St Albans entrepreneur stays in The Apprentice
Luisa Zissman with her teammates during episode two - Credit: Archant
Reality TV hopeful lives to fight another day
APPRENTICE candidate Luisa Zissman will be back on our screens again next week after surviving her second boardroom confrontation with Lord Sugar.
During the second episode of the BBC reality show the hopefuls were asked to produce, brand and sell their own flavoured beer.
But the 25 year old, who owns Dixie’s Cupcakery in Market Place, missed out on a chance to fight on her own turf here in St Albans.
After brewing their new tipple, rivals in the Endeavour team and Lord Sugar’s aide Nick Hewer headed to the annual St Albans Beer Festival, which was held at the Alban Arena in September, to try and drum up some trade to the thousands of beer enthusiasts in attendance.
Sadly Luisa, who owns several other baking businesses in St Albans, reluctantly saw her team Evolve choose to set up stall at another beer festival in Putney.
Led by Tim, Evolve mixed up a bizarre blend of rhubarb and caramel, but problems with the ratios caused massive production delays, costing them 150 pints in sales after taking four hours on the calculations.
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As part of the marketing and branding sub-team Luisa was involved in designing the look of the product, clashing with teammate Usma after criticising her design: “I just don’t think it’s beery...”
The final choice of name was ‘Rhubarb and Riches’, and Luisa was tasked with helping sales to members of the public in Kent, but it proved a short-lived venue due to a lack of footfall and they headed off to a Richmond wine bar.
But as Lord Sugar’s aide Karren Brady pointed out, customers were drinking wine and not looking to sample a new British beer.
Things proved somewhat more successful as the task came to an end, and then it was back to the boardroom the next day to face the music.
It was revealed that although Evolve made a profit of £399.02 but Endeavour beat them with £831.56, meaning a second defeat for Luisa’s team and a return to the greasy café for a post-task report.
“It’s really, really unfair to let the buck stop with Tim,” she told her colleagues.
But Luisa had another lucky escape and following a heated debate Tim took the decision to bring Francesca and Rebecca back to face Lord Sugar’s wrath.
It was a move which was to cost him his place in the process, as despite his efforts to escape being fired, Tim’s journey came to an end.
Next week’s episode will be shown on Wednesday at 9pm.
