Recipe for Greatness
Recipe for Greatness
Chris Kong | Crafting a Better Future with Tempeh
Chris Kong's journey from child actor in Hong Kong to co-founder and co-CEO of Better Nature is nothing short of remarkable. Chris shares how his early experiences in biochemistry at the University of Oxford and his passion for sustainability led him to create a leading tempeh brand in the UK. Growing up with an entrepreneurial spirit, from selling snacks to classmates to experimenting with a hot dog stand, Chris's story is one of relentless pursuit to develop impactful, planet-friendly products.
The episode takes you through the transformative journey of Better Nature's inception, sparked by a chance encounter at a biotech conference. A conversation with his future co-founder, Ellen, challenged Chris's dietary habits and planted the seeds for a revolutionary plant-based protein business. Through this serendipitous meeting, Chris discovered tempeh and its untapped potential in the UK market, leading to a bold mission to make this protein-rich product a supermarket staple and win over health-conscious consumers.
Chris also opens up about the trials and triumphs of the sustainable food business. He details the strategic moves, such as rebranding, to highlight tempeh's health benefits, and the role of strong partnerships in scaling production. His background in sports instilled a dedication to persistence and discipline, essential traits in bringing Better Nature's vision to life. This episode promises not just an entrepreneurial story but an insightful reflection on aligning business with a meaningful impact on the world.
Three, two one zero and liftoff, liftoff, liftoff. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Recipe for Brains podcast. I'm your host, jay Greenwood, where we interview the founders behind some of the best food and drink brands in the UK to find out the skills and knowledge they've used to get to where they are. To end the podcast, we have Chris Kong, co-founder and co-CEO of Better Nature, the UK's leading tempeh brand. With a master's degree in molecular and cellular biochemistry from the University of Oxford, chris transitions from biochemist to entrepreneur, driven by the passion for sustainability and plant-based nutrition. Under his joint leadership, better Nature has achieved significant milestones, including nationwide listings in major UK retailers such as Tesco and Asda and expansion into international markets like Germany. Beyond his professional endeavors, chris is an avid marathon runner and bodies an active lifestyle, and that tempeh high protein benefits support Chris. Welcome to the podcast.
Chris Kong:Thank you so much for having me. Jay, Great to be here.
Jay Greenwood:And I wanted to jump into this podcast a slightly different way because, as I've mentioned before, I've done so much research and one thing that popped out to me was child acting, so can you tell me about how that came around? Did it pass?
Chris Kong:Mate, jay, you did some serious digging there to figure out that I was a child actor. Yeah, honestly, growing up as a kid, I grew up in Hong Kong I had two brothers and my older brother was actually way more into acting than I was, uh, but I guess you know, my mom just wanted to give us something to do in the weekend so she can I don't just chill out and one of the things that she signed us up to do, uh, was on these sort of childhood acting classes and we would do, um, we do musicals and plays, like we've done the classics like Romeo and Juliet, but some really awesome musicals like Around the World in 80 Days, um, you know, like Out of the Woods or is it Into the Woods? Can't remember now, into the Woods?
Chris Kong:that's it, that's it so we've done a few of those and, um, I think it was when I was fat sam in bugsy malone, another musical. When I was fat sam, uh, there was this producer in the audience, uh, who produced for this television company in hong kong calledK, and she was like, oh, this person, this kid, would be great on my TV show. So that's how I got into it.
Jay Greenwood:That's amazing. And then, jumping into a little bit further along the line, you studied a master's in biochemistry. Now someone might look at that sort of choice and think the predictable path for you is sort of like some science background or consultancy or something like that. So when did business and entrepreneurship start to enter your mind as maybe a potential career path?
Chris Kong:yeah, great question. I feel like I've always been quite entrepreneurial, so even at school I would try and sell stuff to my friends. You know, um, being, you know, coming from Hong Kong, going to a UK boarding school, like during the holidays, I'd always come back with a massive case full of pot noodles and all sorts of you know Hong Kong snacks, uh, to sell on to my friends. And you know, just for Kong snacks to sell on to my friends. And you know, just for fun, really, not to not to make any money, but just because I thought it was really, really fun. I remember when I was super young so I've got some family in Australia when I was super young in Australia, we, without any market research, without any sort of planning, right, we, my, my cousins and I decided that we would set up a. Yeah, it's funny. It's funny that we did this, given that I now run a plant-based company. But we'd sell. We'd sell hot dogs on the corner of the street, made zero money, spent loads of money buying hot dogs, made a shitload of hot dogs, but made no money. But it was fun, it was fun and I feel like I've always had that interest in just creating a product, getting it out there and trying to sell it to people, so going.
