GRIDL NEEDS YOUR HELP!
Donation protected
Hey guys.
My name is Danny Cheeseman, and I was the owner of GRIDL In Newquay. I am asking for help to get started again.
Although GRIDL was very successful, especially considering its age, GRIDL had to close its doors in April 2022 due to issues with the landlord of the Cafe where I ran GRIDL from.
In just over 3 years, I have gone full circle from Homelessness to Business Owner, back to Homeless again and I really need a helping hand to get back to cooking amazing Cornish Breakfasts.
What I have.
A large social media following
A high-ranking website for breakfast-based search terms.
A large, loyal customer base who are eagerly awaiting our return
5-star food hygiene training.
EPOS and online ordering setup, along with all hardware
A blueprint for Low Energy Consumption Cooking.
A Trained Chef, ready to go.
A fully-fledged business that is ready to go.
What I do not have.
A Finalised Location.
Certain Appliances required.
Targets.
I have three targets, with 1 being the bare minimum and 3 being best case scenario.
1st Target - GRIDL Popup at a venue - £5,500
This will allow us to purchase the bare minimum required to start GRIDL from a pop-up location, cooking breakfasts from other businesses' premises. Reaching this target would mean we are able to work towards purchasing our own catering trailer.
2nd Target - Marquee-Based GRIDL - £6,750
This will give me the ability to start up GRIDL from a Marquee and make GRIDL mobile. Although this will make GRIDL weather permitting, it would mean I am not relying on other businesses' premises to run. Reaching this target would mean we are able to start out at events and work towards purchasing our own catering trailer.
3rd Target - Catering Trailer Based GRIDL - £12,500
This is the holy grail, and although I am not expecting to achieve this goal, it would definitely be the best and most secure option for GRIDL moving forward and mean self-sufficiency. If you have a catering trailer for sale and would consider a rent-to-buy deal, please let me know.
I would also discuss the possibility of an investment should someone want to help and be a part of GRIDL.
Donation Rewards.
Although I am desperate for help, I hate asking for something for nothing. I have come up with the following awards for donations.
For everyone who donates a minimum of £1, we will give them £3 off their first breakfast with us. We figure that if everyone who likes our page contributes £1, we can get purchase an oven, which is at the very core of our breakfasts.
£10 Donation
Your name displayed on our supporter's wall & website
£20 Donation
1 x Embroidered GRIDL Snapback
Your name displayed on our supporter's wall & website
£30 Donation
1 x Embroidered GRIDL T-Shirt
Your name displayed on our supporter's wall & website
£40 Donation
1x Embroidered GRIDL Hoodie
Your name displayed on our supporter's wall & website
£50 Donation
‘The One’ Bagel or VeggiGRIDL Bagel, once a month for one yea .
Your name displayed on our supporter's wall & website.
There are only 20 available in total, and should we be unsuccessful in our relaunch; you will receive a full refund.
£100 Donation
1 GRIDL or VeggiGRIDL Breakfast & Drink, once a month for one year.
Your name displayed on our supporter's wall & website.
There are only 10 available in total, and should we be unsuccessful in our relaunch; you will receive a full refund.
£200 Donation
2 x GRIDL or VeggiGRIDL Breakfasts & 2 x drinks, once a month for one year.
Your name displayed on our supporter's wall & website.
There are only 10 available in total, and should we be unsuccessful in our relaunch; you will receive a full refund.
Should you wish to donate for a reward, please message me with your name, donation amount and address so I can find your donation and get your reward sent out to you.
My Back Story.
After being homeless for a number of years in Newquay, in Mid 2019 I decided to sort my life out.
I went to DISC in Newquay who signposted me to multiple agencies. I got housed in emergency accommodation through the Star Project for 6 months to start the ball rolling and get me help with my situation, depression, anxiety, and ADHD (I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 12 but stopped treatment when I was about 23).
I was signed off of work by the doctors to enable me to take the time needed to get the correct help and as I had previously abused drugs, I was not allowed to have my ADHD medication until I jumped through months worth of hoops. So, to support myself during this time, I signed up to Universal Credit. However, after deductions were made, I was only awarded £220 a month. I applied for other benefits to top this up but I was turned down.
I managed to get help from DISC Newquay and Newquay Food Bank to survive these 6 months and during my time in the emergency accommodation, I managed to get funding to do my theory test and my driving licence. Within a couple of months, I managed to pass my theory and driving test first time. I also managed to get my CSCS card certification during this time too.
After 6 months in emergency accommodation with not much progress on the mental health side of things, my time in the emergency accommodation was up. I was offered a council flat at 108 Mount Wise and to be honest, anything was better than the emergency accommodation so I took it in a heart beat.
As I was still waiting to start treatments, I was still off on sick, on £220 a month. I was moved into the flat and had to pay £80 a month top up from my benefit as well as pay my tv licence and council tax. I soon realised that I was unable to survive on the money I was on and I had to try and fix things myself. It was at that point, I gave up seeking help for my mental health and my ADHD as I couldn't afford to get the help required.
