Digby Vollrath, 26 and Hugo Campbell, 27
Company: Feast It
Web: feast-it.com

From birthday parties for 50 people to gruelling half-marathons for 50,000, Feast It allows you to turn any event into a street food carnival.

The business, forged by best friends Digby Vollrath and Hugo Campbell, creates a bustling online marketplace for food stalls, connecting traders with event planners and facilitating all stages of the transaction via an end-to-end booking platform.

Traders are hand-picked for their quality and reliability, and the Feast It roster includes a blend of established brands, from Dirty Burger and Crosstown Doughnuts to vendors unknown beyond their own food trucks.

The business started out in London, whose multicultural pull makes it a mecca of street food, yet it has since branched out to Manchester and Leeds. A smattering of Michelin-starred chefs have come on board, adding a dash of high-end glamour to Feast It’s flavour.

Founded just over 18 months ago, the company has already lured blue-chip clients such as Facebook, Amazon and PwC, who have used Feast It to jazz up their corporate events with street-level spontaneity. It has also cut a swathe through London’s uber-competitive catering market, securing exclusive catering rights for events such as London Pride and the Hackney half-marathon.

The first year and a half may have been impressive, but Campbell and Vollrath believe this is nothing more than an hors d’oeuvre before the company goes full-throttle.

Armed with funding from a strong of start-up luminaries including Jeremy Mogford, founder of Browns Restaurants, they’re aiming for 400% growth in 2018 via a 360-degree product range, which will include everything from greasy burgers to Michelin-grade beef bourguignon.

To compliment the core business, Feast It’s founders have trialled new services including photography, wait staff, and florists.

The ultimate vision is for a holistic events company, providing all the trimmings an event planner could possibly need.

Roheel Ahmad and Scott Parsons, 30
Company: Forsyth Barnes
Web: www.forsythbarnes.com

In the words of its co-founders, Forsyth Barnes’ mission is “to introduce the personal touch” back into recruitment.

In an industry often criticised for ignoring the requirements of its clients, this strategy offers a point of difference – and is already proving inspired.

Founded just three years ago, the business encompasses three offices and operates in an ever-growing number of fields including retail, financial services, telecoms and sports. Specialising in executive roles worth up to £250,000, its client base spans the full spectrum from start-ups through to corporate giants such as Adobe, Bupa and Premier League Football Clubs.

Co-founders Roheel Ahmad and Scott Parsons, who both forged successful recruitment careers, are happy to admit they’re not reinventing the wheel. Instead they focus on offering first-class care, going out and meeting clients to get a better idea of what they want and match them to the best possible candidate.

Success has been shared across the business; staff have even been whisked away to Barcelona and New York to celebrate key milestones.

Having started out in the heart of London, Forsyth Barnes has since expanded into Nottingham and now into Leeds, which will be the focus of major expansion over the coming months. Ahmad and Parsons are also ramping up their sports division and plan to open an office in New York, as they push towards their target of 100% average year-on-year growth.

In addition to their ambitious expansion plans, the co-founders are keen to nurture the next generation of talent. Forsyth Barnes also runs its own academy, offering training for graduates to become recruitment consultants and rise through the company’s ranks.

Little wonder that Forsyth Barnes has been recognised for its ‘Commitment to People Development’ at the 2017 East Midlands Chamber Awards – where Parsons picked up the Entrepreneur of the Year gong. The firm has also been recognised by Startups.co.uk before, having been named the 11th best start-up in the country for 2018.

Robert Forkan, 31 and Paul Forkan, 28
Company: Gandys International Limited
Web: www.gandyslondon.com

Few businesses have been forged from such tragic circumstances as Gandys.

The socially conscious fashion brand was created by brothers Robert and Paul Forkan to honour their parents, who lost their lives in the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

Yet, out of this nightmare has come one of Britain’s most inspirational companies, combining London trends with a boldly global focus.

Gandys was born in 2012 and started out selling flip-flops. Armed with only £2,000, the Forkans boot-strapped to the max from their Brixton flat: product shots were taken on an iPhone and the first international order was wrapped in gaffer tape, with a hand-written label.

