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Tributes Honor 'Granny Dot,' Whose £6,000 Loan Helped Launch Harlech Foodservice

A May 1 memorial will celebrate the 102-year-old credited by her family with setting a now 300-employee, £70m-turnover business on its path.

Overview

  • Dorothy Edwards, who died March 28 at 102, is being remembered for the act that helped her family start Harlech Foodservice.
  • In 1972 she and her husband Harry lent £6,000, about £100,000 today, so their daughter Gill and son-in-law Colin Foskett could buy a frozen-food shop in Harlech.
  • That purchase became Harlech Foodservice, which now employs about 300 people, supplies pubs, restaurants, schools and hospitals across Wales and nearby regions, and reports roughly £70m in annual sales.
  • Grandson Andrew Foskett, the company’s joint chairman, called the loan life-changing and said the business would not exist without his grandmother.
  • A memorial service is set for Friday, May 1 at 2.30pm at Telford Crematorium, with donations invited for the Midlands Air Ambulance.