Brand Growth Heroes

Across the Western world, the Carbonated Soft Drinks category is experiencing real transformation… thanks to the sugar backlash, the resulting sugar tax and the fight against plastic.

I recently heard that the majority of fizzy soft drinks sold in the supermarkets now contain no or low amounts of added sugar, which really surprised me. For a category that has been built on the white stuff for over 100 years, that’s a pretty big change.

It goes without saying that it has been a difficult few years for some of the big global soft drink brands, but the other side of that coin is that there are plenty of exciting emerging brands taking advantage of the move towards Healthier and Natural. They and creating new category sub segments some real #transformational growth. Think real fruit sodas, no added sugar seltzers, and even the more niche Kombuchas, kefir waters, sparkling coconut waters….

If you live in the UK, you probably recognise the very cool British soft drinks brand Dalston’s soda, whose mission is to put real ingredients back at the heart of soft drinks.

I think their range of highly distinctive, brightly coloured metallic cans with the big standout D for Dalstons on the front is a future brand icon – just the right mix of cool yet accessible to the mass market.  Together with great drinks made with real fruit, low sugar, local ingredients and even distilled botanicals for serious amount of great flavour, Dalston’s is one to watch.

I spoke to Dan Broughton, CEO and Co-Founder to find out how he and his team is setting the brand up for success.

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The case study in Category transformation that is on everyone’s lips right now is Oatly.

But did you know that Oatly has been around for 30 years in the Dairy Alternatives Category?

It’s only really in the past 5 years that something has changed massively, at least in the UK market.

In 2016, Oatly’s UK revenue was around £6M, but this year they are looking at hitting around £75M!

If you want to know how they did this, then you’re in luck! We spoke to Ishen Paran, UK Country Manager who told us about the 5 levers that he and the Oatly UK team have pulled to drive this incredible growth…

#oatmilk #oatly #transformationalgrowth #brandgrowthheroes #plantbased

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Mark Mulhern is a Brand Performance Coach with a spectacular CV in brand advertising and through-the-line Marketing investment. He’s worked agency-side for the past 20+ years managing advertising accounts worth £100M of pounds and dollars, for clients such as Mars, Unilever, McDonalds, Amazon, Virgin and Sainsbury’s.

If you’ve listened to the first few episodes of Series 1 of Brand Growth Heroes, you’ll know that one of the New 4Ps of Transformational Growth is PROCESS – how insurgent brands define and attack challenges differently to incumbent or less successful brands. 

One of these challenges is managing the transition of how you approach your MARKETING INVESTMENT as a start-up, vs. how you think about it and deliver it as an emerging brand with a serious growth trajectory. 

If you’ve been pootering along nicely with sampling and social media, but recognise that the time has come to get your head around what a more strategic approach looks like, then this episode is for you.

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How many of us eat chocolate or other cocoa-based products without realising – and this is deadly serious – that we could be unwittingly funding child labour and even child slavery in West Africa?

Almost a year ago, we interviewed Ben Greensmith, the UK country manager of Tony’s Chocolonely, and we heard how this amazing company is trying to change the cocoa industry and eradicate child labour and childhood slavery. If you’d like to listen to this episode, look for Series 1 Episode 8 (SE1Ep8) on your podcast player. 

A month or so ago, I learned that the level of child labour in West African cocoa farms had actually increased over the past 10 years, which just really shocked and saddened me.

In this special catch-up episode, I asked Ben to bring us up to speed with the situation in West Africa, as well as share with us how Tony’s Chocolonely is doing in the U.K. market since its launch.

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S2EP12 Timestamps to follow.

It’s tough times out there for many brands. Even for the lucky ones who are seeing an increase in sales due to the current situation, future plans are up in the air and investment in growth is on pause, with so much depending on how things pan out over the next few months.

We wanted to find out what’s happening in the world of investment & funding for brands with big growth plans: have most put their investment journeys on hold? What should you do if you were planning to raise money this year? 

