WHEN his dreams of being a sports star were dashed, after multiple rejections and a serious injury, Paul Brown was at a loss for what to do with his life.He then joined Glossop North End, where he played semi-professional, but “didn't make it, like a lot of people in
Having grown up around his mum working in catering and his dad, who opened Manchester’s first ever wine bar, the food and drink industry was a natural next-step for Paul.and was a bit of an entrepreneur,” Paul says. “So the food and drink scene, and being involved in that as a child, was always something I understood and was quite excited about.It was also having watched them work hard, encouraging him and his two brothers to start working from the age of 10, that motivated him.
“The original passion was to be paid to play sport, like it is for most young people, but then I realised that actually being an entrepreneur was something I really, really wanted to do.”He wrote a business plan for a healthy food business, but struggled to make a go of it at first, and began working as a grill chef, while “trying to get it off the ground”.
“I was travelling a lot from Manchester to London and realised that if you wanted a healthy food product, there weren’t that many options,” he says. “So Bol was set up to make it easy for busy people to eat well.”