On Thursday 20th October 22, we competed against lots of other brilliant British businesses to earn a place on @AldiUK’s shelves.
Waaaay back in early spring, we caught the attention of the wonderful people at Channel 4, they were producing a new prime-time show aimed at identifying ‘the next big thing’ in food production. The programme was to be produced in association with Aldi, with the prospect of supplying the
small matter of 950 UK stores with winning dishes.
Now, we like to keep things simple here at Mandira’s Kitchen, yes we have had visits from loads of celebrities and even members of the Royal Family have popped by for a ‘cheeky Biryani’, but this felt different…this felt like grown up business.
So, when we received notification that we had made the final shortlist, we allowed ourselves to get quite excited, and for all we kept repeating to ourselves the phrase the CH4 producer used in her email, ‘this does not guarantee your place on the show’, we were already picking out frocks and
thinking about how we’d look on Gogglebox!
And then it happened.
We had reached the actual final and were going to appear on a real life, actual terrestrial TV prime- time programme.
Now, of course there are some people and businesses that take this sort of thing in their stride, but not us. We are only just over three-years old as a business, how can this be happening? When we sent in our application, it was in all honesty more in hope than expectation, after all we were up against hundreds of other great businesses, businesses that probably appeared on TV all the time, businesses that weren’t still metaphorical toddlers!
The production process was like a well-oiled Magi-Mix, the people at South Shore TV held our hands
every step of the way, we were wide-eyed innocents and they treated us like seasoned
professionals. A film crew visited us at our Silent Pool HQ and we were thrilled to welcome
presenters Anita Rani and Britain’s Best Home Cook, Chris Bavin to see our kitchens and take a close look at our processes (and taste some of our food!).
The show airs on Thursday 20 th October on Channel 4 at 8.00pm, we have already seen plenty of
trailers on TV, including this one, and we are nervous/excited/petrified to watch the programme…they say the camera adds 20 Lbs and we’re an all-female team!
On the show you will see the hugely experienced and genuinely delightful and supportive Julie Ashfield, Manging Director of Buying at ALDI UK, her insight and understanding of our business was a wonder to behold and we are grateful for her support.
We can’t tell you how we got on, you will have to watch the show to see. All we can say is that the 5
other ‘competitors’ in our category have wonderful businesses and we were proud to be in their company.
We have come a long way in 3 years…who knows how far we can go from here!
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