A STOURPORT business was chosen to cater for the wedding of former Dragon’s Den star Theo Paphitis’ son, Alex.

The Greek Outdoors, run by husband-and-wife team Chris and Christalla Ellinas, was recommended by Mr Paphitis as the firm was selected as one of his Small Business Sunday (SBS) twitter winners.

Mr Ellinas said: “We received an email in January from a Charlotte Edwards enquiring about catering a wedding taking place in Surrey in June. She told us Theo was her father-in-law to-be and he had recommended us to her.

“We were taken aback at first and quite shocked as she told us we were the first people he recommended so we must have made quite an impression on him.”

The wedding between Charlotte and Alex took place on June 28 at Cherkley Court, Surrey and Mr Ellinas said they were highly commended by those attending.

“We do many events each week but, with this one, the nerves really got to me, especially as the marquee we were set up in was full of event organisers, including Deborah Meaden, who runs her own event organising company, so we were really trying to impress,” he said.

“Luckily we had a great response - Theo even commented on his twitter page about how good we were.”

On the morning of Tuesday, July 1, Charlotte tweeted: “Thank you 2 the most fantastic Greek caterers @greekoutdoors @TheoPaphitis @alexpaphitis.” Mr Paphitis retweeted and added: “I agree!”

Mr Paphitis retweeted Greek Outdoors last Thursday, thanking them for catering the wedding.

The organisation, which produces traditional Greek food, first came to Mr Paphitis’ attention in October, 2013, when it was chosen as a Small Business Sunday winner.

The scheme rewards people who tell him about their small firms in one tweet, with the hashtag #SBS.

Mr and Mrs Ellinas were selected from thousands of businesses as one of the six weekly winners.

In November last year the couple attended a special event, where winners received a certificate at the ICC in Birmingham.

Mr Ellinas now believes the exposure the company received from catering at the wedding, as well as being an SBS winner, has had a big impact on their enquiries.

“Since winning SBS enquiries increased immensely - we were producing three to four per week,” he said.

“Now, after catering for the wedding, we hope it will continue to grow and we might get a lot more business from it.”