In this episode we’re talking to Yasha Estraikh, who’s an Associate Partner at Piper, the investment partner of choice for brands such as Propercorn, Mindful Chef and many more you’ll recognise. Yasha is in charge of Brand and Customer Research and Insight, and he helps brands keep their customer at the centre of everything they do.

I learnt SO much from this hour with Yasha – not only that most sources of investment are focusing on their current portfolios at the moment, but tons about how funding and investment for growing brands works in general. If you have ever really wanted to understand how it all works, you need to listen to this!

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S2EP11 Timestamps to follow.

Buymie was conceived when Founder Devan Hughes learned that the £9bn online retail grocery industry in UK & Irl, was loosing over £300M per year…and he reckoned it was therefore ripe for disruption.

Buymie is a mobile-first, on-demand grocery delivery platform enabling consumers to order any grocery or household item from local stores using their mobile device, and get them delivered in as little as 1 hour.

The Buymie platform connect customers, via the app, to a fully vetted and trained crowd sourced personal shopper network.

Listen to Devan share the inside track on the super-charged growth that Buymie has seen over the past 18 months, how they’ve just received £2.2M in funding, and how they are now the online delivery platform for Lidl Ireland!

 An episode not to be missed!

Buymie.eu

Devan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Same day grocery e-commerce platform Buymie. Devan holds a degree in Finance from the National College of Ireland, and has worked in the start-up sector for most of his career. A guest lecturer in some of Europe’s best Business Schools, Devan is recognised as one of Europe’s foremost thought leaders in the fields of grocery e-commerce, platform economics and architecture.

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S2EP10 Timestamps to follow.

In Episode 5of Series 1, we spoke to Sam Dennigan, founder of insurgent frozen brand STRONG ROOTS, which offers tasty plant-based food designed for busy lives.

Sam promised to come back on the show and update us on how their impending launch in the USA went…which he does in this episode.

Shortly after we recorded our update, Covid 19 hit, so we recorded a further section on how the current crisis has effected the Strong Roots business.

An episode not to be missed!

strongroots.com 

Instagram: Strong Roots Irl Strong Roots UK Strong Roots USA

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S2EP9 Timestamps to follow.

We’re going to spend the next few episodes exploring how growing Food & Bev. businesses are coping with the current crisis, the kind of help they need, and some of the resources available to help them. 

In this episode we’re talking to Jason Gibb, one of the co-founders of Bread & Jam. Once an annual business festival for Food & Beverage entrepreneurs, now Bread & Jam is helping several hundred companies a week, joining them from as far away as Australia!

From evening workshops to morning socials, entrepreneurs can sign up for free and paid events that will build key skills, their industry network and their confidence.

Bread & Jam was borne from the success of Jason’s online community, The FoodHub, which is the biggest community of food & drink entrepreneurs in Europe 

Jason also has his own plant-based food start-up, called Unruly Burger https://www.eatunruly.com/

Listen to Jason on why he started Bread & Jam, and how it works:

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S2EP8 Timestamps to follow.

LISTEN AND RATE THIS EPISODE ON ITUNES HERE

Listen to this episode on Spotify HERE

If you’ve listened to the first few episodes of Series 2 of Brand Growth Heroes, you probably know that one of the themes we are exploring is the BRAVE decisions that food & Bev founders sometimes have to make.

In this episode we’re talking to Paul Brown, CEO and Founder of BOL Foods, a fast growing chilled food brand that offers plant-based Dinner boxes, Veg Pots, Salad Jars and Soups to busy foodies, and is available in most retailers nationally across the UK.

***Covid 19 addition: Paul and I caught up again last week to record an update in which Paul takes us through how he and the team are getting through the Covid 19 crisis***

Paul launched BOL after 14 years at Innocent drinks, where he gained invaluable experience across roles from Field Sales, to Sales Controller, and finally as General Manager of Innocent Food in 2014.

He launched BOL in 2015…and what’s particularly fascinating about this story is the brave decision Paul made – for ethical reasons – that led to BOL becoming the first FMCG food brand IN THE WORLD to drop all meat, fish and dairy from their products …to become 100% plant based.