Chris Kong:But for me, I think, ultimately the work that I had to do, or the work that I wanted to do, had to have an impact, and I was good at science at school and really enjoyed biology and chemistry in particular. So for me, studying biochemistry just seemed like a natural fit and I was inspired by the technological innovations that were coming out you know, even still today at such an accelerated rate from the field of biochemistry that can just completely transform the world, whether that's through, you know, the regeneration of our environment, whether that's through the development of new drugs. I felt like biochemistry was just a huge, hugely powerful tool. But I knew that I was not going to be a scientist. I knew that I wanted to study biochemistry so I could learn about the science, understand the context, but in the back of my mind it was like I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be able to sort of transform these scientific discoveries into actual products and innovations that can benefit consumers, um, benefit the planet.
Jay Greenwood:so, yeah, that's when I think it's always, it's always been there and we mentioned this at the beginning, like well, I mentioned that maybe consulting you actually did go into that. But one thing I found really interesting you sort of mentioned that you just noticed that from sort of in the bottom of your heart, you weren't being fulfilled. So like, I guess, what was that feeling like? And then how did you go about trying to find something that may fulfill you? Like, how did you explore potential opportunities or potential paths to go down?
Chris Kong:Yeah, I think it's quite interesting. So I think I've got nothing against consulting firms like, let's be clear but I think they do an incredibly good job at selling themselves, especially at top universities. So I had the great privilege to go to the University of Oxford and pretty much all of my friends were obsessed about getting an internship or a full-time job at one of the big consulting firms, whether it's McKinsey or Bain or BCG. They do an incredible job of just marketing themselves and saying that you know, here's a job that'll allow you to solve some of the world's biggest problems and have amazing impact. And if you're, you know, a bright kid who didn't know what to do, frankly, immediately after university, this seemed like a pretty good jumping off point, which it is. You know you can. If you look at the alumni of some of these consulting firms, it's fantastic, right. It is a good place to start, especially if you don't know what you want to do, because you just equip yourself with a broad range of skills.
Chris Kong:But you know, during my internship at McKinsey, I just didn't feel like I wanted to be a mercenary for my brain, right, because ultimately that's what a consultant is You're just effectively a mercenary. And you know they say you're going to be working on hugely impactful projects. Speaking, the vast majority of their clients are billion dollar multinational corporations who have benefited tremendously from the extraction of the world's natural resources, and I won't name any names, but you can probably tell what I'm referring to and I just didn't feel comfortable working for those sort of companies. So, but then again, as a 21 year old right, it just seemed like a really good avenue to at least start off exploring. So I did take up the full-time job offer to return to McKinsey after my internship with them.
Chris Kong:I met amazing people at the company. In fact most of our internship class are still my friends to this very day and I count some of them as my very best friends today. But I just knew it was never going to be long term for me. So in my final year of university I was just exploring other avenues that I could sort of go down. So I started getting really involved in the university startup scene, in the entrepreneurship scene. I would work on odd bits and you know bobs with different sort of yeah, I don't know university startups or people coming up with different ideas at uni, and it was through through that that I ended up starting Best Nature pretty much.
Jay Greenwood:And I want to then dig into sort of how the sort of formation of Best Nature came around and you met your co-founder at the Gap Summit, competition and what I'm curious about. What was it about? Sort of Tempe and then meeting your now co-founder that you decided that there were. I guess that they excited you and you thought let's create a business around this yeah, I think it was just a confluence of so many different things.
Chris Kong:um, you know, from a personal perspective, I, when I first joined Oxford, right, um, I had the great fortune to meet one of my now co-founders and our co-CEO, ellen, who at that time was basically the only vegan that I knew and was the first vegan I ever met. And you know, she was again coming from, I guess, a Chinese background. Old boys, boarding school. The notion of reducing my meat consumption never, ever, crossed my mind. But after meeting Ellen and after speaking with her about her dietary choices, I started challenging why it is that I was eating so much meat, and it was during that process that I started reducing my meat consumption.
