Posh 'meals-on-wheels' are going down so well

Oct 1 2008 By Rupert Basham, Surrey Herald

A mother-of-two who set up a luxury meals-on-wheels service from her kitchen and now has celebrities including Ruby Wax and Patsy Kensit on her client list, has won an entrepreneur of the year award.

Jennifer Irvine, who lives in Wentworth with her husband and children, was awarded the Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Girls! Make your Mark, a national campaign that aims to recognise the UK's leading enterprise potential and give women inspiring role models.

Jennifer founded her food delivery service The Pure Package in 2004 after noticing a gap in the market It now turns over £1.2m a year and has more than 3,000 clients and 25 staff on its books.

The 30-year-old, who was presented with the award at a ceremony in central London by tele-vision personality Carrie Grant, said: "Receiving it was fantastic, I really wasn't expecting it. It's nice, because it reassures you that you're heading in the right direction."

The Pure Package is a seven-day-a-week service in which three pre-prepared meals and two snacks are placed in a temperature-controlled bag outside a customer's home before 6am every day, at a cost of between £24 and £27 a day.

The company delivers within the M25, but is looking to expand all over the country.

Jennifer also caters for top class events such as London Fashion Week and receives a lot of orders for clients in the lead up to the Oscars.

The company works with its customers to create a menu tailored to their individual dietary needs, and recipes include ostrich and artichoke salad and green tea infused duck salad.

Jennifer grew up on a self-sufficient farm in Ireland, where her parents still make Milleens cheese.

She completed an honours degree in food marketing economics from the University of Reading, and launched her company while taking on senior management roles within the Deals Restaurant Group and the Conran Group.

She said: "I saw a service that I wanted to use so I set it up. Since then, it's been incredibly popular, and there have been similar set-ups abroad.

"From that perspective, it's quite nice to be a pioneer. I launched The Pure Package on March 1 2004,

"I had a piece about the company in the Evening Standard on the second, and by the third, I had too many orders.

"I had Patsy Kensit phoning me up, asking if there was any way she could skip the waiting queue. She even offered to pay extra."

Since the launch of The Pure Package, Jennifer has won a handful of accolades that range from Best New Business to Young Entrepreneurial awards and has been noted for both her charity and environmental work.