HUNGRY.

🔥 From a shed in Birmingham to a £611M exit — Al Barratt’s story is a masterclass in brand-building, balance, and staying sane in the chaos.

The Grenade founder reveals how he built a world-class product, a world-class team, and a brand people actually love — while ignoring industry noise, financial vanity metrics, and the temptation to chase every shiny trend.

This is an episode about focus, systems, and having fun while you build something remarkable — even when revenue is flat, growth stalls, or the journey feels uphill.

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💥 ON THE MENU
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🍫 How Grenade reinvented the protein bar category — “We didn’t invent them, we invented good ones”
🚀 From shed to £611M exit at 27x EBITDA
🧠 Don’t solve problems that don’t exist — why simplicity wins
🏋️‍♂️ “Be good and new” — how to win in stale categories
💼 The hidden path to profitability (and why you should never use your own money)
🔥 “Better revenue ≠ better business” — how flat sales can still mean a better company
👊 Building a world-class team and killing cultural cancers fast
📊 Understanding systems: category, context, and shelf strategy
💸 The 6 rules Al uses when investing in other founders
🥇 Compete where you’re strong and they’re weak — love competition
😌 Finding contentment on the journey — and why happiness fuels success, not the other way around

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♨️Still bloody HUNGRY? Course ya are. Each week I spend 15 hours writing my newsletter. It’ll take you 5 mins to read. Full of wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink. Subscribe here - https://hungryfeast.beehiiv.com/🍲

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🌟 HUNGRY's Absolutely Bloody Marvellous Sponsors🌟
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A massive shoutout to our incredible sponsors who make HUNGRY possible:
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This episode was edited by:
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This conversation with Seth Godin explores the difference between strategy and tactics, why most brands confuse the two, and how true marketing is about the product and story itself—not just promotion. Seth unpacks how systems shape behaviour, often invisibly, and how founders can break or reframe those systems to create new opportunities.

The episode dives into the idea of customer traction and feedback loops—how the right audience, story, and channel can make or break a product. Seth illustrates with examples from Patagonia, Dyson, Apple, Prince Spaghetti, Tony’s Chocolonely, Innocent Drinks, and Scharffen Berger Chocolate—showing how successful brands win by embedding meaning, status, and culture into their strategy, not just chasing tactics.

Creativity and consistency are also central themes: Seth argues professionals “ship” every day, rather than waiting for inspiration, citing musicians and artists like Miles Davis, Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Patti Smith. He frames origin stories as self-fulfilling—founders must choose a productive story that drives them forward.

At its core, the episode is about seeing differently: spotting the hidden systems we operate in, distinguishing tactics from strategy, and building stories that compound over time. The conversation blends behavioural economics, culture change, and practical examples into a playbook for founders who want to grow brands that matter.

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♨️Still bloody HUNGRY? Course ya are. Each week I spend 15 hours writing my newsletter. It’ll take you 5 mins to read. Full of wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink. Subscribe here 🍲 

🤝 Let's Connect!

►Let’s link-up here ​ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-pope/)

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How do we ACTUALLY save restaurants from closing?

The UK government aren’t gonna save hospitality… but Marco Pierre White and Pan Koutlakis think they have the answer with Eat Club.

Restaurants.

It’s easier than you think to save your restaurants.

Are you going to be your neighbor?

What’s FUCKING MENTAL is most punters don’t even know.

This cataclysmic earthquake is brewing in the background.

Behind the warm hug of hospitality hides the cold bite of fear.

You revel in merriment, operators reel in morbid fear.

Fear of closure. Fear of NI increase. Fear.

In the dining room, your giggling gaggle laughs over languid luncheon.

In the back room, the howling fantods scream up operators’ bones.

Think of your favourite restaurant for one second… do you realise how scary it is right now?