I managed to get a few tools together and so I started up a little side business making furniture out of recycled wood called Rekraft UK. I was also doing odd handyman jobs to make a little money.
The furniture business started taking up more and more of my time so I decided to focus on that.
Then lockdown started.
All of the pallet wood dried up pretty much straight away and there went my little business. ‘I was stuck with orders I couldn't fulfil, so I had to end it..
As it was a new business, I couldn't get any financial help. To get help from the government, would mean waiting however long to get any money and that money would only amount to £220 per month which is not enough to cover the bills on my flat.
I was facing homelessness again.
The Start of GRIDL
One of my main problems has always been the effect my ADHD has on me and as I was still unmedicated, I still found everything bit of a struggle. A friend of mine was also diagnosed with ADHD, but as he did not take his medication, he offered it to me to help out. It helped loads. Suddenly my focus came back, and I started brainstorming ideas on what I could do.. That's when I came up with the idea of a lockdown food business. The initial idea was GRIDL, Street food Takeaway, selling homemade kebabs and burgers.
For this to start, we needed to get our hands on a catering trailer. So I started to sell what I could and work where I could to raise the money. I found the perfect trailer but I was 1.5k short. Amazingly, a friend of mine had just come into a little bit of money and offered to lend me the rest as long as it was paid back within 6 months as he didnt want to spend all of the money and it would act as a savings account for him so of course, I agreed.
I then purchased the catering trailer, set it up out the back of my council flat and started testing the new menu..
A week before opening, I saw a friend of mine out the back of our flat and it transpired that he was just about to start a burger business… As I felt that this was a conflict of interest, I realised that I would not be happy competing with a friend so the decision to start cooking breakfasts was made..
As I had learned web development and graphic design some years earlier, I designed and coded our website, designed the menus, ordering systems and employed my mate to deliver breakfasts and that was that. We opened.
GRIDL went MENTAL! I think it was two or three weeks before I had to close for a bit to try and find a partner as it was all too much to handle by myself.
This is when Jay Day contacted me to offer his services as he used to be a head chef. Jay joined the team as the main super chef, so I could take care of the ‘front end’..
Now that we had a team, GRIDL absolutely smashed it. A few months went by and I started getting visits from the housing. It turned out that I was not allowed to run a business from my flat and measures were being taken to get me evicted. Another month went by and luckily enough, we were contacted by the landlord of a local cafe who asked us if we would like to take on a cafe. We went for a meeting and we were told by the landlord that the previous tenant was turning over 160k+ and that the place was always busy so we would not have any problems up there. We later found this out that this was not true and this was just a sales pitch to get us to sign the lease. However, at the time, this was a no brainer and it was the the obvious move. We rode the wave and agreed to take on the Cafe.
We then put our catering trailer up for sale to get together the deposit for the cafe and as luck would have it, we managed to sell the catering trailer right on the morning of the meeting to sign the lease for the cafe and pass over the deposit, for the exact amount the deposit was. You couldn't have made it up.
The GRIDL Cafe.
We moved into the GRIDL cafe starting off with Breakfast, planning to open up in the evening. Pretty much instantly we started turning over 10k a month. When we opened, we were that skint, we didn’t even have plates or cutlery so we worked hard, serving breakfasts off of paper plates, using Covid as an excuse, putting all of the profits into all of the required equipment that we needed to run the cafe.
I think it was a month or two and Jay was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. It came so unexpectedly, everyone was in shock. Jay, obviously, gave up his position at GRIDL to focus on fighting the .. I am gutted to say, he sadly lost the battle and heaven gained another angel.
Trying to put the loss of the Jay from GRIDL in the back of my mind, I frantically tried to hire a chef. As soon as the job was posted, someone got in contact and after a quick chat, he came in as the chef. He was really expensive and it meant that I could not pay myself as around this time, our service charge was put up by 400% and the electric increased which was already being charged over the odds. To me, this didn't matter as I just needed to keep GRIDL up and running which I could not do by myself.
The new chef seemed to fit in well and we came up with the idea for NUUDL, a noodle based business which we would serve up in the evenings. After a 5k investment, we launched the business and over the course of the month, it was also a great success.
One day, out of the blue the new chef kicked off out of the blue, we had a few words and he ended up walking right out of service and quit on the spot with a full runner of NUUDL orders, leaving me to pick up the pieces. It transpired that there was more to the story than we knew and that the Chef had preplanned his departure. We received stupidly big orders of stock over the next few days as well as finding out that he had over ordered fridge stock. We had to throw out hundreds of pounds worth. Not only that, he changed the password for our ipad, locking us out as well as deleting all of the recipes for NUUDL off of our google cloud account. He essentially attempted and very almost succeeded in completely shutting us down and although NUUDL perished because of his actions, I managed to keep GRIDL going. I have heard since that the chef in question is well known for this behaviour in Newquay and has done pretty much the same to a few other businesses and we simply fell victim to him.
I then employed 3 friends. As they were all friends, it was a situation whereby if one left, the others would also leave. They then decided that they all wanted to go on holiday together over the same week. I told them that I couldn't lose them all at the same time because if I had to close for a week straight, I could not pay my bills and I would probably be forced to close. This fell on deaf ears and I was essentially held to ransom..I decided that I had no option but to close up and rethink my options.
