A protein bar, for instance, might have 20 ingredients, 10 of them you've never heard of, five you can't pronounce.

We are making these with like nut butters, protein powders, dates, freeze dried ingredients.

We come up with a strap line, ballsy by nature because on one hand we wanted to pick up all of these protein bars and stamp on them.

Look at the crap you're selling.

Do you stand behind that?

Do you eat that?

Do you even know what that is?

Can you pronounce the ingredients?

And what do you think that does to your body?

We're building these with healthy, natural products that taste great, look great, fill you up, you know, 10 grams of protein.

But none of the.

Welcome back to business without bs the alternative mba where we talk to Matt Hunt, a man who sold 300 million protein balls, built multiple brands, survived Dragon's Den, Brexit and Covid, and still likes his wife.

We go deep into manufacturing margin brand flavor, supply chain, pa scaling with integrity.

And why doing it yourself is often the difference between greatness and collapse.

So if you ever wanted to turn an idea into a product, someone actually buys.

This episode is your essential blueprint.

Matt Hunt builds products people actually pick up.

Olives that flew off airline trolleys.

Protein balls that move from kitchen experiments to global shelves.

Premium porridge that reframed a sleepy category.

Even dog treats clean enough to eat.

He's navigated Dragon's Den rebrands.

Bad Deb get Brexit and Covid.

And he scaled without selling out.

Matt, welcome to the podcast.

Okay.

It makes me sound amazing.

Thank you.

I think I'll be off.

Matt, I think let's start with a.

A big opener.

You've.

You've got it, you've got a few business.

But, you know, on the table, we've got your lovely protein balls.

Yes.

I think my dog is probably quite keen to check out the dog's version.

Absolutely.

But you've sold just a staggering 300 million balls.

Yes.

Something funny about that sentence.

Show us a little because here, for the camera, let's just lift us some up.

These are just some of.

We've got 12 flavors, but like lemon and pistachio, blueberry, oat muffin, salted caramel.

What's the most popular?

Peanut butter is their most popular, which is why it's not here, because we had a taxi wrap and we've been going around and taxiing all the products.

By the way, that's not rapping.

It's not hip hop in the taxi as I thought he was.

It means he's wrapped a taxi branding.

Yes, that's it.

So these are our best selling plant based, which are going across the whole of Europe.

And the dogs has just launched into Pets Corner.

What do you think was the single decision, if you had to TR and bowl it out, that you took, you know, took you from this sort of first bar to your first million?

I would say the, the decision that got us to where we are is that we, my wife Hayley and I, we thought, let's start a protein ball business.

Because we've been in the US about 12 years ago and seen how big protein had got and we come to the decision, do we get somebody to make it for us or do we make it ourselves?

And that one decision, let's make it ourselves, I think is why we're in the seat and why we're.

We've rolled 300 million boards because I think if we'd have got somebody else to make it, there's so many more hurdles along the way.

Whereas because we're in control, we can do what we want to do.

And how do you mean?

You, you.

There's lots of.

Actually, one of the few things we're good at manufacturing in this country is food.

We are, we are good.

But when you go to a co packer and you say, I want to make these balls or these bars or whatever you want to do, you then have this co packer will say, well, you know, NPD or new product development is going to cost you this much.

I can only get your samples next week.

You got to pay for your packaging, you got to pay for your recipe development.

It's going to take four weeks, six weeks, because we're busy.

Oh, we've just had another order in from big supermarket, might be eight weeks, then we get the sample over to you.

Well, you want to change your packaging, we need to repay for everything.

So there's this whole process.

Basically you give control to somebody else and then they will take your products and you fit into their timeline.

Whereas with Hayley and I, we can say we had a big meeting today with a big nationwide store and I think it's going to go ahead.

And they're really big on healthy cuisine, Asian cuisine, and it was fantastic.

But it means that we can adapt.

We can look at matchables, we can look at trending flavors, we can look at Dubai chocolate and how that's come into the mix.

So we have a complete chance to be able to do exactly what we want to do without having to wait for somebody to give us the Timelines as to when it fit into their products.

But it's exactly what you want to do.

But you got to do it all.

Yeah, doing it all is not the problem.

Oh really?

Yeah.

So I'm, I think once we have control of the ingredients, the suppliers, the traceability, well, you know, you can go to China and you can buy a lot of ingredients or you can go to Argentina and get your nuts.

You know, you can go to, you can get cheap whey protein from many countries.

You can go to these farms in Austria, in Germany, in Ireland and you can create relationships.

You can go to Pakistan to buy your, your dates or you can make a great relationship with Tunisia or United Arab Emirates.

And we can actually select the ingredients that we want.

We can taste them, we can look at all the certification and we can say we want to be premium.

We want, for instance, we want roasted peanut butter, we want roasted peanuts, we want pumpkin protein that comes from this farm in Austria.

We're looking at freeze dried ingredients and we want them to taste strong.

We want to see the ingredients before so we have control to make all of them decisions.

There's a bit of when you have a co producer, they're trying to make profit.

So quite often they will use ingredients as cheaply as they can so that the price they sell it to you, they make as much profit as they can.

And they have the relationship with the suppliers.

Of course they do, they have the relationship.

But also they can kind of work with ingredients that we wouldn't choose for our product.

And you never really know, you will.

Never know underneath it.

I made cosmetics years ago and I remember, that's fine.

They're on the phone to them and they said, oh, we've run out of that organic thing.

We ran out of that ages ago.

We were like, that's our main ingredient.

What have you been putting it?

Oh, we just found some non organic.

You know, it's sort of a slip of the tongue almost like, oh my God.

But you know, no one's sitting testing these balls.

I was right to say, yeah, so what leaves our, what leaves our production site is everything that we have signed off by us, by our quality manager.

And we know that what will arrive to the customer, we know exactly what's, what they're going to get.

And that's different.

With a co packer we've just had, we have a brand called Oluvs which is healthy olive snacks.

We were the very first to invent olives in a bag.

We looked at the PH level, we looked at the Salt.

We sent it to labs.

We found out that you could pack it without liquid.

This was like 15 years ago.

But we have a co producer which is now in Greece, and we have these problems where they sent out 200,000 bags to the US and the bags were exploding.

We didn't see the product before it went to the US and now we're getting these reports all around, northeast, southwest coast saying that there's a problem.

So we have 200,000 bags that we're trying to work out what to do with.

But to me, that's an example is when you have control, you see what leaves your factory.

It's just sort of no one cares as much as you do.

It's no one cares.

And in our business, we have such strict criteria on what is good versus what is bad and what is acceptable to go out to customers versus what isn't.

So we make sure quality is our number one and we make sure what leaves the factory is what we want to leave.

Well, I've got two questions in my head.

One is, yeah, if you normally go to a manufacturer, you need a minimum order.

I guess you don't need a minimum order when you make it yourself.

I mean, you do for the suppliers.

You need a minimum order when you order in your ingredients, half a ton, ton pallet container.

But when a customer comes to us, so we do a lot of private label, we will have minimum runs and that usually is an amount per shift per day that we can produce.

So a customer A will say, I want, I want to produce these protein balls in my wrapper.

And we say the minimum is 20,000 bags because that's what we were doing 12 hours with one shift on one line.

And we have three lines.

So we have to work out each line and each shift pattern and each staff that we're going to need to run that line.

So the minimums become on how much you can produce.

Because with a lot of food products, obviously there's allergens and allergen control.

Some products have milk, some of our products have nuts, some of our products will have oats.

And so we have to make sure that the allergen control is correct and what's on the, on the back of the pack is correct, which means major clean downs, including swabbing and everything to make sure that if you're moving from one allergen to another, then everything's correct.

Where you, you now you what, you have a warehouse?

Yes, yeah, we have a production which is in Worthing, which is just outside Brighton.

We started off with a kind of double garage, my wife and I.

And now we have four big units and we're producing 60,000 bags a day.

And we put six balls in a bag.

So we're doing some 360,000 bags per.

360,000 Balls per day at the moment are leaving our site.

Wow.

And did you just mix in young children and all of that at the same time?

Just to, you know, you did just have some spare time.

I mean, you know, running a business is crazy.

It take, it takes over your whole life.

I'm not even sure if weekends exist because your mind is in another place.

Yeah.

You're either lying on the ground dribbling or thinking.

You're dribbling, you're crying, or you're just like in a small space rocking on a chair.

Because there is so much that people don't realize behind the scenes.

To walk in on a Monday and be happy and kind of be the leading, like, okay, party people.

37 Of us, go, go, go.

You need to have had that break to actually think like, have we paid our bills?

Have we got enough money at the end of the month to pay everyone?

Have we paid the units?

Have we paid the pensions?

Have we paid everything that needs to be paid?

Utilities that have gone up, Our rent on our buildings have gone up.

40 In four years.

Wow.

Obviously everything's going up.