Yet the business has grown from those humble begins, branching out into other garments popular with travellers, including swim shorts and a distinctive round beach towel. The range began to attract celebrity followers, including Richard Branson and Jessie J.

As demand grew, Rob and Paul saw the need to establish direct retail premises. Four shops were opened in 2016, including an outlet in the bustling Spitalfields district, and several more opened last year. A number of high-profile partners have endorsed the company’s designs, including the Rolling Stones and the McLaren F1 team.

Yet the key focus of the business is helping people.

Rob and Paul were taken out of their south London school in 2001 and whisked off on a journey around the world by their parents, who were doing humanitarian work. The brothers say their mum and dad taught them it was vital “to do more in life than just exist,” and this focus, combined with the wanderlust kindled by their nomadic childhood, continues to frame their vision today.

Rob and Paul opened their first children’s home in Sri Lanka in 2014, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Tsunami. Another facility opened in Malawi soon afterward, and now the brothers are planning to go global, starting with a new launch in Brazil next year.

The driving force behind this global programme is the Orphans for Orphans initiative, to which 10% of Gandys’ profits are channelled. Rob and Paul’s charitable work led to an invitation to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, and Prince William has since promoted their brand.

The brothers say they have several marketing opportunities lined up over the coming months, and will be launching further stores in London before going UK-wide in 2020.

Blending this business expansion with their global charitable drive will take some doing, but it’s nothing compared to what they’ve gone through to reach this point,

Simon Phelan, 28
Company: Hometree
Website: www.hometree.co.uk

Many of us have been through the ordeal of replacing a boiler at some point.

You wait two weeks for an appointment, take a day off work and the engineer often doesn’t show up. It’s a staple of British life, like barbecuing in the rain or investing forlorn hope in international football tournaments.

Hometree wants to make this routinely frustrating experience better, using digital technology to take boiler installation out of what it calls “the dark ages”.

The two-year-old company, co-founded by Simon Phelan (pictured left), offers boiler surveys via video call, saving homeowners the ordeal of letting a sharp-suited salesperson into their home and being sweet-talked into buying a product they don’t need.

If a customer does decide to get a new boiler fitted (and there’s no pressure to do so), they can select their preferred model online using Hometree’s e-commerce solution. Visitors to the website are offered a live chat upon arrival, emulating the real-time customer care pioneered by companies such as Amazon.

Phelan – who began his career working for legendary venture capitalist Jon Moulton before switching to the energy market – hopes to install up to 6,000 boilers this year, making his company the third-largest installer in the UK, and establish a dominant hold on a sector which has hitherto been largely untouched by digital innovation.

The company has raised over £12.5m, having recently raised a fresh funding tranche of $8.5m led by one of the largest financial companies in the world.

Moulton has also invested in the company, as has Paul Pindar, the former Capita CEO who has steered two previous start-ups, Purplebricks and eve Sleep, through IPOs.

Pindar’s experience is helping the company prepare for what Phelan calls “hyper growth”, and plans are in place to build on the core boiler business with a smart home services arm – surfing the technological wave made possible by Internet of Things.

James McMaster, 35
Company: Huel
Web: huel.com

It’s a question that’s boggling the minds of scientists from Moscow to Melbourne. How does our society feed itself without ruining the environment around us?

Huel is aiming to find a solution to this existential issue. The company, run by 35-year-old CEO James McMaster, offers nutritionally complete and affordable liquid meals which protect animals and the environment.

Huel was founded by serial entrepreneur Julian Hearn in 2015 and its flagship product is a powder comprised of oats, pea protein, flaxseed, brown rice protein and coconut, specifically designed to provide a nutritionally complete meal which is 100% vegan – and costs just £1.63 at the checkout.

The product ensures zero food waste and uses far less packaging than alternative products, a particular benefit in a country which throws around a third of all its food away.

Huel’s powder, which takes just minutes to prepare, has particular benefits for busy, time-poor professionals, but the City certainly isn’t the limit: in fact its ultra-healthy blend of ingredients appeals to consumers far beyond the corporate space.

Huel has only just turned three years old but already it’s sold 25 million meals. Even more impressively, it has managed to crack the daunting US food market, and turned over $10m in its first year of business on the other side of the Atlantic.

