Taylor Shannon International

Background

Started by Dave Shannon, a management consultant, together with Professor Eunice, Dr Joanne and Dr Jerry Taylor, the company is bringing innovative safety solutions to the food service, catering and hospitality sector.  The Taylor family, notably Professor Eunice, had dedicated many years to researching why food businesses struggled to meet the requirements of the sector’s safety management system, HACCP.  Backed by three PhDs, the Taylor family developed a complete food safety management system known as Menu-Safe to enable businesses to meet HACCP standards.  Based on the extensive research indicating Menu-Safe’s potential, Dave saw a huge opportunity for commercialising the system. Such was his belief in Menu-Safe that;

• He convinced the Taylor family that they could and should commercialise the Menu-Safe system
• He decided to leave his own career in consulting and focus purely on the new venture.
• He then persuaded the Taylor family to set up a company, Taylor Shannon International Ltd, to sell Menu-Safe both in the UK and into overseas markets - and hence transform the catering, food service and hospitality sector’s ability to comply with HACCP standards

Taylor Shannon International fully redesigned, internationalised and brought the product up to date with the latest theory and practice and immediately began to promote the system to the world wide network of contacts that Professor Eunice had already built as a result of her international projects and reputation. Dave then started to source specialist support to help launch Menu-Safe and fill the gaps in their knowledge and understanding of how to run a business with huge growth potential. Dave therefore met with Ian Palmer of Business Link who highlighted the NWDA High Growth Programme.

Support     

Taylor Shannon International signed up in March 2009 as a start. They received five days of specialist high growth coaching support from an experienced coach. The coach’s input enabled Taylor Shannon to:

• Develop a simple business model to scale up the business and achieve volume sales of Menu-Safe
• Put in place the structures and controls needed to cope with the anticipated rapid growth
• Address areas needing immediate attention including analysing margins and the cost base such that they could price the system sensibly in target markets - and still operate a discount structure for bulk buyers
• Redesign the UK version of Menu-Safe to make it immediately clear that it is 100% compliant with HACCP
• Build a team of overseas partners and distributors to drive sales in those markets where the company already had good relationships and where there was a known demand for the system
• Target leading UK chains, consultancies and food safety bodies to build up business in the domestic market
• Establish a certification arm to enable Taylor Shannon to also certify Menu-Safe for their clients

• Identify other relevant business support such as the NWDA Innovation Vouchers scheme

Outcomes    

• Real clarity in their thinking, enabling them to identify the key business opportunities and make the critical decisions needed to move the company forward
• Major sales quickly made into the UK market and three target overseas markets – Oman, UAE and Honduras
• Negotiating major distribution deals with potential partners including a major UK food safety company with a global presence and the potential for large sales volumes.
• Dave Shannon now making much better use of his time by focusing on quality, commercial and legal issues
• Already approached by a major multinational looking to buy the business!