Everything is going up.

So the weekends are about like kind of debriefing your head and trying to be kind of normalized with your children so that on Monday you can pick yourself up and believe in yourself again to start again that week.

But today is a very special day because it's our 11 year anniversary.

Thank you very much.

11 Years.

We start ago.

We started the protein ball company.

Wow.

I loved what you said about you've got to go in Monday morning and be cheerful and leave.

I mean, that's so important in a business.

So difficult.

It's hard.

I've, I've spoke to a lot of founders and I've said, you know, you're, we're only 37 people.

Some have got hundreds of people and they say, you know, I speak to, I have counseling or I speak to psychologists or I have, you know, I, I talk to people to help me through this.

Because there is a lot that you are balancing on the books to run your own business and to make it a success.

There's also a lot of debt.

So a lot of our customers can be quite big, especially in America, and they might pay on.

They're on 60 day terms but that can fall to 70, 80 or 90.

So you look at your books and you might be like, you know, 400, 000 per month.

You could be up to a million out.

And you're waiting for that money to come in.

When that money comes in, all of a sudden you've got to buy your ingredients and pay all your bills and of course you've got to pay all your staff on time.

You can't say well I'm waiting on a million and as soon as I get paid I'll pay you guys, don't you worry about it.

Everyone has to be paid on time.

So we have to balance the books and we have to make sure that we have everything in place.

Which means banks and bank loans.

Yeah.

How have you financed it?

Where have you financed it from?

We have financed it through multiple, multiple options funding circles.

One that we've used a few times, we've had the bounce back loans.

We use a bank, hsbc, we also use Metro.

We've used multiple ways of financing.

Do you have assets for HSBC to borrow against?

Yeah, we do, yeah because we have, we've built up by buying assets.

So each piece of machinery can be 150, 170,000 pounds.

You've got the machinery.

Yeah.

So we will, we've got three lines now and each line is like 400,000.

So we will start to pay off one line and when we're super close like that is on the fourth year out of five, we then will start again on the second line or on the third year and then we say look, we've done pretty well so far.

We've never not paid you but lately they will look at your books and they will say well you haven't got that much money in the account some months.

And you say I know but look at what we're owed.

And they say well we don't look at that side so we can give you a loan but it means that your house, which you haven't paid for, which is on the mortgage goes against it.

Yeah, yeah.

You end up with personal guarantees.

Personal guarantees, yeah.

So what could happen is if it all went wrong, you would not only lose your business and lose your house, you haven't paid your mortgage anyway.

So you really have to believe every day.

You have to be strong.

And we are strong and we are believers and my mum and dad will say we're total optimistics because we always believe that we.

This time next year Rodney, we're going to make this work.

Yeah.

No matter what we Will make it work.

Well, 300 million balls, you know, Exactly.

We probably threw the hard part.

Yeah, I can believe it.

I mean, your positioning is brilliant.

I mean, out of interest, when you were talking about getting paid, you know, it's one of my.

I think it should be against the law in this country that large, Large companies can just say, oh, I'm going to pay you in 90 days.

You know, it's just outrageous.

Are the US better than the UK?

I mean, they're usually better at paying debts.

No, they're the same.

Same.

Yeah.

But they do pay, so there is honor.

So a US, our US Importer.

We work with some really big companies in the US One of them's Whole Foods Market, you know, multibillion dollar operation, 600 stores, North America.

We make all of their balls.

They pay completely on time in 30 days, but we don't receive the money for 60 or 70 days.

But quite often you have a lot of containers that are moving over.

We might move, say, four containers per month.

It's probably more four or five containers a month.

And each container has 100,000 bags on it.

And so we have all the time we have money on the water that's sailing from Portsmouth over to New Jersey.

So that's a lot of money tied up on the water.

And you get special insurance.

You get special insurance, but you've really got to watch.

Cash flow is king.

Because if something was to go wrong then, and you haven't got enough cash to continue, that's where most hurricanes, things happen.

Absolutely.

I mean, when we look back at the last five years and we think, like, you know, what would you have done differently?

Is a great question.

Everyone says.

And I always say, like, I actually don't know what the next thing is going to be because of Brexit, because of rising costs, because of inflation, because of global wars, because of COVID Like, each thing hits you separately and you learn to adapt.

And I think, you know, we're small enough that we can adapt, but each one hits us in a different way.

When Covid, obviously, Covid hit everyone, but it was a real challenge.

We probably lost 80% of our business.

After four years, we got to 4 million, and then we dropped down to, like, you know, hundreds of thousand.

And we had to start again three years ago.

Wow.

And we're coming up to the 5 million again.

And we almost started again from day one because.

But in a way that's given us strength, strength to know that it wasn't just that we were doing well when we started, it's that we had a lot of experience, a lot of know how.

And we're bringing that into our 11th year.

So I think that's the key.

Eleven years in, we're kind of wiser.

We have more experience, we understand how to talk to customers, we understand what customers want and we understand what sells.

And we also now are looking more, which we never did, at key trends, you know, what flavor profiles are coming through.

People love to buy world, the Instagram world.

I'm too old.

I'm not even in on the Tick Tock world.

My children are.

And they're like, you know, dad, how are you ever going to sell to someone like me?

I'm 16, I don't know your product.

I've not seen it on Tick Tock.

And I'm like, oh, I'll just start shop.

And they're like, it's not that easy.

You don't know what you're doing.

You can't do it.

Wow.

And it's right.

I need somebody younger.

You can come through.

And that's our next move.

2026.

We do pretty well on Instagram and Facebook, we do super well on Amazon.

We have a lot of backend on B2C on our Shopify website.

But some of the younger markets, which Tick Tock would be ideal, we really need to start pushing TikTok and YouTube.

Wow.

Amazing.

What an amazing journey.

And then, I mean, with all of.

With all of these things, obviously, you know, trying to break down your different revenue sources, you've got getting it on the shelf.

Yeah.

If we forget about the digital world, you know, what.

What was.

Who was the first buy you actually found?

Or what was the first bit of luck you had there?

Great question.

So with the Olavs, we went straight onto Delta and United, which was just crazy, crazy volume, up to 100,000 bags per month in the first few months.

And as I said, we sold 70 million bags with porridge, one of our first customers with Waitrose.

So that was really good.

And I think we were seen on Dragon's Den.

We'd done so much work with QVC that our brand had really got out in front of a lot of people.

And I used to go on QVC with some of the presenters and it was hilarious because you'd have somebody who doesn't like Ollies, but they're like professional salespeople, and the woman would say, like, oh, Ollie's.

But before, like, 10 seconds before, she'd say, don't give me an olive because I hate them.

And I'd look at her and it'd go, three, two, one, go.

I am Matt from.

And you do give the olive.

No, you had to keep it away.

I hate them.

But that gave us so much exposure being on qvc, which I think somebody from Dragons then saw that we were doing.

We had a nice brand and we were out talking to people.

I don't know if QVC is a good place still for people.

It's carrying on.

I see.

It's actually amazing.

It's better than most people know in America.

You've got Home Shopping Network and qvc, and then over here we've got qvc.

If you've got a good product and it's unique and it's different and you've got a story.

The sales are phenomenal.

Absolutely phenomenal.

Was one day when my wife and I, we.

You go into this little room and you get a little bit nervous because you've got to hit 3,000 in like three minutes.

And if you don't hit that, then they just say, never seen you again.

And you've invested in all this stock.

And I opened the door and I said, my wife, like Joan Collins, it won't be the real one.

And then she walked out.

Wow.

She walked out.

She walked past me looking amazing.

It was so funny.

But, yeah, no qvc.

And then Dragon's Den were great kind of exposure platforms to the masses.

I don't know how many millions of people, but it's got to be like 5 or 6.

It's got to be 10 of the country, like moving up towards 10% of the country.

Yeah, that was always my question with qvc.

I was like, I don't know anyone who watched qvc.

And then you find out nobody admits.

No one admits to it.

And it is a slightly.

Not slightly.

It is an older demographic.

Okay.

It's 50s, 60s, 70s.

Because really, you know when you hold up a snack and say, you got to buy this quick because it's running out in 24 hours, it's going to go.

It's going to go.

You've got to quickly phone in.

Phone in.

I mean, really, you don't have to.

But they need urgency to make it work.

One of these.

In the moment, they're staring me down.

Of all of those that we named.

Let's do the airlines.

Yes.

Why did you even think of the airlines?

Or airlines is great.

Although you do.

You don't make a big.

I suppose the margins are tiny, but the volumes are huge.

So if you had something like United or Continental or Delta, you're between 100, 200 and 300 bags per month moving around.

We've had Ryanair, we were with Ryanair for seven years.

The volume was colossal.

EasyJet, does it build a brand?

Being super good for building a brand.

Is it?

It really is.

