Good Foodies: good food and good business

In this solo episode we’re talking all about your audience, your customers and how to get a really clear picture of them so you can best serve them. This is something so fundamental to your business because it shapes so much about what you do and how you do it.

In this episode you’ll learn what a target customer is (and isn’t), how to find them and how to create a fictional representation of them using real data that you probably already have access to.

Plastic is a huge issue, particularly when it comes to single use plastics. Our oceans and landfill sites are full of plastic and it wreaks havoc on the environment and wildlife. Surprisingly, plastic was invented as a solution to another terrible problem. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it?

Tune in to this episode of Good Foodies to discover a compostable, flexible packaging which is plastic free and has the potential to revolutionise the industry without the need for massive changes to consumer behaviour. If you need all sorts of packaging and business support solutions for your food startup, you’ll definitely want to keep listening for our resource of the week too.

Mary Lynch is a registered nutritionist and passionate about good honest food. She used to work with Jamie Oliver’s and during her time working with him she was inspired to start her own social enterprise. Onist make vegan avocado choc pots in a range of flavours. For every pot sold, Onist give a meal to a child in Gambia.

Tune in to this bitesize episode to hear Mary’s inspiring story and pick up some health and nutrition tips too!

According to Ben Pugh from Farmdrop, the food system is completely broken. Farmdrop have just raised £10M to fix it with their unique combination of mobile technology, marketing personalisation and a focus on quality, ethical and sustainable products.

Tune in to hear how Farmdrop has changed over the years and how they have raised money in all sorts of interesting ways. We’ve also got a classic book as our Resource of the Week which will help you test your ideas and gather valuable feedback from customers.

Food waste is a huge issue and the UK food industry wastes 1.9 million tonnes of food every year. It’s a similar story in consumers’ homes up and down the country.

Too Good To Go are fighting food waste with a mobile app and marketplace that connects food vendors with hungry consumers. The concept is simple but there’s so much to learn from how the TGTG team have approached the whole experience. Tune in to hear how co-founder Jamie Crummie and his team taught themselves code to cobble together the first version of their app and how they now across Europe and have saved millions of meals from going to waste.

If you’re keen to learn to some coding skills to help you in your business, stick around for this week’s resource of the week. You could even join Guy at one of his Coding for Beginners classes!

What do you get when you cross a mechanical engineer, an architect and 900 investors? Something incredible and groundbreaking. Pierre Paslier is the co-founder of Skipping Rocks Lab, a London based startup that are solving the problem of single use, flexible packaging with Ohoo.

Ohoo is a flexible sachet used to package liquids from water to alcohol and condiments to cosmetics. They’re on a mission to reduce plastic waste and are taking the startup world by storm. Tune in to hear this inspiring story and tips for capturing the hearts and minds of consumers and investors with crowdfunding.

Your food business probably has a website. You probably use social media. You may write blog posts. Perhaps you send weekly emails. But WHY? It can be easy to do these kinds of things because everyone else is doing them. But do you have a plan for how each of these activities work together? Do you have a strategy for marketing your food business?

In this solo episode you’ll discover the answer to one of the most common startup marketing questions. You’ll also learn a simple and actionable strategy for connecting your brand message and all your marketing channels together.

Pete Thompson is a farmer with a huge entrepreneurial streak. His family farm in Essex (which has been operating since 1948), produces a whole range of interesting crops for Asian food service up and down the country. They also take on a number of innovation projects as well as growing a range of fruit crops in small pockets of space, dotted around the farm.

Pete is always on the lookout for new projects that increase revenue whilst reducing waste. They’ve turned surplus apples and pears into juice. They’ve created fruit gins from plums and apricots and have a number of other secret projects underway. Listen to Pete’s story and be inspired to find opportunities from everything around you.

For over 12 years, Scott Fry has been working with indigenous communities to protect and conserve our collective natural assets. Scott and his team at Loving Earth have worked with communities around the world. From aboriginal groups in his homeland of Australia to the Ashaninka tribe of southern Peru, they’ve used cacao as a vehicle for creating quality chocolate and a method of putting carbon back into the soil through regenerative agriculture.

Scott has a big vision and has made it his life’s mission to spread the word and enable people around the world to experience incredible chocolate that’s making a real difference.

PR used to be all about black books full of contacts and lots of dreary press releases. But Charlotte Moore teaches a more effective and modern approach. This episode is jam packed full of practical and actionable PR, social media and SEO tips for food startups.

You’ll also learn how to (and how not to) approach journalists, publications and influencers to give your food brand the best exposure. Listen now for lots of great advice, lessons learned and a fab resource of the week.