Mark ‘Sharkey’ Williams and Natasha Spencer-George set up Sharkbite burgers in 2021. Mark’s nickname is ‘Sharkey’ so this made naming the business an easy job.
Cwmbran Life is putting the spotlight on independent businesses in and around the area.
Research by Keeping it Local said when you spend a £1 with a small/medium-sized business around 63p remains in the local economy. Only 40p stays local when you shop with larger businesses. The money you spend locally circulated through local businesses helping them to grow.
Every business owner has a story to tell.
What is your business?
Sharkbite Burgers is a local burger restaurant that some of our customers tell us serves some of ‘the best burgers in town’. We make homemade burgers with fresh ingredients, cooked to order.
The business was started from home back in September 2021. Initially, it was us dipping our toes into something that we really loved and dreamed about. Before we knew it we had a very ‘in demand’ service that we never expected to take off that quickly. But luckily, it has rocketed and we obtained our first restaurant, which opened in March 2022.
With a passion for food, a love for cooking together and creating homemade food that we wanted to share, the business was born. Friends and family taste-tested in September 2021 and the rest is history!
Since opening we have had people travel from all over the UK to come try our food including food critics and food review companies, many of which gave us amazing feedback.
Why did you want to work for yourself?
Believe it or not Natasha and I both still work full-time jobs, completely unrelated to food and catering. However, we both just love to cook for each other, friends and family and see how happy our food makes people.
We give away free food nearly every month and run giveaways to give everyone a fair chance of getting free food. We also are very aware of the cost of living crisis at the moment and during the school holidays we ran incentives for kids to eat free with us too.
Mark is a competitive bodybuilder and post-competitions we have previously travelled hours for the best burgers around. One day we woke up and said let’s give this a shot ourselves… little did we know how big we were going to get and so quickly. Both of us have worked seven days a week since the very beginning to make sure that Sharkbites is and remains a success and going off the reviews it seems we have achieved this.
What are the best things about running a business and what are the challenges? How have you overcome the challenges?
Without a doubt, the best thing is meeting new people, and putting smiles on everyone’s faces. Cwmbran isn’t exactly the biggest of towns so we have our regulars and we love seeing new customers every week too. We love our town and are doing our very best to give back when we can.
We have faced many challenges upon starting this business the biggest one being neither of us have ever run/owned a business of this size before. But we have an incredibly supportive family and wonderful staff. We just take every day as it comes. It can be stressful when talking about the important stuff like money, taxes, wages etc but luckily Natasha’s dad is a businessman himself and has guided us throughout this journey.
The cost of living crisis has also been a struggle, but we are so fortunate that most customers really do understand how important it is to support local businesses during this time also and fully understand when we have had to make changes to our prices to accommodate the rise in utilities and produce. For that, we are extremely grateful that we still get supported.
What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting a business?
If you have a dream or even just a small goal, don’t be afraid. It can be difficult to start with, most of our friends/family laughed at the idea at first but once we got up and running and they could see how dedicated and determined we both were about this new venture the tables start to turn and you get taken more seriously. Not that they were negative towards us, but it seems to be that with any dream/goal no one will believe you until you believe in yourself.
Tell us how customers can contact you?
Sharkbite burgers
Grange Industrial Estate
Cwmbran
NP44 8HQ
- Open every weekend.
- Order through Uber Eats
- Website: sharkbiteburgers.com
- Instagram- @sharkbiteburgers
- Facebook- @sharkbiteburgers