Because you see, if you think you're a captive audience, so you're sitting on the airline, you're bored, you read the whole thing, you read it through and you see these brands and like, just subconsciously you think, oh, I haven't had them olives, I haven't had them protein balls.

But it's there.

They, they say that you have to see a brand seven times before you buy.

So this is an opportunity to hit amazing figures and I will get them completely wrong because I'm talking years ago.

But like these airlines, ryanair and, and easyjet, they're 150,000, 150 million people per year.

You know, it's actually a lot more than that, but it's colossal.

How many people.

But did you think of it or you accidentally bumped into it?

No, we accidentally bumped into it.

We did a show and then somebody said, I think your Ollis would sell well on airlines and travel and catering.

And then it exploded.

We did an airline show and that was in Nice.

And we won all these contracts.

So you have to find your market with your product.

And qvc.

You approached qvc?

We were approached.

And you were approached.

We were approached.

And Dragons Den.

We were approached as well.

Where they seen you then?

They were on the airport.

Delta.

We used to do it.

Yeah, yeah, it could have been.

It's hard to know where it exactly comes from, but we had great exposure with both in places and now with the protein ball.

So as a timeline, OLUVS was 15 years ago, Protein Ball, 11th birthday now, and Great British Porridge Company is about 7 years old.

So Great British Porridge Company shares the same ingredients as the protein balls, which is just oats and dates and freeze dried fruits and natural products.

Everything we do is about being a natural product.

And I think sometimes, I mean, we're coming up a 5 million company, but I see a lot of non unnatural products and they are, you know, 100 million companies.

Especially when you get to the protein ball world or protein bar world, you can see two or three of the biggest protein bars that are doing crazy amounts.

You know, it's funny is how they're all packaged in a way that they look natural.

I mean, I just had it with a bag of crisp.

Because I get migraines badly.

Yeah.

And they looked all natural.

It said it was all natural.

And then I started getting one and then I look on the back of the.

In it and it's MSG and stuff.

And I'm like.

But it's the packaging persuaded me.

Yeah.

I don't know if you saw the Joe Wicks program.

Well, I'm aware of Joe.

You're aware of it.

So he.

He kind of did a program about a month ago which was called the Killer Bar.

And he's brought out the Killer Bar and he's put on the back of it.

This is a protein bar that may give you cancer, may stop you living longer, may give you heart attack.

Because he wants to explain that the protein bars that are on the market at the moment are kind of disguised rubbish.

That people.

Made his own one.

He's made his own.

It's like death cigarettes.

Death cigarette.

It's just.

It's purely to say to everybody, this is what you're buying.

This is what you think is good.

And we bought it.

We actually.

We have an unveiling and an eating of it next Thursday in the office.

Because it's incredible.

We sold a lot of them.

And on the back, it's all these warnings that you might die early.

But a lot of protein products, particularly.

But you could say it for water, even waters, you could say it for any.

Any product line they are selling and they are making it sound amazing with natural flavors.

Forget about the benzoate with amazing proteins and no sugars.

We won't tell you about the sweeteners that are in.

We won't tell you about the emulsive.

Yeah.

Because they don't count sweeteners.

They're not counting sweeteners, you know, which are cheaper.

Absolutely.

A lot of them aren't that well understood.

Although a Sparta Main, I understand, is the most studied, you know, food additive or something.

But it never feels quite right, you.

Know, so you're buying this product and you're holding it up and you're going, holy moly, look at that.

That fits me.

20 Gram of protein, no sugar.

This is exactly what I need after my workout.

That sounds fantastic.

And you don't really read all the back of the pack because that's slightly not hidden, but there's a lot of stuff on there.

But when you actually start to analyze it and, you know, I didn't realize that it had all of this stuff in it.

And it has 20 ingredients.

And it really, really is not natural.

It's the speed of which we.

And we'll talk about branding a bit later.

But it's the sort of speed of which you.

You just sort of.

We don't spend time looking at it.

No, we just flash.

It looks good.

It's that two selling points.

High protein, no sugar.

Yeah, done.

Bosch.

Like the packaging.

Love it, you know, love it.

Looks good.

It's natural that.

A bit of me, that is.

But who did you approach first, then those of those approach you.

Who did you approach with the Protein Ball company?

We've had a.

After Covid, we started again and the last three years we decided that we were going to kind of go a different approach.

So we're building it up from kind of fans upwards.

Instead of just going straight into a supermarket, a Tesco, and saying like, this is on the shelf.

I hope by hell it sells.

And if it doesn't, then we lose our brand and we're off.

We've decided to go to gyms like Nuffield, to coffee shops like Cafe Nero, Flying Coffee Bean, Black Sheep Coffee.

Lots of gym chains.

Lots of independence, lots of.

Well, try and get it on the.

Counter and to really try and get people to understand the brand.

Understand walking and talking to people.

Yeah.

And just kind of feel like rather than just say, there it is, it's in the supermarket.

Buy it or we go bust in six months because three months, because we'll be kicked out because that rate of sounds too low.

It's to build kind of loyal fans and following and it's really working.

But explain what you mean.

Give me an example.

In this coffee shop, what are you doing?

We are not doing anything.

But our exposure is great.

So Cafe, we are selling the product.

Yeah, yeah.

But say Cafe Nero, you're in like 600 stores or opening 100 stores this year.

We have two SKUs, we have lemon and pistachio and blueberry oat muffin.

And they're sitting right at the front of the store, so everybody will see them and they will associate when they have their wonderful caffeinero coffee with a snack, which is a protein ball, they will, at that moment in time, is what they are going to experience.

Yeah, that brand experience is far better.

So at some point, and that point will come soon, we will be in the supermarkets and someone will say, you know, I've had them before and they're bloody lovely, I love them, I'm going to buy some.

Whereas if you just go straight into a supermarket, the supermarket buyer says, firstly, welcome to a supermarket.

We're a lovely supermarket.

This is our Listing fee.

This is our rebate, this is our money that we want back every month.

This is what you've got to sell, otherwise you're kicked out and give us 10 or 20 grand or 50 grand just to start off.

Thank you.

Yeah.

You should break that down slowly.

I mean, I think it's a really important thing that the retailers are monsters and I mean that not in like their last years in like they're massive organizations and like you say you, you can go to a supermarket if you've got an interesting product.

They need interesting products.

They do.

They'll put it on the shelf.

Yes.

But then what happens next?

That's when the work starts.

Because if they, if they was to put this on the shelf or any product, you take a brand new water, Fiji Water, you've just launched it, it goes on the shelf.

No one knows the brand.

Possibly you're a bit higher price than some of the competitors because you haven't got your economies of scale.

Yeah.

So you're not doing a million, you're doing like a thousand.

So your product.

A good example is we had a chocolate brand.

A chocolate brand was called Organic Meltdown.

We went to meet Sir David Attenborough.

We had Ecuadorian forests that we were going to try and help save the trees.

We had, we bought a parcel of land with a, a chunk of money and we went to Waitrose and we got listed and everything was good.

But we were 229 and green and blacks and Lynn were 189.

And after about three months, four months, lint, the category managers decided to kick us off because they were in control.

They didn't like it, it was ethical and it was going to save trees and it had a great name.

We'd met today.

They didn't like that.

They didn't because they wanted their lint up there to be the main one.

But then they don't work for Lynn.

They were the category manager who owned the chocolate aisle.

So they shoved us aside and then people never got to realize the story and the wonders of the chocolate and what we put together and how ethically it was and how it was sourced and what we were doing because the bigger category buyers just wanted to move it off the shelf and put themselves back over there.

They had complete say over it.

But there's something in there maybe I don't understand.

So I work for the supermarket, I'm in charge of this category.

Yeah.

I'm biased towards the big brands.

Yeah.

Because the big brands are giving you the money.

Well, they're Paying big advertising.

They're paying huge listing fees, rebates, they're paying percentage, they're paying overrides, they.

All of this comes in many guises,.

But so fascinating, so many ways the supermarket sell it that they're actually being paid by these large companies.

Yeah.

Because.

And then they're always kind of, if.

You, if you did a million, that we want three, then we want five, seven, you know, let's get it up a little bit.

But you want to be on there because they obviously have the space and they have the buyers.

Some of these big supermarket chains have 10 million people going through them.

Yeah.

So I understand that there's costs, I understand that there's, you know, major costs for the whole, for the stores and for the people and for everything that they do.

But they have say so if we wanted to get these two into a big supermarket, this tiny space here has a retail price.

You know, this is like Monopoly.

This is Mayfair.

We want to be in, on your, on your supermarket aisle.

We want to be sort of around about eye level.

We want to be roughly on the right because most people are right handed and they go to the right.

So that's where we want to be.

We don't want to be on the left, most people don't go to the left.

And we don't want to be at the bottom, we don't want to be at the top.

We want to be where you can see us.

That is premium space.

Wow.

That is premium.

