A snack solution inspired by lockdown - Economics with Spanish students Kieran Fitzgerald and Joshua Barley

Snackcess is the exciting new venture founded by three friends - two of which are UoB Economics students Kieran Fitzgerald and Joshua Barley - the third member is Sonny Drinkwater. Their idea is a snack business aimed at HR managers for their business staff working from home and the concept has been wholly influenced by the lockdown restrictions enforced during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

We came up with the idea when we realised how much workers and students working from home during the lockdown were complaining about the deterioration of their diet and frequent unhealthy snacking. Snacking doesn't have to be unhealthy, there are so many healthy snacks out there to keep workers fuelled when working, while staying health-conscious.

Kieran Fitzgerald

The founders believe that whilst many companies were providing healthy snacks to employees in the office, they are missing this benefit when working from home. So they have come up with the idea of using healthy snacks as a tool to improve employee wellness, health and engagement.

Who doesn't like free healthy snacks? We think that the Coronavirus pandemic will change the workplace forever, we predict that we will see many more remote workers and believe the whole labour market will shift towards remote-working, now we all know it is possible

Kieran and Joshua have taken full advantage of all B-Enterprising has to offer from starting their first business in their earlier years at university through to mentoring, grant money and our highly successful B-Enterprising Boot Camp. Both Kieran and Josh entered the 2017 Boot Camp with Kieran’s team being crowned the winners - this in turn inspired them to work on their own businesses while studying at University.

They were awarded grant money from B-Enterprising for their first idea. Although the outcome didn’t go to plan they have learnt a lot of skills and used this experience to help create their latest idea, Snackcess.  It's important to remember that failure is a part of success.

Snackcess have some valuable advice for start-ups:

It's better to start selling and improve your product based on feedback rather than losing time trying to perfect from the start.

So far, we've been surprised how easy it has been to start a business remotely. During lockdown, the three of us are all in different locations. We've been using technology to conduct meetings, collaborate and share ideas and it's been such a breeze (internet connections permitting).

It's surprising how much help there is out there for students like us who just want to start something. The B-Enterprising team offer remote support for students and outside the university there are local incubators, start-up loans available, local business mentors and support through organisations such as The Prince’s Trust.Find out more about the B-Enterprising Ideas Fund here.

Joshua Barley

Bob, Kerry and Mohammed are always available to support us with advice and are only an email away. It's a shame more students don't take advantage of the resources from B-Enterprising to start their own businesses at university, the £500-1000 grant money and extra support is a great boost.

We coined the word Snackcess by combining the words Snack and Success because we want our snacks to lead to successful snacking workers. The word snackcess means a successful snacking experience.

If you would like to find out any more information or organise a snack box for your business: please email us at hello@snackess.co.uk or check out our website www.snackcess.co.uk

The B-Enterprising team are on hand to help get your freelance idea or start-up off the ground.  Why don’t you visit our website to find out how we can still support you remotely with funding, business advice session and online workshops.

Blog Edited by Kerry Brunn, B-Enterprising Team

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