Now, it is targeting annual revenues of over £40m in 2018 and a future valuation of £1bn, propelled by expansion into new markets, nutrient bars and cereal products.

Yet the operation will retain its start-up vigour; Huel’s staff are more like a tribe, a bunch of ambitious professionals known as ‘Hueligans’ who happily don the company’s clothing to work every day. It’s an invigorating atmosphere, one which is perfectly attuned to Huel’s vibrant, health-conscious vision.

Adam Frisby 31
Company: In The Style
Web: www.inthestyle.com

Adam Frisby’s working life began flipping burgers with no GCSEs. Today, he is at the head of a £15m clothing brand which fuses Manchester’s anarchic cultural scene with Britain’s love of reality TV.

His business, In The Style, is an online clothing retailer made famous through collaborations with celebrity influencers from reality shows like Made In Chelsea and The Only Way Is Essex.

The venture is built on ‘fast fashion’, edgy designs straight from the catwalk which are hugely popular among women and girls aged 16 to 30.

The success of the venture has made Frisby one of Britain’s sought-after young fashionistas. He’s been featured in Drapers’ 30 Under 30, and is regularly seen in the tabloids alongside the country’s pretty young things.

Frisby says he got his work ethic as a teenager, when he relocated to Spain with his family and was forced to work at Burger King on his return due to a lack of options. He subsequently branched out into banking and recruitment, before eventually taking a redundancy payout of £1,000 in 2013 and ploughing it into his dream.

Originally from Norfolk, Frisby relocated to Manchester before starting his venture and fell in love with the city, seeing it as the perfect place to start a business. Manchester has long been a beating heart of the UK’s cultural scene, and its daring fashions are very much evident in Frisby’s product range.

Right from the start, In The Style has been all over social media. Frisby sold his very first batch of dresses through social media and has since focused on generating a viral buzz for his e-tailer, using the reflected glory provided by reality celebs.

A key early milestone was securing the collaboration of TOWIE star Lauren Pope, and the company has since worked with several other TV favourites including Billie Faiers, Binky Felstead and Charlotte Crosby. This approach has built an army of online fans: In The Style has 1.4 million direct followers on social media, backed by a wider social media reach of 18 million via its celebrity partners.

The business took on external investment from mid-market private equity firm Livingbridge last year, and is eyeing expansion into new avenues such as plus-size lines. The company has also launched an under-£5 range as it targets UK-wide dominance: Frisby says he wants to hit £50m turnover within a few years.

Given recent pop culture trends, he has every reason to be confident. Love Island dominated Britain’s consciousness this summer, almost knocking the World Cup off the top of the watercooler charts.

In The Style has been quick to capitalise by signing up winner Dani Dyer as its latest collaborator, and with a new series of TOWIE just around the corner, Frisby will no doubt already be eyeing up his next publicity goldmine.

Tamara Rajah, 35
Company: Live Better With
Web: livebetterwith.com

If you follow the healthcare news, you’ll probably read about at least one ‘groundbreaking cancer treatment’ almost every week. A leading-edge therapy dedicated to helping patients rid themselves of this awful disease.

But what about the solutions for patients in their day-to-day life?

Where are the products and services to maximise their quality of life as they undergo all the gruelling operations and chemotherapy?

These questions have been answered by Tamara Rajah, who has built an e-commerce platform dedicated to helping those living with cancer.

Live Better With is one-shop shop for all manner of aids and supports, helping patients deal with all the manifold side-effects of cancer and its treatment. Now, after winning a string of awards, the business is expanding to help those suffering from other long-term conditions such as the menopause.

Rajah founded the business after becoming intensely frustrated by what she saw while working as a healthcare specialist at McKinsey. Whilst patients with long-term conditions typically receive great medical care, there is a glaring lack of advice available to help them mitigate the ancillary problems.

She explains: “There are actually hundreds of products that can help relieve these symptoms and side effects, from lotions and balms to food supplements to books to mobility aids. But patients and their families either don’t know about them or struggle to find them to purchase. This is hugely frustrating and wrong. And it’s not just cancer, it’s the same with every long-term condition.”