And so these bad boys would have to sell 10 bags, 15, 20, 25 bags per week per store to even stay there.

And then you have to keep paying money to make sure that you stay there.

So would you recommend.

So your point is very well made.

If you're going to go to retail, you need, you need a base level of customer who's experienced your product.

That's what we believe.

Some brands, there's some brands just hit the shelf running and it's incredible to see.

There is, there's, I've seen it recently of a couple of brands.

Perfect, Ted.

For instance, there's Trip Drinks.

They've hit the shelf.

You know, they've gone from zero to 300 million incredible stories.

And why?

Well, obviously there's a, they're fantastic brands, they're fantastic companies.

But also they've, they've probably mixed with fantastic people.

So Stephen Bartlett, for instance, has got involved with Perfect Head.

And so there's been a wonderful synergy there and you know, what a great guy to have in on your business.

And so I think if you, if you're at the right time, in the right place with the right people, there is no stopping a brand to going sky high.

For us, as I say, we wanted the kind of triangle to be the opposite way.

We wanted to.

Instead of just going on all the shelves and seeing what our rate of sale is, we want to drive it from the bottom upwards.

And so we've gone into like a lot of office blocks, a lot of food service places like HSBC, Monday.com, lots of virgin active, lots of places where we get the product into as many people's visuals as we can.

So that when we actually do the supermarkets, people will know the brand.

How many flavors or sizes are like the right amount without confusing people with.

Oh, that's, that's an amazing question.

So for us, we would be happy to get two, three flavors into a store.

But will you always wonder, you go into a big.

You see it like a big brand?

Yeah.

Let's say like naked or, or eat natural something.

They might have 12 or Coca Cola.

They might have the whole shelves full.

Basically, the more flavors they bring out, the less space there is for anybody else.

So their goal is to flood the supermarket and say, we're your number one selling drink where your number one selling crisp.

You need to carry all of our flavors.

Wow.

And they say, but this bad boy doesn't sell.

They say, but that bad boy stops someone else getting in.

So that bad boy is there for a reason.

So let's take all of that aisle, let's own it and let's stop anyone else coming in.

And when you sit down with the supermarket, what do you, what do you talk about?

Well, obviously they want to know how it's going to grow.

Their category.

We are protein.

So how is it a protein ball going to grow a category when you have rows of protein bars?

So we have to sit down and we have to explain at the moment, it's a fairly easy talk chat at the moment because protein bars are crashing as we speak because of Joe Wicks and because people like younger generation, they read what's on the back of the labels.

So they're not going to pick up something full of and say, do you know what that's going to give me the six pack.

They're too smart for that.

All right.

They vape on one side.

Yeah.

But on the other side they're too smart.

They're not falling for the marketing.

So smaller companies like us are starting to really come up through because we are all natural.

So as I Said a protein bar, for instance, might have 20 ingredients.

Ten of them you've never heard of, five you can't pronounce.

We are making these with like nut butters, protein powders, dates, freeze dried ingredients, freeze dried strawberries, free dried raspberries.

Oil that comes from Barcelona.

Like a lemon oil and orange oil.

Yeah.

Give me the pick one.

Anyone?

Yeah.

And so we're, we're building these by.

With healthy natural products that taste great, look great, fill you up, you know, 10 grams of protein, but none of the.

And I think that's, that's the difference really.

I mean I know everyone would always say that, but wow, like you really get the lemon and that.

I mean you get the flavors.

We actually found a company in Barcelona that does natural lemon oil.

Essence of natural lemon oil.

We went over and visited and we bring it through.

It's incredible.

And also we, we're sort of 10 grams of protein because if you try and put more than 10 grams or more than 12 or 15, you add a lot of other crap to fill it.

I like the size too.

I expected them to be bigger because the protein ball that used to be on the counters everywhere, I don't know what.

There was a big one.

Yeah.

And it was a bit of a.

Yeah, it was like a few that are making the big ball.

And the trouble with the big ball, it's so hard to eat, it's so unattractive and, and women are kind of a big driver for this product.

And also.

Yeah, this, this is really hitting a lot of, a lot of things.

This is hfss, which means the sugars and the salts and the fats are correct.

This is really hitting every trend at the moment and also with the flavors as well.

And then being so natural, it's put us in a great position and you.

Know, if you had to sort of list like three simple things that always lift sales.

So for me natural is number one because so many things aren't natural.

I think a GLP1 is the, what everyone's talking about, GLP1.

Well, if we look at all of like the Ozempic and stuff like that, like it's a really good opportunity for people to have bite sized balls as opposed to and, and dense nutrition as opposed to lots and lots of food.

So something that's really healthy in small bites, I think at the moment is trending.

Oh, of course, people eat taking a Z.

Can't eat too much, they can't eat too much.

They.

I don't know the whole science but you kind of you're not into food, you know, it's not on the agenda.

So it switches your brain off.

Switches your brain off.

But when you do eat, you want something which is dense but nutritious, but natural, but healthy without all the.

Otherwise there's no point taking no, you know, so we're beginning and I think that that's just going to grow and grow.

And as that grows, we're in a really lovely position.

And also we had a rebrand on our 10th birthday.

We put a lot of money into rebranding the business and that's something that is really driving us forward.

Let's talk.

Let's talk about branding.

I think that's a great.

Well, I said one more question on dealing with the retailers is a.

Has there been any sort of change you've made that has stopped acquired delisting?

Actually, delisting is purely on sales figures.

So it's just black and white.

Basically.

They will look at the rate of sale is how many units per week per store.

And if you're not hitting a minimum of four, five, six, then you're out.

There's no talk about it.

We, we obviously, if you take something like Cafe Nero, we might be doing 15 or 20 in some stores, 25, 35.

They have the same sort of.

They would be less.

They'd be less brutal about how much you're selling.

They would be less brutal because they will see, depending on the location.

For instance, we just gone into WH Smiths and so it skewed our figures because where we are in some of the train stations and some of the airport lounges, all of a sudden the rate of sale is colossal.

It's far greater than it would ever be in a small store in a high street.

Yeah.

You know, you could be crazy amounts and so you.

Everyone's looking for a snack.

Everyone's looking for a snack.

They're probably maybe.

Well, obviously they're traveling, but maybe they're going on holiday.

They're not thinking like, you know, is this two and a half quid going to ruin my budget for the month?

And so it's a really good, good place to be to get fast rate of sale.

Very good.

Let's talk about the branding.

So let's first of all talk about.

I mean, you did a rebrand, which would be great to go through with you, but you know, at the shelf, people decide fast.

Yes.

What do they need to notice first for your products to be picked up?

So we worked with a agency called Robot Foods, which are based in Leeds, which Are they were voted the 11th best in the world.

I would actually say they're in the top 10 now.

And we spent time with them to go through what, what does somebody look at when they're buying?

And believe it or not, you know, it's, it's color, it's font, it's, it's the tone of voice.

But you have one or two seconds.

So you need to understand what the product is and what the category is and what it's selling to you within like one or two seconds.

So when we spoke to them, we, we wanted to put so much on the front of the pack.

We wanted to say, this is gluten free, this is high fiber, this is high profile.

We have so many selling points.

This is all natural.

This is Scotia, this has Halal certification, this is vegan society.

And they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's step back, you know.

And they made us do this really fantastic branding exercise called the graveyard.

And you have to write an obituary of why your product went to the grave and what things you should have done to have resurrected it or what you could have done to have stopped it dying.

So we sat down and we were like, you know, we should have put more, less money into marketing and more money into sampling.

I was like, yeah, we do put a lot of money into marketing and we should have put, we should have really got behind the brand and we should have built it more with the consumer.

We should have done more on LinkedIn and less on Facebook.

Yeah.

So we kind of built up what we should have done and why it gone bankrupt and how sad it was to actually think that you've been going 11 years and you've crashed your company.

And now when we entered the market, we are like, okay, we, we really are going to make this work.

Now.

That's such a fascinating exercise.

So fascinating.

Sort of go through the emotion.

You went through an emotion.

But they, they had these incredible questions that made you write answers that were difficult.

Did you overspend?

Did you put too much in one place?

Did you get your position in right?

If you started again, what would you do differently, do you think?

Blah, blah, blah.

So did you sort of spell out your own answers?

We did and we looked at it and we were like, we burnt through a lot of money, so we got some investments and you kind of, you spend money quicker because you really want the company to grow fast.

But really the money you get from investment also has to be used for growing the business.

So what we come out of that is we hedge, we Hedge.

A lot of the time we don't just go in one direction, 100 mile an hour.

We've hedged.

And hedging for us means that we have private label and private label is where we make our product for somebody else with their name on side and our products.

And that is over 50% of our business.

And say a company like Whole Foods Market usa, they don't want the protein ball company in there.

And if they did want the protein ball company in there, they might want 100,000 a year for promotions and activities and sampling and all the kinds of things that keep you on the shelf.

