At 14, Doherty started making jams from his grandmother’s recipes in Edinburgh, Scotland. Originally, his customer base was limited to neighbors and friends from his church, but business picked up quickly, and by age 16, he left school to work on his jams full time. He added some tweaks to the recipe and gave his business a name. The name is Superjam. His jam is made entirety of fruit and fruit juices. When he first started he was getting so many orders he couldnt keep up. He started renting out a factory a few days a month to keep up. In early 2007, Waitrose, a high-end supermarket in the U.K., approached Doherty hoping to sell his SuperJam products in their stores. Within months there were SuperJam jars on the shelves of 184 Waitrose stores, hoisting Doherty and his business to new heights.
Doherty also launched a charitable project in 2008 called the SuperJam Tea Parties. Since the program’s inception, SuperJam has hosted over 100 tea parties in Scotland, England and Wales for elderly people who live alone or in nursing homes. “Guests often cry at the end of the afternoon since they’ve had so much fun,” says Doherty. The events–including live music, dancing and drinks–have attracted as many as 500 guests.
Whtas inspiring about this young man is that he simply loved what his grandma had done for him and he thought that her recipe was so good that everyone needed to know about it. So he went about his whole enterprise, based on knowing that people will love what he has loved for years. He is a very humble young man and is quite inspiring. I mean really i ought to start pulling out some old family recipes and see where it gets me.
Great find! I absolutely love stories like these. Its so cool to see how a business can be formed around something as special as a family recipe. That seems to give people a certain emotional connection to the company. I mean who doesn’t love their grandmas recipes?