A lad who started off by charging his mate 2p to jump from his top bunk has hit entrepreneur success as his food and drink company makes £10 million.
Stefan White, from Reddish, has created a whopping £10 million alongside best friend Tom Renshaw as their venture Bier Company alongside Bier Nuts and Bier Crisps continues its success after the pandemic.
The pair were inspired by bar snacks they'd discovered whilst on holiday together. Stefan recalled: "They were just so good, especially with beer, they were like nothing we had ever tasted before, and at that moment we knew we had to show the UK what they were missing out on."
In the summer of their graduation from uni in 2019, they successfully raised £7,000 from a Kickstarter campaign, £5k of which was from friends and family.
They also secured a £24,000 Government start-up loan to help get them started on their business journey.
With their initial funds, they focused heavily on product and were left with 100,000 units of nuts in a storage hold in London to sell. Stefan explained: "That’s when the door to door selling started. But the beautiful thing about London is that there are 9,000 pubs.
"After about six months we had visited about 4,000 pubs, with 500 on board - a 1 in 8 success rate. My shoes were talking to me, my jeans were ripped, and I lost 20kg in weight."
After pounding the pavement and knocking on doors, they finally hit a breakthrough with Stonegate Group, who put their tasty snacks into 300 of their pubs, which then landed them in other chains.
The cheeky pub snacks wasn't the first time entrepreneur Stefan had come up with a money making idea either.
As a child, he was always finding ways to make extra pocket money. The budding businessman would sell his Easter eggs a month later for £1 cheaper than supermarkets and he even charged his younger brother and sister 2p a time to jump off of his top bunk bed.
As a kid he set his sights on business success, something he's keen to do with Bier Club.
Now Stefan and his uni mate Tom have their sights set on further expansion into Europe and the US, and they started selling craft beer online after pubs closed during the pandemic.
Stefan said: "This business will be the first name that pops into your mouth when you talk about craft beer. It’ll be the brewery once we launch that, the snacks, in pubs, online presence, draft beer dispensers in your homes.
"This business will be everything. Currently, that's Brewdog - but it won’t be in five years’ time."
Featured Image Credit: MEN Media/Stefan White