Whereas under their brand, then they.

People trust their brand.

And we are selling shed loads of protein balls because we are under their branding365brand.

So part of hedging for us is to not just have all of our eggs in one basket, we have private label division, which is really important for us.

And we approach companies who will not take the protein ball brand, but will take a version of it under their brand.

We also have our brand, the protein ball company.

And that's growing and that's ideally where we want to get to.

But we also hedge with other things as well.

I really want to talk about the private banding, but let's just clarify some of these branding things.

So that's really interesting.

It's got a.

Only got a few seconds.

Yeah.

Don't have too many messages.

You went through a sort of process with this marketing agency who really sat down with you and made you spell out, imagine it's all gone bust and what you did wrong.

But out of that, there's a branding message that came out.

There was a branding.

We come up with a strap line together.

Ballsy by nature because on one hand we wanted to pick up all of these protein bars and stamp on them and smash them with a cricket bat.

Right?

There's an anger, there's a frustration and anger and frustration.

Like we've seen five or six cars go.

Cars, six companies go from zero to a hundred million bosh like that.

And then we are coming along, but we don't want to sell the cigarettes to the kids.

So we're trying to do it all naturally and we're just watching another one come through and another one.

So there's an anger and we want to be ballsy and we want to say to your supermarket buyers or any buyer, like, look at the crap you're selling.

You know, do you stand behind that?

Do you eat that?

Do you even know what that is?

Can you pronounce the ingredients, and what do you think that does to your body?

So one part was to be ballsy with the new brand was to look at the font, look at the dynamics, look at the color, look at the tone of voice.

We are ballsy.

We are.

And the other part, we're proud.

But the other part is we are natural.

So how can you be natural on one side, like, we are sourcing the best ingredients.

We are going to Argentina to find this roasted peanut butter that is the best you'll ever buy.

On one side, we're saying, we are so ballsy, we're gonna smash these bars.

But on the other side, remember, you know, remember the little farm that we're getting the protein powder from?

So we had to combine it, and that's when we come up with ballsy by nature.

So before we crack on with the show, please consider subscribing to this wonderful channel and to our mating list@withoutbs.com you get free weekly classes from the best minds in business and free downloadable resources to strip away the jargon and give you the real world lessons.

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Thank you.

It's a passion for natural ingredients.

Is that because you're a foodie who loves.

Yep.

Super foodie.

And also, I just, I. I see the disguise that companies are using.

Like yesterday we sat down and somebody had a fizzy water that was natural sp.

Spring water with no additives and no, no additives.

And you turn it around and there was a heap of sweeteners, and then there was sodium benzonate and then there was some potassium sorbet.

And then it was like, how the.

Is that natural?

How is that mineral water?

And how is that with no sweeteners when it's got all this crap in it?

Is that illegal?

Were they just lying or is just.

They're just being very clever with the super gray line.

And so if you're in the gray area, you're always going to shout out what you're great at.

You know, you go, we have no sugar.

Well, you have a few sweeteners in it.

We have no sort.

Yeah.

But we put.

We ain't gonna tell you about.

And so that's what's happening.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I find them fascinating.

I mean, the one in cosmetics was always dermalogically tested, which people say, well, it has to be terminology tested.

That means you tested and failed.

By the way, a dermalogically approved is the symbol you're looking for.

But people just slap it on, isn't it?

It sounds Good.

It sounds good.

It sounds good.

So a lot of people were hired behind something.

So we spent time with the agency and we were like, we really, really, really want to shout and scream from the top of our voice, from the top of the buildings that this is a healthy product that you, your body will crave, that you want, that will do you good.

But we also want it to be so natural that when you read the back of the ingredients, you say, holy moly.

You know, this is good, this is what I want.

I'm going to stick with this company.

I believe in it.

What signals you?

So out of all of these messages, which are the ones that really matter, which ones?

I mean, you mentioned something I didn'.

Apparently is a big thing.

GLG, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

GLP1.

But that's not the biggest one.

What really matters is protein.

Because everyone's bodybuilding.

No, because you need protein.

When you're a child, you need protein.

My mum and dad in their 80s have to up their protein.

You know, you don't really want carbs, as many carbs all the time in your diet.

So protein is the macro that most people are looking for really, nowadays.

Atkins vibes, is it?

They don't know.

Atkins was maybe too heavy on the fats.

Yeah.

So, you know, you're your, your fried egg and your bacon.

Bacon every morning isn't particularly good.

And so protein is the biggest driver.

And then it's, what protein do you want?

Do you want plant protein?

We use pea, we use brown rice, we use pumpkin.

Do you want egg?

Protein is massive.

In America, most of our cells are egg protein, so we use egg whites and put that in with the protein powder.

Or do you want whey protein?

Whey.

Protein is probably the biggest selling protein there is at the moment.

But protein is milk.

So are you, are you okay with dairy?

So protein breaks down into so many different fields.

We are seeing at the moment that plant protein, especially in the uk into Germany, into Holland, into Switzerland, is really growing for us.

People are so educated now, you know,.

They are beginning to get educated, which is great because years ago protein would have just been like milk, milk powder.

Yeah.

You know, or some, I forget the names of them.

Early shakes.

But now it's like, like, okay, I'm not so good with lactose.

I'm not so good with dairy.

I, I'm, I, I don't really get on too well with pee.

So they know what's good for their body, they know their blood types.

I don't know.

And that's where the younger generation coming through, they read the back of the pack, they understand it, they're educated enough and they're like, that I don't have in my body.

So you did this rebrand bullsy by nature.

Gray.

Yeah.

What had stopped working, why did you, why did you do it?

Oh, it was a long period, a lot of money.

But after 10 years of being on the market and after Covid and after everything that happened and almost starting again, we decided that we'd learned so much in that period that if we did start again, what would we do differently?

Right?

One of it was to shout and scream how great we are and to actually be that brand.

Don't say like little kids and mum and dad, like, you know, don't eat too many, you know, just not that good for you.

Because I'm in protein bars.

One or two, you're on the toilet for a while, you know.

So we, we wanted to shout and scream and to be what we said we were going to be.

And that's why, why we went to an agency, why we spent all the money.

It took time, it took effort.

We worked together.

You didn't go to an agency originally.

You went to a graphic designer.

We've had lots of.

We work with an in house graphic designer who's wonderful and we probably would have got to almost the same time, but it's very difficult for a single person, one person to be able to commit that much time and to really make it.

Whereas we work with this agency in four or five months, we come up with ballsy by nature.

We come up with the colors, we change the logo, we come up with like all of the messaging.

What is the tone of voice you follow?

That tone of voice is like, you know, nature is bold, nature is ballsy.

You know, roll with nature, be part of this.

You know, don't put anything in your, don't put any junk in your body.

We have no emulsifiers, we have no added sugars, we have no sweeteners, we have no crap.

So, yeah, you're not going to tick off.

I'm on 35 grams of protein in this product, which is impossible by the way.

Instead you're like, this is a good, wholesome, natural snack.

I didn't bring it here.

But we also have a low sugar range as well.

And low sugar is becoming super big as a category.

So low sugar, low calories is really growing.

Low carb is really growing at the moment.

So people will look at the back of the pack, you know, and they'll say, okay, you Know, like keto, I want 5 grams of sugar per hundred and I've got to look at how many calories that is.

And I've got X amount of calories per day.

And so this snack that we've launched, 100, 112 calories per snack.

That fits.

That works.

It's keto that works for me, that keep me in ketosis.

And so, yeah, there's so many different ways of making the product work, but our underlying is quality and natural and that's what we stick to.

Well, how did you know it was.

Working when you changed the packaging and.

Got it on the shelves?

We've only changed the packaging four weeks ago.

No way.

Yeah, four weeks ago.

This is it, this is it, this is it.

And we are already seeing an incredible uplift in sales online on Amazon.

In fact, our Amazon sales are just growing crazy.

And we were sending them stock and we're wondering like, did they put it to the wrong warehouse or something?

Because it's gone through, obviously.

We've had.

Because we've just rebranded.

There's been quite a big splash on social media are particularly LinkedIn.

A lot of people have kind of jumped in and said, I like your brand and like your branding.

So the word has spread and so we've had probably more footfall than we would have had if we'd stayed the same.

But at the moment we are riding pretty high.

And then with what happened with the.

With the protein bars, like with Joe Weeks, we are kind of in this new territory to help.

It really helped.

I'm not saying that everything you said was 100% because you.

You could also pick bad in any category you look at, whether you looked at like vaping or if you looked at burgers or if you looked at some of the drinks on the market, he.

He happened to pick protein bars, which has really helped us.

And the number one, number two, number three protein bars on the market in the UK particularly, are crashing down at this point.

How do you.

How did you bring your stockists along with you?

Yep, we had to kind of bring them in on the process.

