A home-made fudge venture set up with just £100 is bringing sweet success to three Loughborough graduates.  Henry Banks, Tom Mundy and Tom Revill launched TOMS Fudge 12 months ago and have already turned over £100k and been recognised as BBC Good Food Champions.

This summer they will embark on a nationwide tour of the UK’s major food exhibitions and events to showcase and sell their sweet treats. “This year we have aimed for the top tier events with the highest footfall including Burleigh Horse Trials, where we sold out last year. We are also attending the CLA game fair, the Great Yorkshire Show and the Royal Welsh Show,” says Tom Mundy. 

Tom Revill adds: “It’s really exciting to see how widely our brand is recognised as we tour the country. We have recently launched our online store which will allow fudge fans across the world to order their favourite treat to their doorstep. Our facebook and twitter pages keep people up to date with our latest developments and are very popular.”

The three entrepreneurs continue to run the business from their shared house in the suburbs of Loughborough. They have converted the extension of the house into a top-spec kitchen and source ingredients from a local dairy.

With a wide variety of flavours of fudge selling out as fast as they can make it, the trio are about to launch an exciting sideline with nitrogen frozen ice cream, as Henry explains:

“Cow & Now Natural Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream uses liquid Nitrogen to freeze the ice cream mixture. Liquid Nitrogen, which has a boiling point of -195.8℃, freezes the ice cream very rapidly. This prevents the formation of large ice crystals resulting in an ice cream with a smoother texture.”

Tom Revill adds: “This new venture is very exciting for us. We can customise the flavours for specific events, for example strawberries and cream at Wimbledon, champagne sorbets for the Royal Ascot. There’s a huge range of possibilities.”

TOMS Fudge will officially launch Cow & Now in September at the Cake and Bake show in Earls Court, London.

Whilst fudge and ice cream are not the obvious career choice for economics, accountancy and architectural engineering graduates, the trio believe their degrees help them to structure their time and work as a team. They also appreciated guidance and financial support from Loughborough University, which continues to provide plenty of profile-raising opportunities for TOMS Fudge, from awards ceremonies to team building days.

They are a success story of the University’s Glendonbrook Centre for Enterprise Education, which encourages all students to develop enterprising skills through formal modules and extra-curricular activity. Eager to ‘give something back’, TOMS Fudge take part in enterprise workshops for school children and have recently taken on an apprentice from Loughborough College.

TOMS Fudge is featured in Loughborough University’s Inspiring Graduates campaign which hopes to inspire students and graduates to follow their dreams.

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