Chris Kong:I cut off all red meat, but I was a really keen athlete at university, so I rode for my college for a little bit, but then and then transitioned into boxing. So I ended up representing Oxford against Cambridge in the varsity boxing match. But to do that I had to train like 15 times a week and like for all the boxers out there. You will feel my pain. You know I had to keep all you know, on top of my weight and making sure I made weight was just such a huge pressure that I was studying every single macro, every single product that I was consuming, and this, that. But I guess, though I wanted to reduce my meat consumption, I couldn't find a solid, staple plant based protein that I could eat day in and day out, in the same way that I was eating chicken at that time.
Chris Kong:You know I would go to the meat free aisles in our local Tesco and I, you know I've been a dilemma. I felt like I had to make this choice of either eating your meat alternatives, so your corns, your this's of the world, or tofu and falafel. And you know, don't get me wrong, I think meat alternatives are great. They look great, they taste great, they cook just like meat. But looking at the back of pack, looking at the ingredients that go into some of these products, I didn't feel comfortable eating these products every single day at this. You know, in the same volume that I was consuming my chicken at that time, Right At the other end of the spectrum, your tofu and falafel like. Realistically, there was no way that these food products were going to meet my protein demands and from a versatility perspective, I felt like it was. I just ended up making the same dishes all the time and it just wasn't. It wasn't very fulfilling. What I was looking for was a plant based protein that was all natural, that was as nutritious as chicken and ideally even better than chicken from a health perspective, something that can be cooked, just like chicken can as well. I couldn't find it, so I ended up just eating loads and loads of chicken in training for my boxing.
Chris Kong:But it was during that time serendipitously, as you mentioned that I applied for the GAP Summit. It was this incredible biotech conference that was taking place at the University of Cambridge, and during the conference, or as part of the conference, what they did was that they grouped up 100 of the delegates into random teams of five, and these were students from all around the world you know the US, you know Asia, everywhere. They grouped us up into teams of five about two or three months before the actual physical conference and they taught us to come up with a business idea. And I just so happened to be put into the same team as Driando, who is now one of our co-founders as well, and he was at that time studying a PhD in food science focusing on tempeh fermentation, and I'd never heard about tempeh up until that point literally never, like no idea what it was. So, but naturally, we just got talking about his PhD. We are talking about the research that he was doing.
Chris Kong:I was a biochemist, so I could understand, at the very least, what the words that were coming out of his mouth, and I was fascinated. I was absolutely fascinated. I felt like, wow, this is something that I could really use this product, what he was saying, the fact that it was all natural, that had similar protein content to chicken, that was super high in fiber as well, that can be cooked in all the same ways that chicken can. That was also supercharged with gut health benefits, given the fact that it's made using whole fermented soybeans. I just just blew my mind and so I went out, tried to find tempeh in the UK, found extremely difficult, but managed to get my hands on some and loved it. Loved it. So we ended up putting together a business plan for this effect.
Chris Kong:Well, actually, it wasn't even a tempeh brand at that time. It was a business idea for a company that made a tempeh maker, right, so kind of like a bread maker, right, but a tempeh maker that you could have on your kitchen top that would allow you to make your own plant-based protein on the go, right On demand. So we pitched that in the competition and, out of the 20 teams that participated, we ended up winning. So I thought like, wow, we're on to something. And it was after that competition that I then went out to Indonesia to you know where tempeh comes from? Uh, it originates in Indonesia. About 300 years ago went out there to sort of just immerse myself in the world of tempeh and absolutely fell in love of it. Came back to the UK and thought this has to be taken into the mainstream. You know like I will not rest until this is in every single Tesco in the country.
Jay Greenwood:Amazing. I love that story. So sort of the difference you know, when a business idea finds you versus you trying to find a business idea. It feels like you really, that business sort of found you and you were the right person for it, versus you try and find a business idea. It feels like you really, that business sort of found you and you were the right person for it. And I want to dig into now sort of how you approach sort of the risk around setting up this business, because you had a offer from McKinsey to begin your career there and you know, probably growing into a race festival career. But how do you approach the sort of framework with sort of deciding whether or not to go down to consultancy or pursue this business?
Chris Kong:yeah, um I, you know I think I got really lucky right.
