Think of luxury foods such as truffles, caviar and smoked salmon and you assume these desirable products are largely dominated by the rich aristocracy. That a slice of this lucrative industry is in the grasp of a PhD student from Sheffield would seem fanciful if the process wasn’t shown on BBC TV.
Paul Thomas, the 24-year-old student in question, appeared on BBC 2’s Dragons Den almost by accident, having only just started to develop his idea of producing the perfect truffle - a foodstuff more valuable, per gram, than gold.
“When I was approached to go on the show, I thought it was an award – I didn’t really want investment,” he explains. “But they kept phoning and bugging me, so I went along with it.”
Thomas was one of just a handful of aspiring entrepreneurs who managed to prise funding from the claws of the Dragons throughout the BBC 2 series. Although his proposal, which required prime land in France to be purchased in the hope of bountiful truffle hauls in the future, seemed slightly quirky, Rachel Elnaugh and Simon Woodroffe both showed an interest, with the YO! Sushi founder eventually stumping up £75,000 for 25% of the fledgling company.
Thomas is glad to have Woodroffe on board, having only recently focussed his full attention on the business after finishing his PhD studies.
“He’s really keen on the business – he’s a great guy and we get on well, although he’s very busy at the moment,” says Thomas. “I wasn’t sure about some of things we talked about, because he wanted 25% of everything, so if I went back into science and took some funding to work in a lab somewhere, he’d have a percentage of my income, which I wasn’t keen on.
“Simon talked about truffle clothing and books too, although I’m not so sure about that!”
It was while he was gaining a scientific PhD that Thomas first realised there was a potential business in the truffle market.
“I love my food and was always collecting gourmet mushrooms that you couldn’t get in the supermarket,” he says. “I was always looking for British truffles, but I never found them, so I tried to cultivate them. I looked at ways that people are growing them, what technology there was available and realised it wasn’t great.
“I started reading about plantations that had been successful and how much they were worth. I thought it was a good area to get into because once you get a plantation, you only have to work half of the year.”
Describing himself as a “geeky biologist”, Thomas admits that he has always had entrepreneurial ambitions.
“I’ve always wanted to work for myself, whether it be in science – because you can be an independent researcher and work for yourself – or not,” he states.
“But in science you are still at the mercy of funding bodies and what they want. I wanted to do the research I wanted to do, and be paid well for it. This (the Dragons Den) is another route of doing it.
“I’ve never been interested in working for other people, I’ve always wanted to be my own boss.”
