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Julie Waddell’s passion for food and broadcasting came together when she took on a role on BBC Radio 4 as a journalist on The Food Programme in 2012 alongside Dan Saladino. During this time she started researching the popularity of humous in the UK, and she was amazed to discover that it’s market size exceeded £60m. 

At the same time, she had ‘invented’ smoked humous in her home kitchen where her creative culinary skills had been put to use when she had been looking to make healthy food taste amazing for her young family.

Julie combined her professional research with her cooking creativity and did some market testing on her unique smoked humous. It turned out that people loved it and wanted to buy it, so she decided to set up The Little Smoked Food Company and launch a range of Moorish smoked humous products to sell in delicatessens in her local area.

Early success meant that Julie had the confidence to approach Waitrose to see if they’d like to stock her products. Things moved very quickly with Waitrose launching the brand at the end of 2012.  Julie says “Getting in to Waitrose changed my life, I have worked very hard to grow our brand in Waitrose to pay back the buyer who took a punt on giving me this amazing opportunity. I’m still friends with my first Waitrose buyer and we often talk about how the listing came about and how I was so fortunate to hit upon something trendy and delicious.”

Julie is now Founder of Moorish - the leading British brand of humous & dips, available in retailers nationwide.