Chris Kong:So I knew that I wanted to pursue this around october 2018 time and I was actually meant to join mckinsey around that time. So what I did was that I just emailed them and I said, hey, look like we ended up winning this startup pitching competition in order to get fun. So as part of the competition, we won something like five thousand pounds. Doesn't sound like a lot now, but back then it was a mind boggling amount of money. I was like I cannot believe it. But the only way we could get our hands on that cash was, if it was, if we incorporated the business and you're not allowed to be a director of a business as well as a consultant mckinsey it could be a massive conflict of interest.
Chris Kong:So I emailed mckinsey and said, look, I really want to do this like. Is there any way we can delay joining for a year? And they said sure, which I was extremely grateful for. So we pushed back the start date to October 2019. But in that year, managed to from it started off with Triando and myself. You know, the first thing I did was call Ellen right and say hey, ellen like.
Chris Kong:I know you're in this incredible marketing job, but we need a marketer because neither of us have anything know anything about. You know about consumer Right, can you? Can you join and help us develop the brand and lead on that, and she did, which is amazing. The brand and lead on that, and she did, which is amazing. And fabio, who's our fourth co-founder he, he comes from a product food product development background.
Chris Kong:So, though, gianno knew everything there was to know about tempeh fermentation and I was, I don't know. I don't know what I was. To be honest, I'm probably a jack of all trades. I could talk all right, I could sell the vision. At least, between us and Ellen, no one had any experience of actually taking a food product from laptop to shelf top in a retailer. But, yeah, we established a founding team, we raised our first round of funding from friends and family, and so, by the time October 2019 rolled by, there was just no way. There was just no way to join that. I could have just left it and joined McKinsey, but I think you know in.
Chris Kong:You know if I was also be just completely frank, and to answer your question about high managed risk, it was just not something I thought about, and I think that's the benefit of starting a business when you're quite young, right, I was 22, 23 at the time. I didn't have any dependents, and I think that's a really fortunate position to be in and one that I'm greatly appreciative of. Right, that I don't take for granted, and not everyone has that opportunity to sort of just jump in to a crazy venture at such a young age. But I wasn't shackled down by a mortgage or anything like that, so I felt like that also massively de-risked it, and at the end of the day, I also thought what's the worst that can happen? Right, the worst that can happen is that I spent a few years having an amazing journey, learning loads, doing what I love, and there'll always be an opportunity to go back and, you know, join McKinsey if I wanted to that's amazing.
Jay Greenwood:And one thing I wanted to get into there was you mentioned sort of like the founding team and one thing that really stood out was what an incredible array of like talented people. So they all had you sort of mentioned marketing people, had the marketing jobs. So how did you convince these people like, right, don't do these really successful careers you've worked hard to get into, come join us and join the startup world? And then also, when you looked at sort of the skill gap, like did you, were you just self-aware enough to realize that you know we needed these people in to fill the gaps that we couldn't quite fill ourselves?
Chris Kong:yeah, definitely. I mean I think it all comes down to the mission and the vision of the business like it needs to be, of the business Like it needs to be, compelling right and from the get-go. The mission of the business has never been about oh, we're going to make a billion bucks, right, and we're going to exit Coca-Cola and we're going to become filthy rich. That was never, for us, the vision and the mission of the business. It was to genuinely have a positive impact and I think it's becoming increasingly more powerful as a tool. But I think it's still severely under leveraged in that these days, really high, you know, really ambitious individuals are looking to have an impact. They're looking to do something good for the planet. They want to wake up knowing that they're making the world a better place and not just lining up their pockets. If they can do both at the same time, fantastic right. But I think many people are intrinsically motivated to make the world a better place. So I think for us, by making sure that the business was grounded in the mission and vision of making the world a better place, for us, the vision of the business is to make eating whole food plant-based the default, not the alternative, right, um, and but the why?
Chris Kong:I think, yeah, I think between us two perhaps it's quite clear. But the reasons why is because you know the animal agriculture industry represents. It's probably the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet, more so than any other industry. It's about 15% of global greenhouse gases come from animal agriculture, but beyond that, it also consumes 87% of global farmland. It's hard to think about what 87% of farmland looks like, but it's equivalent to the land masses of the US, canada, australia and China all combined, and all of that land is used to either create animal feed to feed animals or to rear animals themselves. Feed to feed animals or to rear animals themselves.
Chris Kong:And that's just land use, not to mention water not to mention all the waste that comes from rearing all these animals like, not to mention the diseases like COVID, for example, like the implications are tremendous and that's just the environment. You know. We haven't even talked about the impact on human health.
