Establishing a new business is never easy, but raising a glass to the creation of your company three days before Lehman Brothers went under and sent the entire global financial system into meltdown, adds the sort of challenge that would finish many businesses before they’d really got going.

But that was the challenge faced by Peter Bruce, chief executive of Aberdeenshire-based catering firm Entier, and nearly a decade on his business has grown from these unsteady beginnings to post revenues of £45 million last year.

“We were geared up to a point where the banks had said ‘no problem’, and then it was ‘sorry’, so we had to dip into our own pockets,” he says. “The banks weren’t very supportive in September 2008, let me assure you.”

He describes the firm’s first couple of years as “challenging” but does so with sense of humour firmly intact.

“Six months into the business we also had a client go bust and we took a six-figure sum bang on the chin,” he says.

From its base in Westhill, Entier is present on every continent. In addition to its remote sites and offshore division, which is its biggest by far, the company has diversified into weddings and outside events, delivered catering solutions and it operates a Fresh branded retail outlet.

The latter, Mr Bruce says, is about creating a brand as much as a shop. It sells Fresh-branded coffee, water, sandwiches and boxed salads. And further shops could be on the horizon.

“We have looked at potential areas to open further shops but we haven’t found the locations that we’re looking for at this point in time,” he says.

In November Entier did make its first major acquisition, with a deal for Perthshire-based Wilde Thyme. This saw its managing director Andrew Hamer, a former executive chef at Gleneagles, move to Entier.

Married with four boys and a stepdaughter, Mr Bruce seems as driven today as he was in 2008 when he set a revenue target of £50m.

With sales expected to grow 20 per cent this year, it will comfortably pass that milestone, which is why a new target of £100m has been set.

“That is where I see it getting to,” he says. “It will be a spread of business, whether events, international [expansion], or on-shore growth.”

He adds that while much of the growth will be organic, “if the right acquisitions come along we will look to acquire”, he says, noting that one ambition is to move south of the Border.

“Acquisition gives you geography, it gives you instant growth, and people so it’ll be a mixture of both. I have identified potential targets,” he says.

Mr Bruce smiles wryly when asked if there will be acquisitions to announce this year, offering no affirmative answer. What he can reveal though is that international expansion is set to continue with an office opening in the Middle East in the near future. This will join offices in Canada, the US and Perth, Australia.

Before Entier, Mr Bruce ran Compass in Scotland and the north of England, which had revenues of £214m, including an offshore business he’d grown from £10m to £94m.

The pivotal moment came when his boss decided to retire, prompting Mr Bruce to think of doing his own thing.

“I was sat down one night in a restaurant, actually waiting on my new boss to appear,” he says. “He was delayed and the guy who owned the restaurant was a friend of mine. He said I didn’t look myself. I said I was hacked off, seriously thinking of doing my own thing. He said he would introduce me to some people.”

The fledging Entier would later buy a small business called Olive Garden, owned by the same restaurant owner, and adopted that company’s double olive logo, which it uses to this day.

The company employs more than 450 staff now, and it is these people that are Entier’s greatest asset, according to Mr Bruce.

“It doesn’t matter what area of business, it’s all about getting the right people.”

And he adds that as the company has grown he has managed to ensure the staff that come in are as skilled as when the company was smaller.

“It doesn’t become difficult if you don’t sit behind a desk,” he says, when asked about the scale of the operation. “It’s important to talk to [staff], recognise them and take the time to go speak to them when you can.”

This is not hyperbole. Mr Bruce has driven a lot of the business’ many philanthropic ventures through his staff. One that he seems genuinely moved by was the story of the daughter of a chef manager at the business, who was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease.

The youngest person in Scotland to suffer from the illness, Entier got behind her campaign to raise a couple of thousand pounds. She has now passed the £100,000 mark.

“There’s a lot of satisfaction in helping people less fortunate then yourself,” he says. “It’s part of your values, what you stand for and I’m a great believer in supporting different organisations.”

The company has also won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise and International Trade. And it runs the only Maritime & Coastguard Agency approved training centre in the north of Scotland.

Mr Bruce, who describes himself as “just a simple chef” has lost count of the number of local suppliers Entier works with, but he said these relationships are what give the company the edge over its competitors.

“We use a lot of local producers, it’s something we’re very proud of, and when we work internationally we use local businesses and that supports economies,” he says.

That includes sending fresh fish and beef offshore, and delivering award-winning turkeys to rig workers at Christmas.

“It’s about delivering a quality service. We’re the best at what we do, we’ve been described as the M&S of the North Sea. We’ve grown our business on quality. The day we don’t continue to do that is the day there’s no difference between us and our competitors.”