Sally Fell Catering: from a Facebook page to a proper booking pipeline

For Sally, cooking has never been just a job. Her career includes several years as Head Chef at Althorp House for the Earl and Countess Spencer, catering for functions attended by Diana, Princess of Wales, and Prince Charles, including an occasion in the Royal Box at Covent Garden. That experience later took her to VE Day commemorations at Bletchley Park, Diana's Freedom of the City reception in 1989, and Earl Spencer's funeral in 1992.

Since founding her own catering business in 2000, Sally and her husband Jerry have covered Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and the home counties, catering weddings, private celebrations, corporate events and leavers' balls for schools including Berkhamsted, Bedford and Queenswood. It's the kind of track record most local businesses would struggle to put into words on a Facebook page, which was exactly the problem.

Before Handbuilt Web got involved, Sally Fell Catering relied entirely on a Facebook page and word of mouth. There was nowhere for a couple planning a wedding, or a company organising a corporate event, to browse services, see sample menus, or get a feel for the quality of the food and the level of experience behind it.

Sally and Jerry needed a proper website: one that separated their four service areas clearly, presented real sample menus rather than a vague description, gave people a straightforward way to make an enquiry, and did justice to a genuinely unusual career in catering.

We hand-coded a fully responsive five-page site: Home, About, Services, Gallery and Contact. No page builder, no template, no plugins to maintain.

The Services page breaks the business into four clear categories: Weddings, Private Events, Corporate and Funeral Catering, each with its own sample menus built from Jerry's actual menu documents rather than generic placeholder text. The About page tells Sally's own story, including her time at Althorp House, so visitors understand the experience behind the food before they ever pick up the phone.

An enquiry form on the Contact page lets people specify the type of event, a date if they have one, guest numbers and how they'd prefer to be contacted, replacing the old back-and-forth over Facebook Messenger. Every photo on the site is real photography from Sally and Jerry's own events, colour graded to a single warm, consistent look. Handbuilt Web handles the hosting, so neither of them has to think about it.