Chris Kong:The fact that you know the fact of the matter is the overconsumption of animal protein or animal products is the leading causes of chronic health disorders like diabetes and stroke and heart disease, and together they're killing more people than than you know, than anything else on the planet, these days, than than you know, than anything else on the planet these days.
Chris Kong:So, yeah, for us the mission has always been how can we make eating all natural, whole foods, plant-based protein, which, though there's so much debate going on these days about what diet is best, what foods, what foods you should eat, etc. It's pretty much unanimously, you know, agreed by food scientists. Then all natural, plant-based diet is solid, like you cannot go wrong with that, so long as, of course, your needs are met, your micronutrients, your macros are all met like you cannot go wrong with that diet. Um, so for us, that has always been the mission and the vision, and I think, yeah, by communicating that you will find people that align with those values, with that vision of the world, and that's how you convince them to join incredible answer.
Jay Greenwood:Now I want to dig in now to the first product. And how did you go about making it when? When did you? Do you remember your sort of first sale? So was it you guys creating this just in your kitchen, or was it to a manufacturer? How did you go about making it? And then, when did you sell it?
Chris Kong:yeah, I mean the. The amazing thing about tempeh is that it's been around for hundreds of years, so we're not talking about super complex machinery in order to make it right. It's a fermentation process, so it's no more difficult really than making bread right or beer at home. Technology is just as old, right? So when we first started, we would make tempeh in our kitchens, right. We'd watch YouTube videos, make it in our kitchens and use that to test. Then we got a little incubator which allowed us to, you know, to make a slightly, slightly bigger batches.
Chris Kong:But I think when we got, when we started, we knew what product we wanted to develop, when we had nailed the recipe and you know, like with any fermentation or any fermented food product, how you ferment it, what you ferment, what microorganisms you use to drive the fermentation right. All of these things have a tremendous impact on the taste, the texture and the nutritional value of the end product. So we did a lot of trial and error, invested a lot of time into developing the IP around creating better nature tempeh, not just any tempeh, but really what we thought was the highest quality tempeh out there, tempeh that can truly rival chicken as that go-to source of protein on people's plates, Something that had to cook just like chicken, had to crisp in just like chicken but also deliver the nutritional content of chicken. So we spent a lot of time doing that, when we got ready, when we thought where we nailed the recipe, like, I think this is where many food brands differ. Some food brands decide to take production in-house. They scale up and they grow and scale up, scale up, scale up.
Chris Kong:But we took the opposite approach. We knew that in order for us to have the impact that we wanted to have in the timeframe that we wanted to have it, we had to find a partner right on pretty much day, one that would take a bet on us, that already had all the kit, that already had the capacity to produce it en masse. So that's what we did, and it wasn't easy to convince a you know, a manufacturing partner to retool and reskill and learn how to make the tempeh exactly to the way we wanted it. But we managed to find an amazing partner through a lot of trial and error and got our first products produced by them, and we sold it in January on the 1st of January 2020, through our website. Yeah, we first started off D2C. We had a distributor as well, called Essential essential. I believe they're based in bristol, selling into independence, but that was our first sort of sale, like on the 1st of january 2020 amazing.
Jay Greenwood:What a day as well to have that one. And I sort of got the sense from your story and you sort of alluded to as well, like the goal was always, like you know, to get in every big like national retailers, get across the whole country. So did you sort of reverse engineer like the path that you needed to take to get from sort of starting this to get to there? How did you approach basically one day getting well, essentially getting to where you are now, of being in these national retailers?
Chris Kong:yeah, I wish I can tell you that I had this crystal clear plan and I thought, okay, in year you know five we're going to be here, so in year four we need to be here. Like, unfortunately, that's that's not how it worked for us and I think in retrospect it would have been really helpful to have that plan. And we did have a loose plan and we knew that we wanted to get into the major retailers, um, but I think you know, but, but given that we, like I, had no experience in food and beverage, uh, before best nature, um, I think we were a little bit naive. We thought that, okay, if we had a fantastic product, a good brand, why wouldn't a major retailer take us now, right? Um, so from day one, we were pitching to the major retailers and we didn't really have a super concrete plan of getting there, but what we knew we needed to do was to build traction right, get the early adopters on board, get loads and loads of feedback from our early consumers and use that feedback to continuously iterate on our brand and on our product, right? So, as we were also and in fact you know, I, I we had our first meeting with tesco.
