Former England football chef takes on frozen ready meals
“With all the experience of cooking for some of the world’s most high profile and elite athletes and delivering week in/week out on a world stage, there’s always been something in the back of my mind that’s wanted me to take those years of knowledge and deliver that help everybody improve the way they eat,” explained Meziane.
“It’s been an exciting path to walk and in a very short space of time I’ve gone from cooking everything to learning, very quickly, this quite wonderful world of food manufacturing.”
Partners in production
While plans were in place for Tweakd to produce 100% of its own products, the business instead chose to outsource production. As Misiane puts it, the decision has allowed his business more room to expand. Working with partners will allow the business to scale much quicker and not be restricted by what could have been limited production capabilities.
“The real surprise for me is the level of skill and ability that’s out there among food manufacturers,” he continued. “It’s blown my mind coming from a fresh food environment where [ingredients] come in the back door, we prepare it and serve it. It’s changed my perception of food manufacturing.”
When asked why Tweakd had chosen to supply direct to consumer and forgone bricks and mortar retail, Meziane said shopping habits since the pandemic began reflected a shift toward e-commerce and online purchases.
Consumer buying habits
“I think that lockdown and what’s happened in the wider world has massively changed consumer habits and very quickly people have become accustomed now to purchasing everything over the internet,” he said. “It also allows us complete control over our product -- there’s no negotiation on quality.
The dream of a stock keeping unit on a retail store shelf is still something that Meziane aspires to. However, the events of the past 12 months have made him wary about looking too far into the future.
“I would like one day to walk in to one of the big four supermarkets and see our products on the shelves there,” Meziane added. “But it’s really important to everyone here at Tweakd that the quality that we say we are going to give our consumers is in no way interrupted by working with anybody else.”