Listen to our interview earlier this month where Paul tells us about the learnings at innocent that have helped to drive growth at BOL, his super- brave decision to pivot his business model to 100% plant-based, and his thoughts and plans around  plastic packaging….

https://www.bolfoods.com

https://www.instagram.com/bolfoods/ : @bolfoods

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S2EP4 Timestamps:

[00:28] – Introducing, Paul Brown, CEO and Founder of BOL foods; a fast growing chilled food brand offering 100% plant based options to busy foodies.  

[01:55] – Introduction to BOL; what do they make and where can we find their products?

[02:33] – Why did Paul start the company back in 2015? 

[03:23] – BOL is on a mission to inspire the world to eat more plants. Why is that and how has BOL’s mission evolved since its inception?

[04:19] – BOL has big ambitions and fast growth. How many people are there in the offices at BOL?

[05:04] – Paul has managing experience he brings with him after 14 years at Innocent. What else has he learned that he has been able to use while setting up BOL and driving growth?

[07:30] – The food industry is really hard, particularly the chilled foods sector. What are the things that stick out to Paul as particularly difficult to manage as a chilled supplier to a grocery retailer, that he was able to overcome more quickly because of his experience at Innocent?

[10:42] – What kind of roles are absolutely critical to have on the team to make a company like BOL successful? The business is split into five key functions; finance team, operations team, commercial teams, brand marketing team, and people team.

[13:58] – At what point in BOL’s trajectory did they decide to add more people? How do you make the leap from 5 to 20 people? 

[16:08] – Paul explains how everybody in the company interviews the new people coming in.

[17:57] – One of the big draws for people interviewing for food companies is the free products that always find themselves around the office. Are the fridges in the offices at BOL filled with their products?

[20:15] – Paul talks about product innovation.

[21:27] – Initially BOL had meat, fish and dairy as part of their range. How did they make the brave decision to pivot to focus entirely on plant based ranges?

[24:46] – We often talk about a company’s mission coming from a place of authenticity. Paul’s mission came about because he believes there is a real need rather than because he thinks it is where the market is going.

[26:31] – Paul explains why phasing out the meat, fish and dairy slowly to reduce the risk didn’t feel right. He also talks about bringing up his kids with this new mindset about how they look at food.

[29:31] – What it means to be a really authentic mission driven company. Paul talks about his relationship with investors and shareholders.

[33:07] – BOL recently made the decision to launch their dinner boxes in 95% plant based packaging and are aiming for a 100%. How do they reconcile the plastic packaging in their business?

[36:21] – Paul explains how the lack of better options means they can’t take the same approach to the plastic packaging as they did with plant based food products and simply pivot away from it. What approach are they taking?

[38:14] – Finally, what is next for BOL? Paul talks big growth ambitions, increasing the range, and international ambitions.

***Covid 19 addition: Paul and I caught up again last week to record an update in which Paul takes us through how he and the team are getting through the Covid 19 crisis***

 LISTEN AND RATE THIS EPISODE ON ITUNES HERE



Listen to this episode on Spotify HERE



We’re going to spend the next few episodes exploring how growing Food & Bev. businesses are coping with the current crisis, the kind of help they need, and some of the resources available to help them.



In this episode we’re talking to Jamie Mitchell, Founder All Together, an initiative offering CEO-CEO coaching, mentoring and business advice to companies affected by COVID 19.



Through All Together, Jamie has brought together a punchy panel of 60 well-known Chairpeople, CEOs and Investors, who are all offering their help on a voluntary basis. Advisors include Adam Balon and Jon Wright of Innocent Drinks, Xavier Vidal of Flying Tiger, Hema Patel and Jules Hydleman, to name but a few. See the almost complete list of advisors here



Jamie himself brings a wealth of experience to All Together, in his capacity as Non-Exec Chairman of Rare Restaurants and Keatz, and as Ex CEO of Tom Dixon, Daylesford Organic and Innocent Smoothies UK.



Listen to Jamie on why he started All Together and who and how they can help; and his thoughts on the 3 stages your company should plan for during the crisis.



alltogether.company
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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S2EP6 Timestamps to follow.