“I worked as a cleaner at The Royal Free Barnet Hospital for three months just so we could keep paying the bills,” she said.
“But we’ve now reached the point where we are running around to keep up with orders.”
The pair, both 26, have now sold more than 400 of their candles online, which they make in their south-east London studio flat, and have raked in more than £5,000, although most of this has been reinvested into the business.
“It started as a hobby and we had excess materials as I think almost everyone was drinking more during lockdown. But as we grew we started going around our friends and taking their recycling away and started asking pubs if we could go through their bins,” Mr Walker said.
“We’ve smashed a lot of glass and our poor hob is covered in very hard-to-clean wax. We are planning to move to a bigger place as we cook our meals on the same oven and we’re probably in danger of poisoning ourselves,” Ms Jensen added.
Jess Stockell, 24, began experimenting with making doughnuts at her shared house, after she was furloughed from her pastry chef job at the five-star Mandarin hotel in London’s Hyde Park during the first national lockdown.
“My boyfriend bought me a deep fat fryer and I was experimenting and posting pictures online. Then people started saying I should do something more with it,” she said.
She started by selling her home-made creations off the back of her bicycle in and around Clapham in the south of the capital over the summer.
She has since quit her job and has taken on the lease at a local café, making 72 doughnuts a week with her own fully-fledged business.
“I also roped in my sister to help out, who has now quit her job too,” she added.
