What happens when your food business goes viral?

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “Some bus drivers have stopped outside, come in and bought a loaf and then left,” the Crystal Palace-based shop’s co-owner Sian Evans tells me. “It was the amount of pressure that I put on myself as much as anything.” Social media hype has the power to generate a surge in sales for a business like Martensen’s, but it will also open you up to criticism. But oddly enough, for Evans, it’s the locals who love the queue: “Someone said to me recently, ‘I really hope when you open the other shop, you’re not going to get rid of the queue, because I get to speak to people every week’.” Evans has even witnessed customers bring fold-up chairs sometimes an hour and a half before her shop opens at 11am on Saturdays, reading their book and chatting to people to fill time. “We often get people saying to us, ‘can you help us go viral?’ and sometimes that can be a red flag because people expect to go viral overnight,” he says.