Member Article

5 Year Success for Family-Run Beverage Start-Up

A small family-run business in North Shropshire is celebrating a successful fifth anniversary despite challenging economic and financial issues affecting the region’s small business community.

Since it started in early 2014 Janes Beverages has seen a steady 5 -10% growth year-on-year and has expanded its small team from 4 to 10 members.

Based near Market Drayton, Janes Beverages supplies innovative and modern hot & cold drinks technologies to schools and universities across the UK. These machines help institutions reduce plastic packaging while delivering high volumes, with some clients supplying over 30,000 drinks a day.

Director Melanie Janes commented:

“It’s been difficult but worthwhile. The machines we supply don’t come cheap and our industry faces tight margins. But despite the financial struggles our region’s SMEs are facing, we’re able to celebrate this 5 year milestone.

“We think our success is due to many reasons but one of these is our dedicated perseverance to what we do. For many years, we’ve mainly focused on helping institutions provide sustainable and healthy beverage solutions to students.”

Now in its fifth year of business, the company has started working with hotels as well as the education sector and has been one of the first companies to start supplying these sectors with a new range of vegan-friendly products.

Janes Beverages has been able to achieve this growth with support from Skipton Business Finance, which it partnered with in 2016.

As Melanie explains:

“It’s been a real benefit to partner with Skipton Business Finance for the last couple of years. They have helped us to maintain consistent cashflow as our industry tends to struggle with upfront costs and seasonal sales cycles.”

Greg Bell, Managing Director at Skipton Business Finance, commented: “It’s more important than ever to work with people you trust and who trust you. Strong partnerships can really help businesses get through difficult times as you can manage the risk together.”

Janes Beverages is a family-run foodservice beverage specialist based near Market Drayton, North Shropshire. It supplies sustainable, high-tech drinks dispensers, rather than traditional vending machines, to a wide range of customers including schools, universities, hotels, offices and catering establishments across the UK.

A subsidiary of Skipton Building Society, Skipton Business Finance is a leading independent factoring and invoice discounting provider, offering a range of working capital solutions for businesses with annual sales ranging from new-start to £30m.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Skipton Business Finance .