Chris Kong:I think it was like september 2019, so this was like even before we launched the brand uh, I don't know how like, well, well, I know how we got that meeting. It was super, super lucky. We were speaking to an investor and he just so happened to know Derek Sarno, who at that time, was the head of plant-based innovation at Tesco, and he just put us in touch and we got a meeting. But we had no idea how to prepare for it. We didn't have a trade plan together, we didn't have any investment to go behind any sort of launch. So, yeah, nothing, nothing came from that meeting. But as, yeah, as we were speaking to the major retailers, we were working on the independence, we were working with distributors, we were, we had our e-commerce channel, which proved really helpful during COVID to have that already set up prior, and COVID as well so just completely destroyed our go-to-market plans in retail and food service. But we just kept on trudging along and continuously learning from our customers, continuously getting feedback on how we can improve the brand, how we can improve the product, and continuously implementing that. So what that culminated in was actually a really big rebrand that we underwent in the latter half of 2021, which then launched in the beginning of 2022. And that truly just catalyzed so much of our growth.
Chris Kong:Since then, we I think yeah, in early 2022, we got our Selfridges listing. A year later, we launched into Raver, which is a major retailer in Germany. A few months after that, we launched into Tesco. And, yeah, once we unlocked Tes, it was, it was mayhem. It was.
Chris Kong:A few months after that we secured a um like we had our first of a series of wiggigs. So it's sort of these one week promotions where we would sort of go into every single store with little, so every single little store for a week, and so every single Lidl store for a week, and yeah, we sell like 50,000 units in a week. So we had that started that off in July. We then launched into Asda in the beginning of 2024. We then launched into Ocado in July 2024. And in every single one of those retailers we've either extended our contracts or increased our distribution and or secured more SKU facings, more SKU listings. So, yeah, I think it took a long time to get there. It was a lot of testing and learning, a lot of sort of just iteration, but I think once you've nailed the product and once you've nailed the brand, you can roll out extremely quickly, especially if there's, of course, especially if there's a real consumer interest and demand for your products.
Jay Greenwood:Two seconds. My dog's just getting picked up by the dog walker right now, so he's barking, so just give me two seconds while he goes.
Chris Kong:Okay, no worries.
Jay Greenwood:Yeah, he's got an app. Now you mentioned that you hadn't heard of Tempe before when you first came on your radar. Were there any significant challenges trying to launch this product, to educate people, to get them to understand this product in the UK, and how did you face it and then sort of overcome it?
Chris Kong:Absolutely. I mean, I wouldn't say we've overcome it. You know it's our biggest and greatest challenge is how do we educate consumers about all the incredible benefits of tempeh? And I think initially, when we first launched, given all the hype around meat alternatives you know, beyond meat this, et cetera we thought, oh, you know what with tempeh we can pretend? Well, what we can say is that we are an all natural meat alternative that just so happens to be made out of tempeh. So that's what we did. You know, we created things like tempeh ribs of tempeh. So that's what we did. You know, we created things like tempeh ribs and tempeh strips and we tried to be that all-natural meat alternative.
Chris Kong:But I think the challenge with that was that we were not meeting consumers expectations for meat alternatives because, frankly speaking, tempeh does not taste like meat and it does not cook exactly, you know, like most meats it's not. You know, if you wanted an indulgent, you know meat product like a steak, you're not going to recreate that with tempeh. So I think in the early days the learning was that we had to know what we were and we had to also know what we weren't. And what we knew was that we were an all natural, plant based protein that was supercharged with gut health benefits and, as a result, you know, though we may not be, and what we also what we understood is that we're also not the most indulgent and the most meat-like product on the market and by appreciating that, we can also appreciate who are the consumers that are going to be most interested in this. We are not for the carnivore who's looking for a little bit of novelty once a year right. If you're looking for that bit of novelty, go for a Beyond Meat burger a year right. If you're looking for that bit of novelty like, go for a Beyond Meat burger right. It's really good, right, but it's also really indulgent. It's not something you'd eat every day.
