MOVERS & SHAKERS
Alfy Fowler tells Catalyst how he went from graphic designer to running Cambridge’s much- hyped vegan burger restaurant, DoppleGanger
2648 last year, I paid my personal rent a month ahead from my last pay cheque as a designer, I had £400 cash in my account and my parents got me a fryer for Christmas. That’s what those text messages on the wall of the restaurant are about.” (If you visit DoppleGanger, you’ll see a mural of a conversation on the side of the kitchen.) “I’d better go sell some burgers, otherwise I’m screwed...” he laughs. “Cashflow’s always the killer: but it’s never huge amounts for us. We’ve never not been profitable.” Starting any business is scary, and though the audience was proven thanks to his sell-out pop-ups, it was the strength of the reception to DoppleGanger’s permanent site that took Alfy by surprise. “I’d built up the business in the basement at 2648, tucked away. In those first couple of weeks, on a Monday I was already doing what I’d take in a week in the basement. It was manic. Now it’s levelled out nicely.” Along with investment, Alfy’s benefactors introduced him to a business coach, who’s been slowly adding to the young entrepreneur’s skill set. “They said to me: ‘If you look at share prices every day, it won’t make sense. That’s not the game: the game is to see a trend.’ The staff perceive quietness differently – they’ll go, ‘Oh, it’s been dead today’ – but then you look at the end of
o matter how driven you are, going from working on your own to running a team of people is
a challenge: but it’s one that’s relished by young entrepreneur Alfy Fowler, the brains behind Cambridge-based vegan burger restaurant, DoppleGanger. Having started as a pop-up on the roof of the Hills Road office where he’d been working as a full-time graphic designer, Alfy then took his concept forward as a residency at underground bar 2648 – before finding investment and opening a permanent site in January this year, on Regent Street in the heart of Cambridge. DoppleGanger now serves up a menu of plant-based creations seven days a week that use the best of what’s available: as its website proudly proclaims, it’s ‘not junk, just plants’. Diners can choose from classic menu items like air-fried fries or the BBK: a burger packed with miso, lime, Korean barbecue sauce, cucumber and pear – or seasonal specials that come and go as they’re developed by Alfy’s team of chefs. Before opening DoppleGanger, Alfy did his homework, joining Deliveroo as a rider to ‘suss out’ what the service was about, and restaurant owners around the city offered advice to the budding restaurateur. “One bloke said I’d need six months’ cash just to stay alive,” he recalls, “but when I opened at
IMAGES DoppleGanger's 'not junk, just plants' approach has proved popular in Cambridge, offering options like the Crunch burger
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ISSUE 02
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