Byram Arcade. He has also held talks with a highly-prestigious London retailer.
Panda’s Kitchen is on the brink of success, but it came about after an earlier business collaboration, on a web-based publication, fell through. The Enterprise Team at the University of Huddersfield urged Stephen to try his hand at another venture and he immediately thought of a special interest that he had pursued since the age of 18 – devising recipes for flavoured liqueurs and then producing the blended products, most of which have a vodka base.
“I have always been interested in flavour combinations,” he said. “I can’t cook very well, so I wondered what I could do to encompass a lot of wonderful flavours in one neat package. If I couldn’t eat them, I could drink them!”
He got to work in the kitchen of his student digs and a coffee liqueur was the first to emerge and soon proved popular. Now the range has expanded to include popular blends such as marshmallow, white chocolate and – perhaps unexpectedly – chilli.
“You see people try it and think it is really going to blow their heads off and singe their tastebuds!” said Stephen. But as they sip the drink, and taste its combinations of honey, spices and fiery chilli they are rapidly converted.
Advice and mentoring
“Panda” was a nickname once bestowed on Stephen, so he has appropriated it for the new business. Moving on from an enthusiastic student market for his creations, he is now targeting an older customer base which has developed a taste for specialist liqueurs.
In order to open the Byram Arcade premises – which will be up and running in May – Stephen, aged 24, has been through an exhaustive process of acquiring licences and meeting regulatory requirements. And he continues to receive crucial advice and mentoring from the University’s Enterprise Team within the Duke of York Young Entrepreneur Centre (DOY YEC).
But his advertising design degree course has also been invaluable, he says. It means that Stephen knows how businesses tick and how to engage with customers, and he has developed a wide range of presentational skills.
Stephen is from Luton and came to study in Huddersfield because of the excellence of its advertising course. Now he plans to remain in the North, where the towns and cities are increasingly vibrant, he says.
“I aim to get my products stocked in London, but I don’t want to live there!”