So Rajah resigned from her job to set up Live Better With in 2015.

Right from the start, she was dedicated on personalising her offering to each customer, rather than hitting them with the hard sell. Her website offers a careful assessment service which asks patients about their condition, and the benefits of each product are explained in detail.

Every single product on the site has been recommended or endorsed by those living with the condition, so users have a guarantee of quality and reliability. And the website is supported by a community of 70,000 people including patients, doctors, nurses and bloggers.

Having secured funding totalling $9.5m, the venture has gone from strength to strength. Live Better With has already helped 40,000 paying customers and given advice and information to a total audience of 2.5 million. Users are primarily concentrated in the UK and US, but span 40 different countries all told.

Unsurprisingly, Rajah has earned plenty of recognition from The Sunday Times, Forbes and other esteemed titles, and she’s been named as one of our Inspiring Women in recognition of her pursuit of excellence in the field of healthcare.

Over the next 12 months, Rajah and her team want to go deeper into the cancer communities in Britain and America through brand, partnership and community activities. They also want to develop their new menopause platform in the UK and roll it out to the US market.

In addition to this key focus, Rajah plans to escalate the R&D and manufacturing of its own-brand products, of which there are currently six in total, and develop Live Better With’s physical retail footprint across Britain.

Harriot Pleydell-Bouverie, 33
Company: Mallow & Marsh
Web: www.mallowandmarsh.com

Four years after she slayed investors on Dragons’ Den, Harriot Pleydell-Bouverie remains one of Britain’s boldest female entrepreneurs.

Her mission to paint the country pink isn’t quite complete, but she continues to make huge progress with her incredibly tasty marshmallow snacks.

The business, called Mallow & Marsh, launched in 2013 and captured the attention of investors immediately. Harriot appeared on Dragons’ Den a year after launch and promptly rejected the panellists’ offers in favour of going it alone.

Saying ‘I’m out’ to Peter Jones and co was a risky step, but it has turned out rather well. Harriot went out and found investment on her own, and says she has really benefited from the advice offered by her financial backers.

That advice has helped Mallow & Marsh expand nationwide and secure an enviable band of stockists including Sainsbury’s, Starbucks, Boots and BP. It’s a remarkable success story for Harriot, who only started the business after friends bet her £50 she couldn’t make marshmallows at home.

Nowadays Mallow & Marsh is on a mission to show everyone how delicious marshmallow really is. Although the founder is no longer running the business from her kitchen like she did in the early days, the marshmallow is still handmade in the UK, with only natural flavours. The results? The business tripled for two years in a row – and is on track to double in 2018.

And they have huge plans for the future. The founder says she and her team want to grow their UK distribution network, drive brand awareness and keep making the best marshmallow they possibly can. The company will also be launching its export strategy at the beginning of 2019 to build on its UK success.

As the brand’s profile has grown, innovation continues to be the cornerstone of Mallow & Marsh and a key focus for Harriot. Her favourite part of the job is developing new products and she is still regularly whisking up new recipes, either in the factory or in her own kitchen. Outside of Mallow & Marsh Harriot remains true to her big passions – food and entrepreneurship – and dedicates time to helping inspire others set up their own business.

Harriot Pleydell-Bouverie is no stranger to our audience, having featured in the 2015 edition of Startups 100 and shortlisted for our Women in Business Award last year. We look forward to covering her and her amazing treats in the years to come.

Robert Grieg-Gran, 33, Giles Humphries, 31 and Myles Hopper, 30
Company: Mindful Chef
Web: www.mindfulchef.com

The idea for Mindful Chef arose when its three founders worked on a friend’s boat off the Devon Coast, and three years later with a modest amount of funding it is heading for turnover of £9m, backed by stars such as Sir Andy Murray and Victoria Pendleton CBE.

As they returned from their morning’s fishing trip one day in summer 2014, Young Guns – Myles Hopper, Giles Humphries and Robert Grieg-Gran – watched local villagers lining up to buy the produce, and were struck by how fresh it was. The fish looked so much better than the frozen produce available in the supermarket.

