STUDENT entrepreneurs have dished up a tasty enterprise.

Business studies duo Jeff Postlethwaite, 20 and Adam Thompson, 21, have opened a takeaway at Queensgate Market.

Their Fasta Pasta outlet is a project for their Huddersfield University degree but the second year students have invested thousands to launch it.

And the retail novices have already proved they’re on to a winner after their venture sold more than 1,000 pots in its first week.

The takeaway, which serves customised hot and cold pasta pots, is proving popular with fellow students and the pair have hired eight workers and a manager to run the store while they concentrate on strategy and marketing.

Their business debut has been hailed as a great idea by Dragon’s Den star Theo Paphitis, who mentors business students at the university, and former Apprentice contestants Leon Doyle and Claire Young.

The undergraduates’ impressive start-up has caught the attention of the Dragon’s Den and Apprentice stars, who took them along to Leeds to give a talk to 1,500 students on how to start a business.

They have also been invited to London to get tips from Kirkheaton born founder of Innocent Smoothies, Richard Reed.

With the store approaching the end of its first month of trading, Jeff said the figures were looking good but said it had been a steep learning curve.

He said: “Everything’s going really good, we’re getting a lot of students in throughout the week and there’s quite a lot of regular customers coming back along with some custom from people just walking past.

“I don’t think we realised how much work we’d have to put in at the start.

“It’s been very rewarding because we’ve learned so much in the last couple of weeks about things we wouldn’t have experienced if we’d just done it at university, like health and safety, accounting and the legal side, the stuff you wouldn’t think about.

“I would recommend to anyone to try it.”

Adam said organising the staff had been the biggest challenge along with balancing the work with their full time studies.

He said: “We prepared ourselves really well but the staff side of things has been the hardest, covering the hours.

“It was really difficult at first but it’s just a matter of time management and we’ve both learned to do it efficiently.”

Jeff said he was confident they could keep Fasta Pasta going until after they graduated and said they were already formulating plans for growth.

He added: “If it does fail we can still pass our courses but hopefully it will keep going so we’re going to expand to Manchester and Leeds.”