ON THE MENU:

1. From Cafe to Nightclub GM at 19: Eat Club's Genesis
2. Behavioral Science & Social Proof in Nightclubs
3. Volume is Everything: Why Restaurant Capacity Matters
4. Reframing the Question: Growth vs. Cost-Cutting Mindset
5. Product Market Fit: Why Restaurants are Quiet Mid-Week
6. What is Eat Club? Dynamic Pricing for Restaurants
7. The "Trough of Sorrow": Building Eat Club Through COVID
8. Lessons from a Montenegrin Boss: Relentless Work Ethic
9. The Challenge of Scaling: From 12 to 100+ Employees
10. Tech Insights for Restaurants: Customer Lifetime Value
11. Dynamic Pricing Objections: Why People Don't Get It
12. Dynamic Pricing & The Human Element in Sales
13. Marco Pierre White: Early Investor & Eat Club Ambassador
14. Marco Pierre White on Brand vs. Business: Fill Those Tables
15. Arbitrary Pricing: Why Dynamic Pricing is Essential

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Ladies and laddies, Rory & Osh in one poddy.

That is all.

ON THE MENU:

• Scale Kills Magic: Why The Devonshire Will Never Open A Second Site
• Why Restaurants Must Think About “Cost of Entertainment Hour” + “why skint kids spend loads on video games”
• The Devonshire Hiring Strategy: Hire people who think like we think… “hiring your mates is an underrated hiring strategy”
• Broken Fork + Silent Irritants Rule: “Your Job is to ANNIHILATE Silent Irritants”
• Amazon Primeification of Pulling Pints: “…Marketing spends too much time amplifying positives vs. reducing negatives”
• What Standing in Queues teaches us about folly of consumer research… “if it’s felt not thought, therefore it’s not said”
• How Pub Seating Arrangements can improve Train Journeys… “you still feel seen and welcome if you’re leaning on an edge”
• The Danger of The Internal Four Walls: “Use your eyes like you’ve never used them before”
• How to Make Your Pub Busy + Do Things That Don’t Scale… “literally walk around your pub or restaurant and buy punters pints”
• How to create a BRANDQUAKE… “never forget the impact of human to human interactions”
• The Busy Rule: “If you can’t be good when you’re busy, you can’t be good when you’re not busy”
• Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention… “brands spend way to much time on customer acquisition vs. customer retention”
• Why Estate Agents don’t let buyers speak to sellers + “why watering your garden plants increases the chance of selling your house”
• Waitrose’s Inversion Communications Rule… “NEVER FORGET…what you don’t do is also a form of communications”
• Tommy Hilfiger Bullshit Rule: “necessary level of bullshit for a necessary level of expenditure”
• Silent Irritants vs. Silent Pleasantries: how to use behavioural variability to make your customers incredibly happy
• Differentiation requires something incredibly random… Rolls Royce Umbrellas in the car

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In this episode of the Hungry Podcast, Henrik Grim, co-founder of Mimo, sits down to share the lessons he’s learned from scaling startups, investing in brands, and navigating the brutal realities of cash flow. From his early days at iZettle and Spotify to launching Mimo, Henrik traces the path that shaped his approach to building companies with purpose and resilience.

He explains why cash flow is the make-or-break factor for consumer brands, how raising money is more of an art than a science, and why Sweden’s cultural DNA — rooted in the “Law of Jante” and flat hierarchies — has influenced the way startups are built. Henrik dives into what sets apart the businesses that succeed, from customer obsession and competitive urgency to knowing when data is helpful — and when it just creates noise.

Along the way, Henrik reflects on personal challenges: balancing founder obsession with family life, grappling with insecurities, and learning how to give ownership and responsibility to others. He draws sharp parallels between competitive sailing, his sport of choice growing up, and entrepreneurship — from reading the conditions to finding your own path rather than following competitors.

This conversation is packed with insights on startup culture, fundraising, prioritization, customer focus, and leadership — all delivered with Henrik’s mix of candor, humility, and hard-won experience.

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