So a lot of we, when we talk about hedging, we talk about private label, we talk about our own brand.

For us, one of our biggest hedges is export.

So we hedge by going to lots of different countries.

We're in 14 countries at the moment.

And what we do with customers who have been with us a long time, six, seven, eight, 10 years, we started sending them some ideas about rebranding, about colors, about what you like this or this.

And we kind of got them not on board.

You need this brand to work.

We need it to work.

Exactly, yeah.

And so, like in Switzerland, we do phenomenal amounts in Switzerland.

And we were kind of sending him designs and he was coming back with what he thought.

We couldn't always go with what they all wanted, but it got them on board, it made them feel part of.

The process because that's almost too much information.

But they felt part of it.

They felt.

And I've.

I've read horror stories and I actually know horror stories of bars or brands that have rebranded and people have kind of decided they're never going to buy that brand again.

Oh, I've watched the clan do it.

I watched they had to rebrand due to contractual dispute with the person who owned the original brand.

And anyway, whatever, it can destroy them.

So we made sure that we kind of gave them little, little bits on what we're doing and the colors and the scheme and the tone of voice and we got them to say, like, I like that.

A, I didn't like B, I like.

C, I didn't like B.

We actually almost did what we wanted to do, but we did bring them along and we did kind of look at all the results.

So the messaging's the same on all of them.

But you, you saying like, oh, they love milk protein in America.

You have to.

Yeah.

You have different products.

Absolutely.

So in America, it's.

It's egg.

Egg protein is the biggest seller in Germany, they're really into kind of organics and green and natural.

So plant protein is pretty much all we sell in Germany.

In the uk, our biggest is whey protein.

It's by far our biggest skewers selling with whey.

And in different markets, the different markets you sort of deal with, you know what, what is most.

Some places about price, portion, flavor, all of this indio, socracity.

Yeah, it's slightly different everywhere.

And I, I'm the export manager.

I spend a lot of time on export.

So I was at a show called Anuga two weeks ago and it had150,000 people visiting.

Jesus.

So we had a stand and we were talking and it's funny, like, lots of countries have different perceptions and we've.

We've just booked up to do a show in Dubai called Gulf Food.

And for them it's low sugar.

They really want low sugar.

They want keto.

They have such a sweet tooth.

They have such a sweet tooth.

And because we are date based on some of the products and I think we would do phenomenally well.

So I booked up, I'm looking for a distributor in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia and Dubai and yeah, that's where we'll go.

But when, for instance, we go to Germany, we push mainly plant protein and we offer pea and brown rice, as I said, and pumpkin.

And that's really great for the European market.

Market normally, what generally happens is a trend or like protein was huge in America 15 years ago.

About 12 years ago when we went over to America, we saw it and we bought the protein and we were one of almost the pioneers of the protein market.

And over the last 10 years we've started seeing these monster brands that have come, conquered, sold off to major companies and kind of taken over the whole market.

So normally it's a trend.

Will start in America, it will hit the uk, then it'll hit like Germany or, or Holland and then it will come through.

We're at the stage now where we've started in the uk, but we've hit Germany.

Sales are phenomenal.

Switzerland just starting in Austria, France, Spain.

And we're working our way down.

I love the, you know, you call it hedging.

It's a sort of diversity strategy.

So let's talk about this private label.

Yeah.

Without losing yourself in the process, I guess.

When do you say yes?

When do you say no?

Okay, you say no when there is a conflict of interest.

So if you are going to come up head to head against your product, against their brand and potentially they're going to be cheaper because private label isn't.

It is quality, but quite often it's price sensitive.

Yeah.

So they will tell you, I want this.

You know, some of the German supermarkets, I want this like half the price you're selling it at.

What you do just make them smaller.

No, you, you can make it smaller but you, you use different ingredients in a different maker up.

So you're not going to go to Barcelona and smell the oils of the orange and the lemon and bring that across.

You're not going to go into Switzerland, into Austria and Germany and find that whey powder that's like the cleanest way.

You're not going to do that.

You've got to hit a price point.

And so.

And it's not your brand and it's not your brand.

So.

And the customer is expecting a, as you say, a slightly cheaper version.

Yeah, they're expecting a price point.

I wouldn't say it's not necessarily worse, but it's a price point point.

So you have to match your, match it for that price point.

But we will say yes to a private label when there is no way this is going to interfere with us.

And for us, for instance, we have, we work with a golf company and they are St Andrews and they're selling their golf balls all across all the golf.

Golf courses across the UK and into Germany and looking at America that isn't us.

So we will work with them.

We work with sports and nutrition brands that are really big and people go on their website and they buy their whey protein and their protein shakes and their protein drinks and they buy all under that one brand that doesn't affect ourselves.

Where do you find these people?

They're approaching you.

Or a bit of both.

Most of our customers come from trade shows.

So the trade show is super important and you spend money on yourself.

We spend about 100 grand a year on trade shows.

Sometimes 80 grand or maybe 100's a bit much.

But like for instance an UGA, that would be 10 grand.

Then we do Dubai.

I'm over to Chicago on Saturday.

In March, I'm going over to Expo west, which is in California, in Anaheim.

And then we're back April, May, June is back into the UK for lunch and for fancy food chat.

There's so much going on.

So when you do all these shows, you meet customers, you meet, you know, a supermarket chain, a somebody who owns a sports and nutrition brand, somebody who owns a.

Do you put a sign up?

We do private label.

No, they, they kind of work it out.

Yeah.

What are they looking for?

They're looking for a quality product or.

Quality would be, I would imagine, their first criteria.

But the second criteria is something that's different, that they can offer their consumer course.

So the consumer, 50% of their, their market sales might come from a protein powder.

And they say, okay, we've got a protein bar.

And now Instead of getting 20 pound per month from this customer, we're getting 25.

But imagine if we had a protein ball, maybe it gets a 30.

So it's like augmented product.

How do we add more to the.

How do we get their shopping basket to be higher?

There was a moment in the supermarket sort years ago, I remember with my dad to chatting about like, it's.

It was when private label like coming through and all the brands were disappearing from the shelves except like Heinz ketchup.

There was barely anything left.

It was like.

And it was like, oh my God, they're just, they're gonna go.

Well, it's strange because they went and there were disputes and like, you know, the big brands, the Palmolies, The Nestle, they were pulling their brands off of the supermarkets because they.

They weren't getting the terms and conditions they'd had since they started.

Private label now is well over 50% of the market.

Wow.

So it's one of them moving freight trains where you either jump on or you get lost.

You know, if you don't do it, then you are.

You are cutting out 50% of your potential sales from day one.

So you've got to work out, you know, we say no to a lot of private label if we feel it's not beneficial for us.

It's.

It's going to take too much time.

The volume.

Quite often we'll say no to a major volume contract if the price point isn't there.

So we could spend, you know, a week and we could make 500,000 bags, but if we make 500 quid at the end of it, there is no point.

Oh, gosh.

Whereas we could.

We could have one customer and they buy 20,000 bags and we make £5,000.

It's that obvious thing, isn't it?

Like turnovers, vanity.

Profit is sanity.

But there's that thing, you go, I'll buy a million.

And you're like, oh, a million, you know, let's do it, you know, and then you do the maths and you're like, well, we're going to make some money.

It's like, yeah, three weeks work.

And it's like, as you say, I bet you've done that.

These.

We have done it.

We've done it.

And we've even had our management accounts and we've even had conversation with the buyers that I can't say.

And the buyers will say, like, you know, how much are you making?

And you're like, you know, we are making a few pennies, all right, we're selling you, you know, 1/2 million pounds, but we're making a few pennies.

And the buyers would say, could you come down that few pennies?

Just.

Just that few pennies.

Could you?

They say, never say your margin, dude.

You never say your margin, but never let them.

Literally making pennies and they want you to come down them pennies.

You have to.

I had to say to the buyer once.

Do you hear yourself?

Do you hear what you're saying?

I said, I will be bankrupt.

Our lovely 37 staff.

I don't have a job, they've got families, we got houses.

Like, what's the point?

Where are we trying to get to?

But as a manufacturer.

Interesting how with all the.

Control yourself at the same time, you don't want big orders that mean nothing.

But it's nice to have an order.

Yeah, there's a happy medium.

Keep it rolling.

Yeah.

Because economies of scale are colossal in business.

Business.

So instead of buying one pallet of dates and bringing it in and using it, we buy containers of dates.

So we'll bring in 20 pallets.

Instead of buying, you know, a container of whey a pallet away, we're bringing a container away.

So for us, by having big customers who order frequently, that means that we can buy in bulk and we can drive pricing.

But what we have noticed recently is all pricing has gone up and especially lately because there has been crazy weather conditions and storms and floods and hurricanes and then all of the farmers are being hit in each country.

So nowadays we actually need a plan A, a plan B and a plan C. So we need to make sure that the dates we can get from Europe we can get from ua.

