Local companies go head-to-head at Elevator Awards
Three new Aberdeen businesses will go head-to-head in a bid to pick up the ‘Most Promising New Business’ award (sponsored by Business Gateway) at our exciting Elevator Awards ceremony on Thursday, June 30.
FreshMex, Linton and Mac and Aberdeen Concrete are all finalists in the category recognising an early-stage start-up business which has worked to set down roots, build relationships and reputation and gain a foothold in its market.
FreshMex, which is owned and run by Robbie Moult (23) and Calum Wright (24) (left to right), is a pop-up catering facility serving Tex-Mex street food to the North-East of Scotland.
The business was started in May 2015, and has been growing in popularity ever since, so much so that the local businessmen are set to open a ‘food residency’ at the Adam Lounge on Holburn Street, giving the public access to their cuisine seven days a week.
The pair, who both have university degrees, decided to take the plunge and combine Calum’s experience as a chef with Robbie’s business degree and love of food.
“I guess the fact that we are quite young stands out, some of our customers are kind of taken aback that we started it on our own, but we both wanted to do something a little bit different than following the usual route after graduating,” Robbie said.
“I think our success so far has been down to staying focused on ourselves and what we are doing – offering fresh quality food, matched with high quality service and overall experience. We feel the FreshMex brand is pretty strong too, we like to stand out from the crowd.”
Linton and Mac is a local hair salon in the city centre of Aberdeen which was set up nine months ago by Jennifer Linton and Joanna MacDonald. The salon offers hair and express beauty needs for men and women of all ages, in a relaxed and cutting-edge environment.
Jennifer and Joanna (Jaye) decided to set up their own business after working for many years in top North-east salons.
Jaye said: “We wanted to give our clients the full experience. We had a very strong vision of what we personally felt Aberdeen was missing and wanted to have the best possible work place for both clients and staff.
“We are a salon that doesn't feel like a salon. We wanted to create an environment and space that you can look forward to coming to with friends sociably. Somewhere you can start your day or night out early and feel truly at home. We have a great relationship with our clients and pride ourselves on them feeling relaxed here.
“We truly believe we are a first in Aberdeen, no other salons in Aberdeen provide the diversity we do, and we feel bringing something so new to the industry in Aberdeen makes us unique.”
The third finalist is Aberdeen Concrete, the only small, family-run concrete delivery service in Aberdeen which was set up by Chris Graham and his wife, Kara.
Chris identified a gap in the market while working as a groundwork manager for a house builder - after encountering many problems finding a reliable source for concrete, he decided it was time to address this issue himself and set up Aberdeen Concrete to provide a dependable service delivering concrete throughout Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.
“There is not a big story or anything too unusual about what we have done, however, we did do it with three young children in tow, no experience of running a business and both gave up our jobs to give it a go,” Kara said.
“We are extremely proud of what we have achieved to date and hope to see Aberdeen Concrete grow and grow in the coming years.”
The black tie awards ceremony will be held at the Mercure Aberdeen Ardoe House Hotel on Thursday 30th of June 2016. Tickets sold out in record time a month before the event.
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