Married couple Stu and Simon Welsh have recently embarked on a big adventure by staring their own restaurant in Ivybridge called Stu’s Place.

General Manager and Executive Chef Stu comes from Bath and began his catering career 29 years ago in a small village pub, went to some army barracks, old peoples homes then schools and wasn’t happy with what he saw: “The food was just all processed, it was frozen, it was cheap.

“I started a big campaign to bring Farm to Fork into schools and I did, successfully for 10 years.

“We were feeding children organic vegetables, organic meat.

We had no processed foods. There was kind of five items on a day. There was lots of choice for the children, and we maintained a really good budget and then these schools turned into academies and got tighter for money.

“It was devastating.

“You spend years educating the children on food and you spend six years in primaries educating children, getting them, teaching them about food, where it comes from, how it's grown and then they go into secondary schools and they get served burgers and pizzas and all sorts of rubbishy stuff.

“About a year and a half ago, I went into a secondary school and managed that for a few weeks and realised that I was fighting and losing battle.

Stu then went into contact catering but that involved driving two to four hours a day.

The couple met on line and within two months had moved in together then got engaged married and have now been together for four years. They are also both Christian.

Simon was born in Ascot, his father was a teacher at Eton College and he grew up in the grounds but didn’t attend it going instead to Wellington College followed by a state sixth form college.

He describes this period:” I was preppy, I was gay, everyone found me fascinating.

“One day the doorbell rang and there were 10 students asking if I wanted to come out to the pub.

“They just kidnapped me, I got swallowed up into a social group and suddenly my whole life was different.”

Simon then went straight into work becoming a sales person and developing his poetry which he had been doing since the age of 18 and he loved his rhyming couplets.

He explained: “I was looking for the hypnosis that you go into when you’re listening to formulaic rhyming couplets they start to agree and from a sales point of view what you next suggest they will buy.”

Simon did charity work, is a massage professional, a senior account manager, voiced a TV ad for vouchers for Penguin books in the Sunday Mirror, but also had a self-destructive period living in London and taking drugs.

He said: “I’ve been to the edge of darkness and I’ve looked into the face of the demonic and have thought actually I don’t want to go any further that way, I want to turn back to the light.”

On the restaurant Simon said: “We want to have love and light pouring out of this place, we want to bring the whole town in and make it a huge success.”