Que Fresco Ltd
The SME Productivity & Innovation Centre (PIC) at Edge Hill University delivers impact through an intensive fully-funded programme that helps established SMEs, with the vision and potential for growth, build a coherent business model strategy to scale-up.
Que Fresco Ltd case study
Wholesale of high-quality barbecue brands to the retail trade
“The programme has exceeded all our expectations and allowed us to build repeatable business processes to successfully scale-up our business.
We have gone from strength to strength with our new sales manager supporting us in onboarding a new pipeline of customers, allowing us to increase our turnover by 31%.”
Paul Yates Managing Director – Que Fresco Ltd
Benefits and impact
The challenges
Paul Yates, Managing Director of barbecue wholesaler Que Fresco entered the Innovation Sprint Programme to formulate a market penetration strategy for growth, based on the ability to scale-up their business by increasing their sales and demand underpinned by recruiting a new sales manager. Paul’s objective was to increase Que Fresco’s turnover to £1.5m in the next three years. In order to do this, Paul needed to define the market opportunity, customer profiles and routes to market and have the infrastructure in place to do this. The recruitment of a new sales manager will also ensure the appropriate skill sets are in place to onboard a pipeline of new customers.
The opportunity
Recruiting a new sales manager would allow Que Fresco to enter new markets and increase their demand. This would allow Que Fresco to drive up their market share to achieve scalability. Throughout the workshops, Paul was able to map out his existing roles and responsibilities and then define roles and responsibilities for the new role and explore the feasibility of reaching those markets. The key responsibility of the new sales manager was to support sales forecasting, improve customer retention rates as well as onboard a new pipeline of customers. A key enabler to unlocking the opportunity was also going to be embedding a tiered segmentation model to ensure resources were allocated dependent upon the value and complexity of the customer to maximise their profitability.
The key changes
Several changes were identified in the business model to achieve scalability. Firstly, key internal business processes needed to be made more systematic and repeatable. New employment opportunities were also going to be fundamental in uplifting and managing the customer base and effectively meeting customer needs. The most successful SMEs have a clear business plan, underpinned by financial KPIs. During the workshops, Paul developed a plan to increase his sales pipeline using financial data to categorise customers by spend as well as create an ideal customer profile for the new sales manager to target.
The plan and outcomes
Que Fresco used the latter stages of the programme to devise their Growth Action Plan for embedding the business model changes and planning the new role. As a direct result of the programme, Que Fresco have increased their turnover by 31%, acquired 20 new customers and orders in the pipeline have shown an uplift of a further 61%. Recruiting a full time sales manager has also been a key priority to meet this sales demand generated. The fully-funded programme has given Que Fresco the plan and the infrastructure to achieve real scale allowing them to drive up their revenue, create new jobs and ensure profitability.
What we offer
”The programme provides you with the opportunity to work on the business and not in it.”
Professor Simon Bolton – Director, SME Productivity & Innovation Centre
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