And now we need a plan C as well.

Because everything is changing.

And you don't know, for instance, the, the olive crop went up over 40% in the last 12 months.

45 To be exact.

45% Increase.

Do you go to a Ryanair or an EasyJet or a Delta and say, oh guys, you know, you were paying X amount, just put 45% and you can have your next shipment.

They will say no.

So the weather conditions and what's happening around the world or if there is a kind of a war and unfortunately there's been lots of problems around the world and really sad problems and that has put up shipping.

So we would be shipping over a container from the UK to the us, Two, two and a half thousand dollars dollars.

And then all of a sudden this conflict started.

Oh, that would be 9,000 to send it.

Do you have to deliver like, do.

You know what I mean?

Like if you, your reputation, if you've got an order like non delivery is death, is it?

I mean, yeah, it's death.

But if there are wild exceptional circumstances, then they understand majority.

But you, if you're on the shelf and you, you are not filling the shelf, they will put something else on there.

Whether you go back on there or not, you may lose it.

Then you have to go to the next round, which might be six months and then you'll go back through and say we were doing well.

And they say, yeah, but you know, you come off and we're not going to put you back on again.

So you have to do your utmost to deliver.

You really have to.

But as I said, there's so Many outside challenges the forces 10 years and.

And so like just a container cost going from two to nine grand.

You didn't factor that in.

We now sell to the US colossal amounts.

We didn't factor in that there would be 10% going in.

We didn't factor in that the dollar would fall so much that what we're receiving isn't the same.

And has ever private label, you know, has it opened other doors for your own products?

No, not necessarily for private label.

With private label.

And that's our hedge and that's completely different.

And that's a different part of the business.

And that is I really believe that businesses should always look at private label as a hedge.

Hedge for US Export is a completely different hedge.

And then our own brand is a completely different hedge.

And then offering different products we started offering bites and protein bites and protein squares.

And we're starting to get some traction with that as well.

Different markets like different products.

For instance, Germans love little bite sized things.

Yeah.

I don't know if it come from the marzipan or wherever it from years ago but they're so into these small little bite sized balls and bars and the same in France.

Lots of weird things about people.

You're Europe, Europe's great.

But they, if for instance you, you sell in Holland and they would say like what price?

And you say well you know It'd be about €2 wouldn't work anything over 176.

And you say why the 76?

Because in Holland, like in Netherlands 177 is too expensive.

What you say really?

And they're like everything has a price.

You can't be, you can't be 180 or 2.

You have to be like 1 7, 4 and you.

And the margins come.

So it's some markets like the Netherlands price sensitive and some Europeans don't snack much.

So you're in Spain and Italy they don't really snack.

You know they have, they have their tapas but they're not then gonna go and have a, a bar or a bite or something after from between snack.

You know when they eat dinner.

They eat dinner when we snack.

Exactly.

You know so they have.

Yeah, you're going out for 10 o' clock at night at dinner.

Yeah.

Well they have their menu to do their big food in the daytime and then at the nighttime they might, might have an apple and something else.

Some nuts.

Nuts.

They probably have a beer with that because that's the lovely way they live.

But you, you start to see in Europe that there's different Patterns emerging in Europe, in Italy, for instance, protein hasn't even made it big there.

So how do you turn the sort of buzz into shelf space?

You've had these sort of big moments like Dragon's Den with your porridge business.

Yeah.

I mean, look it up folks.

You had all five Dragons.

Yeah.

Rip your arm off and you turned it down.

Yeah.

What was the thing that made you turn it down?

Down?

If, if we go brutally honest, the contract was quite challenging.

Like quite.

As in super quite incredibly challenging.

Yeah.

And also contractual terms.

Contractual terms?

Yeah.

They didn't sue.

They didn't sue.

A small startup business where entrepreneurial wanted to rule the world and thought like laughing and being happy every day would, would really help you to get going.

This was contractually bound.

So I think for us personally, for other companies, it works super well.

For us, we weren't that type of company that could have made that work,.

But amazing marketing and how do you turn that spike of attention into a sort of long term.

Well, you've got to continuously promote and continuously be out there on social media, sending it to magazines, working with influencers.

We think that LinkedIn for us at the moment is one of our biggest talk.

Really?

Because I was just with a client yesterday who's been spending all this money.

Oh God, he's in services or something.

He was like, like, I've given up LinkedIn.

Can't sell on LinkedIn.

That's fascinating for a food product.

I mean it's, it's crazy because you can go on there, you can talk about it.

We have the luxury that we can go into the factory, we can look at the mixers, we can pick up the ingredients, we can smell, we can talk and so we have the whole spectrum.

We can, we had a visit the other day from GS1, which is the barcode and we could actually do a factory tour from, from unloading a container with ingredients to going through and making the product, the finished bag tasting, going in the warehouse and then them loading up a container.

Interesting.

On LinkedIn though, there's so much boring crap of your food.

I can watch food, tasty food.

Well, you actually, when you're doing it, you think, God, is everyone turning off and thinking what a.

But you do get some likes and follows and I think it just builds up over time.

It's good for your personal branding.

But I think for a brand and for a company and, and LinkedIn for us has been phenomenal.

Of course we do all of the others, But I'm finding LinkedIn is the main one at the moment, do you.

Send stuff to buyers as well to sort of.

You do.

I did an email yesterday to a buyer late last night when my eyes are Red.

I was working super late.

I've been trying to get this buyer's name for ages and I see that they put on one of their posts that they said, I took a chance on this company and I did the lyrics to ABBA Take a Chance on Me.

And they may look at it and just sing no Chance.

But it's that kind of interaction because you've got to stand out.

So you saw that the bar had written an article.

I written an article about a company they took a chance on that has done phenomenally well because of that interaction.

And I did the ABBA Take a Chance on Me because.

And then at the end was just out like, give this a shot.

This is going to do phenomenally well.

And I know it is and these are the reasons why.

But you've got to try and do something different.

And then you've got to.

I wouldn't say.

Or actually I would say you've got to harass buyers because they are getting hundreds of emails, hundreds of samples apparently.

And I haven't been into their stock room.

Their stock room is full of products.

People sending, you know, send them a box of that and that and that, they'll love it.

They're getting hundreds of them coming through to them.

They don't even go in the store room because it's too many products.

We've got this world now where, you know, these huge influences.

I mean, I saw there's a chocolate bar from whichever whatsoever that Top guy, top YouTuber is.

I know his name.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Mr.

Beast.

Mr.

Beast.

That's it.

You know, I mean.

And it was like, Mr.

Beast chocolate bar.

And you're like, what?

Do you know how powerful he is?

Yeah.

My 16 year old said, I think he's the most powerful man in the world at the moment.

Wow.

And I was like, really?

He said, he is.

He's probably got like, you know, there's 8 billion people on this earth.

He's probably got like 2 billion watching him.

Really something.

The figures could be wrong, but like he is.

How do you feel about that?

I mean, that's almost like.

Well, I tried the bar and I was really disappointed.

Disappointed because the chocolate was so cheap and he could have done something incredible.

But what do you feel as a brand?

Do you feel like you got to work with influence and everything, but there must be a feeling of like, right.

Do we, you know, do we have to get like a big influencer to get behind us or.

Influencers are now charging crazy amounts of money.

Money.

So you can go to a top.

It's 10, 20, 30,000 to get somebody behind you and they're only going to do a couple of posts and they're promoting so many products.

It isn't necessarily going to lift your.

It's a little spike.

It's a tiny little spike.

So I think we need to do it more ourselves and we need to get behind the brands ourselves.

We need to get to the buyers.

We need to do our own hard work ourselves.

But obviously influencers are making it work with some products.

Is it fair to say a lot of their products will come and go though?

Possibly.

Possibly.

Hence we can't remember the name of the drink that was doing hundreds of million.

Yeah, maybe it was everywhere and it was gone.

Yeah.

And that's what's happening at the moment.

And you're seeing mushroom brands, collagen brands, Lion's main brands.

Interesting.

Actually if you've looked at functional mushrooms, it's an interesting area.

Yeah, it's super interesting.

But like if you want to be brutally honest, the tiny little sprinkling you're putting in, I'm not sure it is going to give you clarity.

I'm not sure it is going to calm you.

You don't like bullshit.

I don't like bullshit.

I just want it to be how it is.

Yes.

Yeah.

It has got to be the real deal.

So onto the last section.

You've been absolutely brilliant, Matt.

So let's imagine we got our 20 year old, 8 year old or 25 year old thinking, oh, I'm going to do this food brand or something.

Yes.

What would be your basic plan for them?

The first listing, the first fa, first packaging glow up.

The first obviously.

Where does he start?

We, we see a lot of young people, new brands entering the market.

Sometimes I just think where are they these all going to get sold?

You know it's so good to have this brand new bovine product but who's really going to buy it?

