Luxury milkshake brand Mr Sherick’s Shakes has succumbed to cost pressures and ceased trading.
Founder Andrew Sherick, who spent 22 years as a buyer at Marks & Spencer, 15 on the food side, launched the startup in 2013.
The ‘super premium’ range of Mr Sherick’s Shakes came in five flavours and retailed at the top end of the market (£1.99 for a 250ml bottle).
Sherick turned to the crowd to fund growth, raising £279k on the Crowdcube platform in May 2015. The fundraising valued the fledgling business at about £1m. He used the cash to increase listings, build awareness and boost manufacturing capabilities.
Following its launch in Selfridges, the brand expanded into Waitrose, WH Smith, House of Fraser, Booths and catering giant Compass.
It also won own-label contracts with Aldi and M&S, which ended up accounting for a majority of the business, with new wins with Morrisons and Asda set to go live in 2018.
Sales had grown from £46k in the first year of trading to more than £1.2m in 2016/17. However, the challenges of the dairy market squeezed margins at the business, with the soaring price of cream a particular difficulty, and put pressure on cashflow.
Mr Sherick’s appointed Timothy Dolder and Steven Parker of Opus Restructuring as liquidators on 13 December 2017. “All the team at Mr Shericks Ltd are absolutely devastated the business had to be liquidated,” Andrew Sherick told The Grocer.
“It took eight years of hard work to get to the point we were at, but we desperately needed to lower our costs and did not achieve that with our manufacturing partner. However, we hope this is not the end for our product and we know both our investors and our wonderful customers, who have been so loyal, echo this sentiment and we are looking at all opportunities.”
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