Meet the Solihull teenagers who turned a horse box into a booming and viral busines

Four school friends decided to start their own business using their savings to stave off lockdown boredom.

The young entrepreneurs purchased a horse box for £2,000 before spending another couple of grand single-handedly doing it up over the next four months.

They completely transformed the rotting old trailer by stripping it out and equipping it with running water systems, lights, electrics and two small portable pizza ovens.

It was also fitted with a wooden chassis and given a slick new paint job during the DIY project to transform it into a swanky street food outlet.

The four best friends are now enjoying a slice of success running Dirty Donkey Ltd and are on course to turn over a five figure sum within their first year of trading.

Ben, Jamie, Beni and Jacques met at school said they had always dreamed of setting up their own business together. Once the trailer was stripped out and running water and lights were installed, the group then purchased two small portable pizza ovens to fuel their fires.

After getting their hands dirty and transforming the trailer into a pizza van, they finally took it out on the road at the start of the summer in 2021. Despite having very little business knowledge after just finishing school, the four friends spent their first summer travelling around the Midlands and making a name for themselves cooking pizzas at a range of different events – from small corporate outings to large weddings. 

After their first successful summer of trading and spinning pies, September rolled around which meant that their university life began. Balancing university studies and working jobs alongside establishing and growing the business from the ground up proved tricky.

Their dedication never faltered however as there were many occasions where they had to dash home at weekends to serve pizzas, all whilst working towards hard deadlines and important exams.  In the midst of catering events and spinning pies, they took to TikTok to grow their online presence, creating content that was seen by millions and racking up over 60K followers, the four friends found online stardom which further catapulted their career. 

After their inaugural summer, Dirty Donkey began getting flooded with bookings. They also began collaborating with Gozney and became part of their Pizza Collective group – working with them to showcase their story and also serve up slices at the UK festival, Wilderness, which saw headliners The Chemical Brothers buying out all their pizzas. 

Ben, said: “We wanted something with a bit of an alliteration and something to catch people’s attention so the name Dirty Donkey was born.

“For the future, I think it would be great to see ourselves converting more trailers and building our fleet and just see the business flourish.”

The process of converting the horse box was a "huge challenge" to the lads who had no experience of DIY jobs on this scale.

Beni, who studied business at the University of Edinburgh but has aspirations to become an actor, added: "After buying the trailer we began to strip of the panels and the components to strip it back to the frame and the chassis floor.

"At this point, we primed and painted the entire trailer, before fitting the wooden side panels to enclose the trailer.”

As business continued to boom alongside their online following, they purchased a car to help them travel distances and added a second trailer to their fleet to meet the ever-growing demand, which they converted during the summer last year. 

Flash forward to now and their story has since been praised by the masses, including Dragons Den businessman Theo Paphitis.

Their pizzaiolo journey has bloomed and grown exponentially, with their most recent record weekend serving over 1,500 pizzas across four days at a local festival in the Midlands.

Planning how to continue the success and operation alongside their other career efforts, they look forward to seeing where Dirty Donkey will take them next.