How big is the market?

I think, think.

I think if you're going to bring out a new product, you need to look at the size of the market.

So you know your market segment, your market segment and you can get that information online elsewhere.

You can find it.

You, if you can't find it, you can even just go into a supermarket.

You look at the cereal aisle.

Well that's a big segment.

Look how many cereal bar.

You know you.

But you Go to something like the stuffed cherry pepper aisle.

There's not many.

There's one or two.

So you, you can just walk around and start to get a feel for it.

Okay, I want to do a granola.

Let's go and see the granola.

There's quite a few.

There's nothing different.

I could maybe do something different.

You need to brand.

Well, branding is key because if it's just in a white bag and says, good granola, no one's going to buy it.

You need to then look at how you're going to kind of market the products and what spend.

You do need money to start a brand.

I was about to say, we need money for this.

Where'd you go?

We started because we were 11 years ago and then 15 years ago with OLUVS, we did a thing called SEIS and EIS HMRC.

And I'd say armchair investors, but they're not.

They're actually, you know, super clever people who, who maybe have a portfolio of products.

They might put 5k, 10k.

But you would have already had to make the product.

You need to make the product.

You need to show them, you need to have the story, you need to show them the positioning.

You need a sales deck.

They need to try the product.

And usually if it's a good product, you know there's potential.

But also I would look at the competition.

So if you are going to start a Coca Cola, don't do it.

Richard Branson couldn't.

You know, if you're going to start something, if you're going to do something that's really competitive, look for something that's more niche but not too niche.

What would be the first marketing channel you could test the product on?

Or what would you do now?

So, like, we started pretty simply.

You can just walk down to your local deli farm, shop someone small in the village, in a town, and give them some free products.

Just say, could you stick it there?

There's 20 bags.

You send them for two pound each.

There's £40.

I'll come next week and see how you got on.

So we started this brand here called.

It's the Dog Dogs.

We've only been going like six months.

We've given it free to so many smaller independent pet stores.

We just send it and say, we'll give you a call and see how you're getting on.

I can eat it.

You can eat it, yeah.

So it's made with peanut butter, chia seed, flaxseed, sunflower seed.

We use pumpkin protein.

It's vegan it's super healthy that you can eat it because it's from the same factory with the same ingredients.

So it's just made with really healthy natural ingredients.

It's delicious.

It's just delicious.

Yeah.

It's less sweet, so we don't put the dates in it.

When we looked at the pet food, it was really important, in our opinion, to be low carb because a lot 50 of dogs are overweight.

When a dog's overweight, I'm glad he's a fussy because it stops him being.

Overweight because it's the equivalent of having a dog that smokes is a dog that's overweight.

You know, they will die.

They will die.

I mean, I want one.

Nowadays they vape.

Yeah.

But like, that's.

That is what it is.

An overweight dog is a dog that smokes that will die early.

So we decided if we're going to enter the market, do what we do, go natural.

What did doing a pet food teach you about doing human food?

We did this afterwards.

This is really new.

But we went to see some machinery into a pet food company and we were just appalled, disgusted, horrified by the smell, the ammonia, what they were doing.

The toilets, like this, these, this pet food factory and probably all of them, the regulations are below the floor.

So we walked out, having looked at a machine and I said to my site manager, Dave, David, mate, we can do better than this.

You know, we've got 37 people, we've probably got 10 dogs in the company.

So we started rolling just peanut butter, chia seed, flax seed, sunflower seed, pumpkin protein, putting it all together.

And the dogs were loving it.

And that was like, there is no, there is nothing in there that you can't eat, you shouldn't eat.

You should always be able to eat your dog food.

And actually my wife just recently, we're now on this really expensive dog food because she just didn't.

And she's a doctor and clever and goes and reads it all and she.

She blew me away.

She was just like, all of these brands are full of.

They're all full of Andy.

And I was like, really?

What even.

And I won't name all the brands, but all those brands that are expensive dog foods on the shelf that are supposed to be good, they are full of.

She did her stuff and she was like, now you have to basically get the one that's sort of recommended by vets, that's twice as expensive.

And it's like, you know, even that crap, is it?

So 50% of the vets are owned by Mars, Palm, Olive or, or Nestle.

The vets are owned by them.

They own 50% of all the, of all the, the vets.

So what do you think they're going to tell you to give your dog one of their products?

You don't want to believe this is the truth, but it is the truth slightly.

So with, with dogs, they shouldn't have too many carbs.

And that's what we research come out.

We read books and looked at seminars and everything.

And I think when you look at any pet food, you've got to look at the carbs.

And what's really strange is there was no legislation for so many years.

It's only just changing now.

You didn't even have to put what, how many carbs on the back.

So most pet foods are just pumping in corns and syrups.

And so, yeah, it's an interesting market.

We've only just started.

We've just gone into Pets corner 150 stores, which is fantastic for us because it seems like a fantastic company to work with.

Very knowledgeable staff.

So we're off and running.

Going back to my founder sitting now, who's gonna, he's gonna get some money on scis.

They're gonna go get some product together, get some, some people to put a bit of money in.

Yeah, they're gonna make it themselves.

Yeah.

You know, they're gonna, they're gonna buy, they're gonna go and source the ingred that.

Yeah.

And build a relationship.

My advice to them would be have a job.

You do full time and have this as part time.

And only once you're.

This product that you're launching overtakes your full time, should you move into it really.

Because the cash burn is phenomenal and so many people start with great intentions and great products and great ideas, but when they hit the first hurdle of 10 grand for packaging, 20 grand for tubs, 5 grand to package market, 2 grand VAT, they're like kind of out the picture.

But I think if you work for somebody whilst you run this as a kind of secondary income, a hustle, and then your hustle starts to grow, man.

Go for it.

But I don't think it's particularly difficult out there at the moment.

It's more difficult than it's been in the last 15 years that we've known.

It's difficult to get the buyer's attention because it's so hard.

It's difficult with the amount of money, it's difficult to be noticed.

There's so much noise out there, it's so, you know, you can't just go on Facebook and everyone looks at you.

You might only get a few people.

So I think I would run it, I would say to the 28 year old, carry on in your job, mate.

Put some money in the pocket, build up your dream.

When, when and only when it's working.

Bosch straight over.

Yeah.

And there's always that problem and I don't know if people appreciate it.

Hopefully they're way smarter than they already do.

But if you, you've got this sort of minimum amount, as you say, the packaging.

So you get together 5,000 products.

Yeah.

If, if you get out, sell them.

And now they want double, you need double the money.

Again, it's this graph that's like.

But the graph is horrific.

So on, on month one, you've got five grand of product, you sold five grand.

You're going to make, if you're lucky, one grand.

Okay, great.

After 31 days, next to.

Nobody's paid you, but you've now got to start making for your.

Yes, exactly.

And you need, if it's success, you need twice as much as much.

So now they.

Someone.

Yeah, Germany, take it.

Okay.

They owe you ten grand.

Have they paid?

No, but I need to produce more because I need it for the UK.

I'm now 30 grand in debt, still haven't been paid.

I still haven't made my three grand profit.

But I've now got to think about April.

How am I going to make April?

How much, you know, money?

Because I, I sit in front of clients and they might say, well, I've got 100 grand together.

I'm like, you're going to need a bit more than that.

100 Grand will get you started.

Yeah, but it won't last very long.

You'll need to be able to draw more.

You need to draw.

And that should be your working capital.

Yeah.

So that shouldn't necessarily be.

You buy your stock, you get your office.

The worst thing you can do is buy an.

Is to rent an office.

Yeah.

Second worst thing you can do is hire load staff.

You know, he's great, she's great, we're awesome.

We're gonna make all friends.

Yeah.

There's 30 grand.

30 Grand.

30, 100 Grand.

Right.

Instead of now doing to pay you guys 100 grand, I've now got to do 500 grand just to pay you.

And I haven't even paid the rent.

Who should they hire?

They should do as much as they can themselves at the start.

As much as they can.

What would be your first hire, do you think?

I would think the way the marketing moving is somebody in marketing and digital and somebody who can can pump out information about you all the time so that you look bigger than you are so people see you so that they.

The snowball effect is I keep seeing that brand.

I want to try that actually.

You know, that looks good.

And so somebody who can get the tone of voice and get behind your story, send it to influencers drive.

Years ago you would have sent it to like the radio Times or the magazines or like the hello magazine.

Nowadays that's all gone.

Now it's get your TikTok, shop up,.

Social media, smile, Radio Times say what's.

On the telly, Radio Times out Christmas, Radio Times.

We used to send it to them every single year we had products like get it over to them.

You know, this will be major.

Matt, you've been an absolute dream.

Thank you so, so much.

Thank you.

Spending your time today 11 years, Matt.

11 Years today.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.

Well done.

Thanks for having me.

So, so much.

Thank you.