Episode show notes
Surinder & Safia Hothi-Bellamy are two incredibly busy Directors leading Pure Punjabi’s remarkably diverse growth, from events & ingredients to private dining & cookery classes.
The business’ humble beginnings only add to the spectacle of their award-winning offering. We hear from the mother-daughter duo this week on ‘It Runs In The Family’ to uncover the ingredients for success within this prolific pairing.
This episode covers:
- The keen initiative that led Surinder to start the business
- Pure Punjabi’s early success and natural diversification
- Maintaining space and specialisms in the relationship dynamic
- How Surinder & Safia have used constraints to their advantage, and thrived off of customer communication and feedback
Episode highlights
“I searched everywhere to buy products to stock, and I just could not find anything that was properly made the way I know that we all make it at home by the grandmothers, mothers and aunties all making grinding. I was wondering where I was going to find it, then I just suddenly thought, hang on a minute – that’s what I do. I could make it and produce it because I’m doing it all the time. I just need to make it commercially available.” – 3:45 – Surinder Hothi-Bellamy
“Our growth from the starting point to now has happened very organically, and has been really customer-led. We have multiple arms to the business, but each one just sort of added gradually one stage at a time.” – 7:55 – Safia Hothi-Bellamy
“Someone within the team of a famous TV chef had literally copied and pasted our entire workshop page and just changed the names to their own names because they could see how people were connecting with what we were doing. When you start to see your things being copied, then you know you’re doing it right.” – 13:30 – Safia Hothi-Bellamy
“We had obviously the plan of what would happen if it didn’t work, but we didn’t really plan what would happen if it did. Within the first year, the tandoori masala product was switched to fresh lab tested, it won a gold star Great Taste Award, we launched events and pop up restaurants that were selling out immediately, I was a finalist for the Enterprising Wiltshire awards in the Young Entrepreneur category. It suddenly was just gaining momentum.” – 19:45 – Safia Hothi-Bellamy
“Not everybody would be able to work with every single one of their family members. So if you feel that you can start that in the first place, then that’s a different thing, isn’t it? Then you just go forward, and then it just happens.” – 24:15 – Safia Hothi-Bellamy
“I encouraged Safia to find something else because you can still work from the laptop, and we’ll come together when we have events or workshops. It’s worked really, really well, because I think you need to have your own thing.” – 31:30 – Surinder Hothi-Bellamy
“Use your constraints to your advantage. So because we were a small family business, we didn’t have a massive budget. The reason we made our product half digital was because we went to the printers, asked the cost for black & white vs colour and one image was like 10 times the price. We thought, ‘This isn’t best for our customers. We need to make it better for them’.” – 54:35 – Safia Hothi-Bellamy
“Don’t use data in a nasty way to spam your people or bombard them with sales things. But it’s key to be able to always stay in contact and connected with them, and email is still the best way.” – 55:50 – Surinder Hothi-Bellamy