Chris Kong:Our type of product was definitely for someone who's health conscious, someone who's looking to reduce their meat consumption right, but someone who wants a protein that can be used as a staple in all sorts of different everyday dishes not the fancy sort of Valentine's Day meal, but the everyday sort of dish consumer. But understanding what we were and what we weren't, we underwent this, this big rebrand, and that has helped us, you know, just made the the effort of educating consumers much more easily, much, much easier, right, I think it's um, you need to know, you need to. You need to understand what your call messages are because of a product like tempeh. You can say so many things, but you need to understand exactly what it is that your customers are most interested in, who your customers are really, and how do you reach them. So what that means today is that we are, for those health-conscious consumers looking to reduce their consumption, their meat consumption, with a product that can slot into every single everyday dishes similar to chicken breast, right?
Chris Kong:So, and as a result, a lot of our messaging is around comparing our tempeh to chicken, right, because chicken is an amazing, you know well, it's amazingly similar to tempeh in that, unless it's a roast chicken or a fried chicken, you're not gonna you know, you're not gonna like dream about your chicken. It's typically this product that has just ticks a box. It's like oh, I want a salad, what protein should I go for? Oh, yeah, I'll just bang some chicken in.
Chris Kong:It doesn't really, you know, it doesn't even have that much flavor in itself. It only serves as a flavor carrier, right, and that's very similar to tempeh and that you need to sort of, it doesn't? It doesn't have flavor in itself but absorbs flavors really, really well. So, and it cooks the exact same way as chicken does and fulfills that need for protein in the same way the chicken does, but it's even better given that it's supercharged with gut health benefits and fiber and all that amazing stuff. So we narrowed that on that messaging and by doing so it's made it really easy to convince or to communicate the benefits to consumers.
Jay Greenwood:Now I've just got a few final questions. I want to finish on One is you mentioned sort of your athletic sort of background. You've got sort of boxing and rowing which were incredibly intense sort of training schedules, and then you also got running now, which you know you're an avid runner. What has kind of that sort of background and sort of boxing and running and rowing taught you that you can apply to your life in business now?
Chris Kong:now, great question. Um, like, my sporting endeavors have always gone hand in hand with either my academic performance at school and now in my sort of performance in business. Um, it, what it's taught me is the need for discipline. Like, you need discipline in order to be good at anything right. And like, even today, like, though I'm a big runner I run two to three marathons a year I don't wake up bounding with energy, being like, oh yeah, I can't wait for my run. No, like, when the alarm goes off, uh, whenever it is 6, 30, 6, 45, there's a huge like. I'm never, ever, tempted, you know, I'd never sort of just jump out of bed like. I'm always like, oh, really, like, can I sort this off? Like you know, but I still do it because I know that I'll feel so much better for it after.
Chris Kong:So I think it's that that doing these sports has ingrained, you know, a really, yeah, very strong sense of discipline, right? Um, as well as structure, right to my life. I feel like if I didn't have these sports, I'd spend my downtime scrolling on Instagram, right? Or TikTok, or just wasting that time, you know, when I could otherwise be looking after myself. And you know, by doing these amazing sports and having these amazing experiences. But I think the other thing it's been super helpful for me for is finding that balance right.
Chris Kong:I think you know, running a business is not easy like I wouldn't recommend it to to most people, right? Um, it's extremely hard, it's extremely intense and, as a result, like you need a bit of a vent, really, in order to get that energy out right or at least find an avenue to. That is not your work to explore, else your whole life would just be completely dominated by a work, and for me that's always been sport, right. So, and because in work as well, there are only so many things you can control right, and most of the things, unfortunately, for most things you can't control right. Whereas with my sport I can control what time I get up in the morning right, I can control whether or not I go for that run right, I can control, um, how intense I take my training and all these things. Having these controllables makes me feel like I've got a little bit more control over my life, which helps me, yeah, just feel more balanced, I guess.
Jay Greenwood:That's amazing. I think that's a perfect place to wrap up this podcast and, yeah, everyone out there should definitely try Better Nature 100%. And also, one thing that's great is the recipes you have on your website. There's some great points and stuff, so people are curious. Go and try, because it is brilliant. So, yeah, I want to thank you so much for making the time to come on the podcast and share the journey, because it is a truly brilliant story, so I really appreciate it thank you so much for having me.
Jay Greenwood:Jay really appreciate it as always, guys, thank you so much for listening, really appreciate the support and if you guys like it and you're enjoying what you're listening to, please like and subscribe and write a review. We really appreciate it. Um, again, we'll be back doing this weekly and, yeah, if you want to know more about starting a food business, head to wwwjgreenwoodcom. But, guys, as always, thank you and be great.