Mercury Business Awards 2019 winner Simon Spooner reflects on past year

The coronavirus pandemic changed the nature of people’s businesses over night.

And Simon Spooner, a private chef from Ketton, knows this as well as anyone.

This time last year Simon, who owns ‘Knife, Fork and Spooner’, won the Great Taste category at the Mercury Business Awards but a lot has changed for him since then.

In March Simon was forced to put a halt to his cookery workshops, supper clubs and private catering as the Government announced a national lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19.

He said: “It’s been interesting and challenging.

“My regular business upended and stopped overnight so I devised a food delivery business which became really successful and popular.

“I decided to go down a different route from people who were doing takeaways and do more high end meals you can have at home at your leisure.”

The delivery service ran until the beginning of August and provided people with three-course dinners which could be heated when needed.

Simon, who was a contestant on the 2018 series of BBC television show MasterChef, said: “The cooking bit was fine, it was more the logistics and running the delivery side of the business I needed to get right.

“The packaging must be as sustainable as possible and I had to work out the delivery schedule.

“At its peak we were delivering to 100 people.”

As lockdown restrictions eased Simon invested in chilled boxes so that he could deliver the food while people were out and it would still remain chilled all day.

The last catering event he did was on March 15.

“Fortunately for me there was Mother’s Day on the next Sunday which gave me the opportunity to trial that as people couldn’t go out.

“Plans went up in the air overnight,” Simon said.

As life begins to return to somewhat normal, Simon is catering at small family functions and hosting tasting menu experiences.

He will use the barn at his home in Ketton to hold the tasting evenings which will cater for 14 people in groups of two and four - similar to a restaurant setting.

As entries open for this year’s Mercury Business awards, Simon has looked back at his time at last year’s event.

“It was a lovely event but it seems like quite a long time ago.

“There seemed to be 300 people which is strange now but it was lovely to get recognition locally,” said Simon.

As shown by Simon’s determination there’s never been a more important time to recognise the businesses that go the extra mile.

Nominations are now open for the 15th Mercury Business Awards celebrating the hard-working companies in the area. Firms like Simon’s that adapted their business model during the lockdown to offer takeaway or delivery services will be looked at particularly favourably in the Great Taste category.

To enter the awards visit www.mercurybusinessawards.co.uk .