The three friends were inspired to launch their own company. Adapting the delivery model which has proved successful for companies such as Graze, they launched a subscription business which distributes weekly recipe boxes to customers, comprising an ultra-healthy balance of pre-portioned meat, fish and vegetables, as well as a recipe card.

Mindful Chef is gluten-free, dairy-free and contains no refined carbs. Providing a wide range of box options to suit all lifestyles, it offers one, two and four-person boxes and cater for gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, flexitarian, vegetarian and pescatarian diets.

The three watchwords of the business are health, freshness and sustainability. Mindful Chef’s quality ingredients are sourced from small award-winning British farms. Meat is 100% grass-fed, chicken is free-range and fish is landed fresh in the UK.

To ensure these standards are maintained across the supply chain, the founders regularly visit their suppliers. They also ask that customers return their ice packs and insulation after delivery, so the packaging can be reused and waste is kept to an absolute minimum.

The idea has captured the imagination of investors, particularly those in the sporting community. In July 2016, just over a year after the company launched, it raised £1m in just 11 days through an oversubscribed funding round including contributions from Murray and Pendleton. In October 2017, it crowdfunded an additional £2m in 12 days.

The company has delivered over one million meals in three years, and is actively looking to build on its 30,000 customers. It has even branched into publishing, having launched its acclaimed debut recipe book Eat Well, Live Better last year.

As their business continues to grow, the founders are determined not to lose sight of their original mission: to spread the benefits of healthy eating and use the business as a force for good. For every meal sold, they donate a school meal to a child living in poverty, and now they want to build the first 100% plastic-free recipe box by the end of the year.

Mindful Chef is proud to recently be certified B Corp, meeting rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

Having featured Mindful Chef among the top 20 of this year’s Startups 100, we’re delighted to have them at Young Guns!

Rich Goldsmith, 34 and Charlie Leet-Cook, 32
Company: MOJU
Web: www.mojudrinks.com

It’s a vision that began in a battered old VW Golf. A vision that took its founders out of the City and back to nature, forsaking large corporate salaries to spread the gospel of earth’s bounty.

And so far, it’s bearing fruit.

MOJU, the functional drinks business founded by Rich Goldsmith and Charlie Leet-Cook, is stocked by Harrods, Selfridges, Wholefoods, Amazon, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and WHSmith, generating the sort of buzz once stirred by innocent drinks.

The founders, however, are reluctant to claim the glory. They say that only one person deserves all the credit: Mutha Nature. The term is stylised to reflect the fact that, in the founders’ words, nature packs a punch.

Goldsmith and Leet-Cook are bringing that power to the people, providing pocket-sized hits of energy and wellness based purely on plant-based ingredients.

MOJU’s shot products, are no bigger than a Jaegerbomb you might find behind a bar. But the effect is completely the opposite: MOJU’s functional product is tailored to the Strava generation, active people who need a gulp of guilt-free goodness to support them through the day. Each product is chock full of vitamins and nutrients, the ideal supplement to ensure everyday nutrition.

Goldsmith and Leet-Cook, juice hobbyists who studied at Oxford Brookes before entering the corporate world, both had promising careers in front of them when they got the idea for MOJU. They could have been forgiven for thinking it wasn’t worth the risk.

Instead they quit their jobs and mapped out their strategy. Having made their own juices to get through the corporate grind, now they needed to roll them out commercially. Too young to have made fortunes from the City, they had to use their old Golf as a mobile office and delivery vehicle.

Three years on from launch, the journey has been a remarkable success. MOJU is one of Britain’s fastest-growing functional drinks brands and its direct-to-consumer sales path has gone down a storm. Goldsmith and Leet-Cook have carefully built their brand so it can be scaled rapidly.

Now, after three rounds of funding, the founders are ready to press on. Four new hires joined in January, and the direct sales model is now complemented by a best-in-class e-commerce site.

Yet as they grow, the founders say they want to retain the start-up culture; it’s what helps to drive innovation and sets the ambitious tone of the company.

While other brands take berths in shimmering skyscrapers, MOJU is still based on Hackney Road, the beating heart of east London’s start-up culture. A grassroots organisation, in every respect.