Good Foodies: good food and good business

Rebranding is a big undertaking and something to approach with caution and a lot of planning. But even when you do plan ahead, there’s lots of details to keep an eye on, lots of steps to take and potentially a few hazards to avoid.

We recently rebranded, renamed and completely redesigned one of our projects. The Food Rush is now Eco & Beyond and whilst we’re really pleased with the end result – and it was definitely the right thing to do – we learned a lot in the process. In this solo episode Kylie and I talk through what we did, why we did it and all the things to consider when doing any kind of project like this. We get into some of the technical details about moving websites, domain names and hosting too so if you’re not changing your brand name but are moving web platforms, there’s some great advice about that in this episode too.

We’re Pausing The Podcast

As you’ll hear at the end of this episode, one of the lessons we’ve learned is it’s very difficult to focus on multiple projects at once and do them all justice. We will be pausing the podcast for the time being while we focus on building up the Eco & Beyond brand. Good Foodies may start up again or we may pivot it into a podcast for Eco & Beyond so watch this space.

Jenny Costa – the founder of Rubies in the Rubble – grew up on a farm in Scotland, surrounded by food. To begin with, her career took her in a different direction and she studies a masters in mathematics and economics. But after reading some research about the shocking stats surrounding food waste, she reconnected with her love of food.

Jenny became obsessed with food waste and set out to create a brand that was fun and celebrated food whilst also tackling the issue of food waste. After some small scale experiments at a London market stall, she’s scaled the brand and diversified the product range and is now competing with big players in the condiments category.

Tune in to this week’s episode of Good Foodies to hear the full story and how Rubies are creating value across the supply chain and taking the brand to new heights.

Amatte is a new luxury coffee brand that embodies Africa’s rich cultures and history of storytelling. It sustainably sources the finest Arabica beans from female farmers across the continent to create delicious single origin coffee and blends in the UK.

On this week’s episode of Good Foodies we speak to Amatte founder, Amani Kiflemariam about her entrepreneur story, the history and culture of coffee in Africa and her passion for empowering female farmers.

Ellie Phoebe-Brown is the founder of Kinda Co, an artisan, dairy free cheese brand based in London.

She used to run a popular food blog called “Kind State of Mind” which was all about helping people make great tasting vegan food. One of the biggest challenges of going vegan is finding a good alternative to cheese. After much experimenting, Kinda Co. was born.

They produce a range of dairy free cheeses with some really interesting styles and flavours. They also run supper clubs and cooking classes teaching others how to live a life after cheese. In this episode we talk all about vegan “cheese”, experience marketing and scaling an artisan food product.

Food waste is a huge issue and it’s something we talk about a lot on this show. Today we’re joined by David Jackson, the head of marketing for Winnow. They have an AI tech solution to reducing food waste in commercial kitchens and it’s now faster and more accurate than humans when it comes to recognising and recording food as it’s thrown away.

Winnow have created a wonderfully simple solution to a complex problem. They’ve essentially put a supercomputer into everyday commercial kitchens in restaurants, hotels, cruise ships and other kitchens to collect data about food that’s wasted – for a whole variety of reasons. The kitchen teams can then use this data to make better business decisions, save money and save the planet.

For the full story, tune in to this week’s episode!

The food industry is an exciting place to be these days. There’s so much innovation, technology, data and all sorts of exciting products coming to market. Keeping up with all the trends is a full time job so we’ve gone straight to the cutting edge of industry news and insights.

Julia Glotz is the managing editor of The Grocer, an FMCG trade publication based in the UK. The magazine has been around for almost 160 years and they have a growing digital offering too. Tune in to this week’s episode to get ahead of the trends, find out what’s hot in food and drink and a discussion of the looming challenges and uncertainty that Brexit will bring.

Nix & Kix produce a range of adult soft drinks with a cayenne pepper kick. In 2014 co-founders Kerstin and Julia set out to create a brand with a difference to remove some of the stigma and boredom that surrounds soft drinks.

Breaking into the pub and bar scene with a non-alcoholic beverage has proved challenging so far but is still very much the end-goal. In the meantime you’ll find these delicious drinks in supermarkets, in canteens and internationally as export has become a big part of their growth strategy.

With zero food and drink experience Kerstin and Julia had to take a “just in time” approach to starting and growing the business. Tune in to this episode to hear the full entrepreneur story.

Content marketing is the most effective way to attract and engage customers whilst inviting them into your brand story. It’s a very popular marketing approach - used by 91% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers - and it’s founded in providing valuable, inspirational or educational content for a targeted audience. In a world where social media moves at lighting speed, content marketing allows you to go deeper and provide value to customers that serves them and you for the long term.

In this bonus episode Kylie and Guy talk about some of the what, why and how of content marketing and outline 5 simple steps for getting started.

When starting a food or drink business the job description is “do whatever it takes”.

Dalston’s Soda started in an East London nightclub on a payday loan. Over the years they’ve navigated their way through a number of challenges to scale up whilst maintaining a craft approach and focus on quality.

By using top quality ingredients and adding nothing weird or nasty, they've created a range of soft drinks that taste like real fruit. And with sustainability at their core and no plastic in sight, they're doing their part for the planet too.

Listen now for the full story from Dalston's founder, Duncan O’Brien.

Your food business is growing and it’s time to scale up – particularly if you’ve run out of space on your kitchen table and you need more space! Finding kitchen space is a real challenge but this week’s guest has a wonderfully simple solution. Kitchup can be thought of as airbnb for commercial kitchen space. They help startups, brands, caterers and others find affordable kitchen space that can be rented by the hour, day, week or month.

To find out everything you need to know about what Kitchup do and how you can take advantage of their service, tune in to this week’s bite-sized episode with Kitchup founder, Charlie Jones.