I should have written before but have been busy with the site and responding to people’s comments and good wishes but I wanted to tell you about The Tesco deal and what actually happened.

I was really reluctant to approach Tesco as I felt they were far too big for us and would eat us alive and I was proved SO very wrong!  The hardest thing is getting through the door to the right person …so I went to the very top, and my letter was passed on to the appropriate person.

I remember walkimng into their offices and meeting Mandy maketing manager for on-line grocery.  I had 45 minutes to pitch to her and we needed a decision really quickly because I knew that if they went for the idea we had to then build it in time for the airing of Dragon’s Den.  What I suggested was that it would be a real partnership – we would provide MyDish and all its functionality for Tesco.com / Real food and they would supply their shopping facility to help us really achieve what we wanted to do – make it easy for people to plan their cooking for the week , or for a dinner party and get the ingredients delivered to your door by Tesco.com.

What impressed me SO much was that they liked the idea and made a decision to support us the very next day.  No meeting after meeting or delay.  The best thing was that huge British company decided to support lil’ ole us.  I think Mandy saw what we were trying to do and decided to go for it and without her this wouldn’t have happened (so thanks Mandy!)

The other thing that really impressed me about Tesco was the empowerement that the teams had, it was like they are all running their own little busineeses – very different from the corporate worlds I have worked in.

Deborah Meaden and Carol Savage at Tesco

Anyway – we then had 2 months to build MyDish for them and to build their shopping application into our site.  We are still developing the scheduler / planner so you know which recipe to cook on which day – but today you can choose your recipes add it to your shopping list and then it automatically goes into the Tesco.com shopping list for you to add to your basket.. We decided not to add everything in one go as you might already have some of the ingredients in your cupboard and not want to buy another packet of flour – or whatever.

Deborah Meaden, Laura Wade Gery, Mandy Minichiello, Megan Powell and Carol Savage at Tesco

Deborah was incredibly supportive along the way – and inputs into our strategy and proposals.  At the final meeting it added huge weight that she came with me to meet the CEO and sign the deal.  We had a really inspirational meeting discussing our ideas for where this can go – and with Tesco helping us we really can create a British user generated recipe site that has all the applications that makes MyDish the place to go if you are looking to make a meal at home.