Cured Delicatessen
Turning Passion into a Thriving Business with the support from Let’s Do Business Group under the RISE Hastings Programme and a Start Up Loan from lenders Let’s Do Business Finance
Cured Delicatessen, founded by former Royal Household IT technician, Kenrick Hanson, is a thriving artisanal deli in Hastings offering handcrafted cured meats and cheeses. What began as a personal hobby turned into a full-scale business with support under the RISE Hastings Programme and a £25,000 Start Up Loan, transforming a former salon into a bustling local hotspot. Today, Cured Delicatessen is not only reviving traditional charcuterie, but also contributing to the regeneration of Harold Road and bringing the community together – one salchichón at a time.
Cured Delicatessen is an independent artisanal deli based in Hastings, dedicated to bringing high-quality cured meats and cheeses to the local community. Founded with a passion for traditional charcuterie, it specialises in creating handcrafted, small-batch products sourced as locally as possible. Each item is carefully selected by the owner, Kenrick, to ensure the finest flavours and authentic taste.
More than just a deli, Cured Delicatessen serves as a hub for the local community, offering a warm and inviting space where customers can enjoy expertly curated meats and cheeses alongside freshly brewed coffee.
Having spent years perfecting the art of curing meats and making salchichón and chorizo, Kenrick saw an opportunity to bring high-quality, traditional charcuterie to the Hastings area. What originally started as a childhood hobby soon grew after friends and colleagues showed interest in the products and sparked the idea that this passion could become a business. This led to the vision of opening a shop where people could buy the charcuterie products and get to experience the craftsmanship behind it. Spurred on by this idea, Kenrick purchased the property along Harold Road in Hastings, renovating the space which was previously a Hairdressers.
“It mostly started because I liked this type of food, and I decided quite a while ago that I was going to make my own. I started off by making cold smoked salmon which I do every Christmas, and some of my colleagues found out so I made some for them too. That was ten years ago, and it has now expanded into curing other meats.”
Prior to starting up his own business, Kenrick worked as an IT technician for the Royal Household. With his new venture and a change of direction for his career, he got in touch with Let’s Do Business Group, to receive support on starting a business, as the process was completely new to him.
With Kenrick’s business being located in Hastings and having been operating for under 3 years, he qualified for support completely free of charge under the business support programme R.I.S.E. Hastings. Standing for Reboot, Ideas, Skills, and Enterprise, R.I.S.E. Hastings was a programme led by Let’s Do Business Group and funded by Hastings Borough Council using the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to encourage and reinvigorate economic growth in the town. Through the programme, businesses and individuals based in Hastings could receive help to start-up and grow their business from our team of locally based experts, through 1:1 advice and support to workshops to learn new skills.
Through receiving start up business support through the RISE Hastings programme, Kenrick learned about further options available to him. Let’s Do Business Finance, the finance arm of Let’s Do Business Group, are Official Business Support Partners of the Start Up Loan Company and British Business Bank, and are able to offer Start Up Loans of £25,000 to businesses under 3 years old*. After creating a business plan and all the materials he needed for his application, Kenrick was approved for a £25,000 Start Up Loan from Let’s Do Business Finance, which helped to cover essential costs to set up the business. The loan allowed Kenrick to fit out the premise, creating a café style space for customers to enjoy, a kitchen in the back which meets all the necessary food-safety requirements, as well as purchasing professional-grade equipment, allowing the deli to function efficiently from day one.
Since the official opening of Cured Delicatessen back in March 2025, it has quickly become a valued addition to the area, bringing life back to a road which once was home to a bustling community of businesses.
One of the biggest achievements so far for Kenrick has been the transformation of the space. From completely stripping and rebuilding the interior to creating a warm and inviting atmosphere, he took a hands-on approach, using the skills which he had learnt from his father growing up.
“Turning this place around quite honestly has been a highlight so far. I spent a lot of time building this because it needed stripping back completely. I then rebuilt the whole thing from the floorboards to the tiling.”
– Kenrick, owner, Cured Delicatessen
Planning for the future, Kenrick’s plans for Cured Delicatessen is to build awareness of his business and begin collaborating with other local businesses in the area. You can find Cured Delicatessen at 194 Harold Road, Hastings!
*Let’s Do Business Finance are Official Business Support Partners of the Start Up Loan Company, and are able to support businesses with Start Up Loans of up to £25,000, if they meet the eligibility criteria of the scheme.
The RISE Hastings Programme ended on Monday 31st March 2025. If you are based in the East Sussex area and are looking for support to start or grow a business, contact us today to see how we can help.
Let’s Do Business undertook the R.I.S.E Hastings (Reboot, Ideas, Skills, Enterprise) project in conjunction with Southern Housing, Education Futures Trust and Hastings Borough Council, in an effort to regenerate some of the most hard hit areas of Hastings.
This project was funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is a central pillar of the UK government's Levelling Up agenda and provides £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK investing in communities and place, supporting local business, and people and skills. For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus
