Enterprise Nation

Did you see Carol Savage recently on Dragons Den? She was pitching her company, Mydish.co.uk and did really rather well. With £100k in investment and Deborah Meaden on board, we ask Carol what the company’s all about and how she plans to spend the money.

When did the site launch?

MyDish launched in 2008. My husband returned from South Africa after his mum had passed way bringing back some scraps of paper with recipes on. They were so much more than just recipes: but memories of his mum and his childhood. I thought that a website would be a fabulous way of saving and storing these treasured family recipes.

Were you working a ‘day job’ when you launched the site and developing the site on the side? Are you now full time running the business?

MyDish is now my full-time job, but for the first year I was running it I didn’t take a salary. When I started MyDish, I’d recently sold a business that championed flexible working and was looking for a new challenge.

If you don’t mind me asking, how does the site make money as it seems that people can post recipes for free?

We have several streams on revenue. We licence the software as a white label tool for corporate: BT and Axa are currently clients for that. We also sell personalised cookbooks and calendars which are very popular. We also take very targeted advertising from brands such as Heinz and Clover. By providing a very engaged audience, we can offer brands and avenue for tailored campaigns

What is the most popular (most often viewed) recipe you’ve had on the site? 

Cakes are very popular on MyDish. And this Banana Bread is a real favourite. One of my favourite recipes, and one of the most popular is my Beef Wellington.

What is the most unusual recipe on the site?

I don’t think we’ve got any that are particularly unusual. What’s more striking is how many variations there are for some recipes. We’ve got so many different lasagne recipes.

If you are successful on Dragons Den, what do you plan to do with the investment?

We were successful. Deborah Meaden invested £100k for 15% of the business. We’ve got lots of new features we want to develop for the site and we want to continue getting the message out there about MyDish. So marketing, so other people can share their recipes, is a huge priority. We’ve got so many ideas, the challenge will be to choose the best ones.

• Mydish.co.uk
• Image source: Dan Wilson photo stream