If there’s one person who exemplifies the principle that what really matters in business is a passion for what you’re doing it’s Lena Bjorck. She started without any financial help or basic equipment, delivering food to customers courtesy of the London underground. Eight years later on and her company - Inn or Out Ltd - is one of the most respected and celebrated catering success stories in the UK. She tells Startups.co.uk just how she did it.
Name: Lena Bjorck
What does your business do: Catering company
Business name: Inn or Out Ltd.
Number of employees: 12 full time and 150 part time
Situated in a narrow street, lodged between London’s Smithfield market and Barbican centre, Inn or Out Ltd has become the name that’s on every city banker, diplomat and highflier’s lips when asked to pick their caterer of choice. The company was founded back in 1995 by Lena Bjorck who, after arriving in the UK from her native Sweden, was appalled at the level of service offered by the hotels and restaurants here.
“I left Sweden with absolutely no qualifications whatsoever and I had the most terrible grades,” she says. “I just traveled around the world as a kitchen porter and a bus girl and then I came to the UK in 1988 and worked in various restaurants but I couldn’t get a work permit because we were not part of the EC. In 1994 I moved back here and got a job as a breakfast supervisor in one of London’s five-star hotels. Within days I just came to realise the people around me weren’t actually in the service industry at all.”
Without a pound in her pocket, a computer or even a car and not actually able to cook that well, Bjorck then quit her job. She manage to persuade friends in Sweden to send her some printed menus by post but when she went to the bank to ask for money they, unsurprisingly, turned her down. It was while signing on for the dole she went to see the East London Small Business Centre. They recommended she get in contact with the Prince’s Trust who eventually awarded her £2,500 to start up.
Opportunity
In a relatively short period of time her business was up and running. After investing £270 in a membership of the Swedish Chambers of Commerce she used their computer to harangue the capital’s major banks into giving her some work and eventually they caved in. Then her really big break arrived.
“I had only been in business a few months when I got the contract to cater for President Clinton which was quite amazing,” she explains “I didn’t have a computer so I had to write the quote by hand and I was up against the big catering companies who offered to do it literally for free not to mention the American Embassy’s own catering. Against all the odds I won it. Then afterwards then I got a letter from the White House office saying it was the best food they’d ever had on a foreign trip. It was a huge marketing tool in the beginning.
Bjorck is clearly aware of how this stroke of fortune has contributed to her success and the picture of herself and Bill Clinton proudly adorns her office wall, along with her many subsequent awards. But, as she puts it: “Every one has luck but seeing the opportunity and actually using it is a different matter.”
But even when she was catering to the high and mighty Bjorck was still living and breathing her business, working over sixty hours a day, seven days a week from home. Her day would begin at four in the morning with a visit to London’ s fish, veg and meat markets, carting all her groceries back to her flat to prepare them. Then after catering for the function, all the dishes would have to be brought home to wash up before going to bed.
So how did she get through it all? Put simply self-motivation: “I’ve always set little goals. Even when I was a kitchen porter I felt like it was a fabulous job because I motivated myself. By the time all the dishes had gone in, I would set myself the task of making sure the side was polished. Every time you reach that little goal you get a better sense of self confidence,” she says.