I closed for a couple of days, taught myself how to use the oven correctly (I had never used a commercial steam oven before and the one we had was like a computer) and I managed to work out how to cook our breakfasts on the fly, using the oven alone. It worked. Towards the end, I could bang out 8 freshly cooked breakfasts every 15 minutes which was amazing.
It was around this time that access to ADHD medication stopped and I was no longer able to get it and suddenly I was struggling to focus, my thoughts were becoming fragmented and pretty much everything became a struggle
I worked my butt off to repay the 5k investment we received for NUUDL which meant that I could still not take a wage for myself but I did manage to pay it all back within 3 months of the investment.
After some time in the kitchen, I considered restarting NUUDL, but I soon learned that my groin hernia was getting a lot worse and was starting to get stuck out. I would really struggle on just a morning service, let alone an evening one and I was not keen to get any more chefs in.. Much to the disapproval of the landlord, it was left at that.
Towards the end, we had a dream team in place. Jodie would help me in the kitchen at weekends loading breakfasts and Chantelle ran the front end to perfection with another friend, Jase coming in to help Chantelle.
In 8 months of me taking over the kitchen and Chantelle running the front end, we had only one bad review out of hundreds given and that was only because I would not send out hogs pudding unheated haha. A pretty mean feat, which I was very proud of.
There were times we really struggled with the location. Considering its age, the location was very mismanaged. New rules, regulations and financial increases popped up often. The management's behaviour created some friction between some of the businesses at the location, leaving a bit of sour taste in the mouth. It became nigh on impossible to run a business at the location. I remember a conversation with the landlord regarding staff. He said, just pay them enough to live on and that's that. I did not take his advice and I gave £10 per hour no matter what the age was. I do, however think that he applied the same logic to his business and its tenants, and at every turn, he squeezed his tenants for everything he can get.
There were also many times during our tenure that the main roads leading to the cafe underwent roadworks which meant the roads were pretty much gridlocked. Customers simply couldn't get up to us. Then in summer, the roads are that busy, people again, couldn't get up to us. Apparently this was normal for day times but also, something that we had no idea about.
The landlord was planning to evict us and get the next business into the cafe. As soon as they had the opportunity to, they locked us out of the cafe with no warning and no notice and started the refit for the new client that went in. I turned up and there were already people in the cafe refitting it and I was told, You are out. I obviously questioned it but I was told, "it is what it is, now get off site as you are barred". The landlord held onto quite a few of the appliances that we bought and paid for NUUDL and then they called the police and accused me of theft! I was pulled over and questioned by the police, but luckily, I had collated all of the invoices and statements showing that I had paid for the equipment in full. Showing that it was in fact, the landlord that had broken the law. They had unlawfully locked me out of my premises and withheld appliances and equipment belonging to GRIDL. But they didn't want to know, and no further action was taken either way. That equipment is still in the cafe and still used today.
And that was that.
The end of GRIDL.
GRIDL was the hardest I had ever worked and the most successful I have ever been, and I loved it. People like me are not supposed to get these opportunities. Someone who spent his life in care and got kicked out at 17 into Newquay. Putting it simply, at that time, I was a discredit to society. Most of my close friends from my younger years are now dead, in jail or have severe drug addictions. I almost, so so very almost, got stuck down this path, but I chose to try and better myself and to be honest, I had succeeded.
Then came the depression again. After everything GRIDL went through, and finally, when we found our team of dreams, everything was lost. I pretty much gave up. I have essentially been homeless since, mourning the loss of GRIDL.
Since GRIDL has closed, I have managed to go through the ADHD clinic, and I am now medicated for my ADHD.
I am signed off sick for three months as I have an operation for my Groin Hernia on the 16th of December, and it takes at least six weeks to heal. Due to this, I am back on Universal Credit, getting £245 a month.
GRIDL currently has over 5200 likes on Facebook, with almost all of them being in the local vicinity. Our website ranks very high on lots of targeted breakfast search terms, such as;
Breakfast Newquay
Breakfast in Newquay
Breakfast Takeaway Newquay
Breakfast Delivery Newquay
Cornish Breakfast Newquay
Breakfast Takeaway Cornwall
Breakfast Delivery Cornwall
Cornish Breakfast Cornwall
Breakfast Cornwall (9th position but first business in search results)
Breakfast in Cornwall (10th position but first business in search results)
All of this took me untold hours of work to achieve, and I am gutted that it could all go to waste.
As soon as I am better, I want to restart GRIDL, which is why I am asking for help. As I said above, I am not asking for money for free. You can help by donating for GRIDL merch or buy a book of 12 breakfasts or bagels at a discount. Even if you donate just a pound, we will give you £3 off of your first order, so if people want GRIDL back, please help me make it happen.
I appreciate your time, and thank you for reading.
Please check out our website and socials!
Thank you for your time and I hope you can help x
Organizer
Daniel Cheeseman
Organizer
England
