Recipe for Greatness
Recipe for Greatness
From Market Stall to Shelf: How Pip Organic Revolutionised Clean Label Children's Food
What does it take to build a thriving food brand that refuses to compromise on values? Karen and Patrick O'Flaherty, founders of Pip Organic, reveal the remarkable journey that transformed their humble market stall selling fresh juices into one of the UK's most trusted organic food and drink brands.
The husband-and-wife team share how their backgrounds in marketing and finance, combined with Patrick's family history in organic farming, created the perfect foundation for their business. Their adventure began at Borough Market in London, where queues quickly formed for their fresh organic juices. When customers started bringing bottles to fill for home consumption, they recognized a retail opportunity that would define their future.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as they discuss a pivotal moment in their business journey – purchasing a bottling line at auction without fully consulting each other, a decision that nearly caused "a divorce in the car" but ultimately proved transformative for their production capabilities. This candid glimpse into their partnership reveals how entrepreneurial impulses sometimes clash with practical considerations.
Perhaps most compelling is how parenthood reshaped their business direction. When Karen and Patrick couldn't find clean-label products for their own children, they identified a crucial market gap: while the baby food category was predominantly organic, options disappeared once children outgrew the toddler stage. This insight led to their mission of creating products that pass a simple but powerful test: "Would we give this to our kids with a smile?"
Their commitment to quality comes with constraints – developing products takes longer, costs more, and sometimes means saying no to certain categories. Yet this unwavering approach has built extraordinary consumer trust. As they've scaled to over 10,000 distribution points across the UK without external investment, the O'Flahertys prove that patience in business can yield remarkable results.
What lessons might your business gain from their "you only get out what you put in" philosophy? Listen now to discover how authentic values and consumer-first thinking can create sustainable competitive advantage in even the most challenging markets.
Three, two, one zero and liftoff, liftoff, liftoff.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Recipe for Greatness podcast. I'm your host, joe Greenwood, and in this podcast we're going to see the founders behind some of the best food and drink brands in the UK to tease out the knowledge and skills that they've used to grow their business. Today I'm joined by Karen and Patrick O'Flaherty, the husband and wife team behind Pip Organic. They started out pressing juices at the market stall in London and over the last two decades have quietly been one of the UK's leading organic food and drink brands. With background in branding and passion for organic farming, they've grown Pip independently, balancing business, family and a clear set of values from day one. Patrick and Karen, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much, Jay. It's great to be here.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Jay. Thanks for having us. Super excited to be here.
Speaker 2:So I want to take us back to the early days. I think, patrick, your background is in finance, karen, you're working in marketing. And, karen, I'm curious for you when did you start to think about business outside of just a working career, and how did that conversation between evolve between you and Patrick, where maybe you started thinking, oh, maybe we could actually do a business?
Speaker 1:yeah, well, it's a great question. I think it's something that evolved over a period of time, with both of us going back to my roots in marketing. I actually worked for a global marketing agency and on many occasions would work on kind of big projects and think, wow, I wish I could do this, I wish I could have my own brand. And I worked on kind of various different projects and types of brands, from working with the NHS right through to to working on health, health brands and and other big FMCG brands. So I kind of had this kind of itch that I wanted to scratch to own my own brand.
Speaker 1:And after I met Patrick, we met in London and we actually went travelling together and while we were travelling this kind of idea of a healthy juice snacking brand started to appear with both of us. So we were looking at trends in other markets, looking at all the healthy kind of trends that are happening in particular in Australia, so in juice bars and all of the exotic fruits, and we came up with the idea that actually, you know, this was a bit of an untapped market in the UK. So I suppose for me it was a little bit of well, could I have my own brand, could I create something from scratch? And I think from Patrick's perspective I'll let him speak about that, obviously but I think it was, you know, this feeling of you know, creating something that we could own together as well. So when we came back to London, that's when we both kind of readjusted how we were working and started to develop our idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and also, I think, coming from South Africa and also the background that I was fortunate to have on quite a lot of agriculture in my background, both grandparents were farmers.
Speaker 3:My father had a farm, so I had a lot of time in nature and it was trying to reconnect back into nature and I think that's where the principles around organic and organic farming and organic processing were very close to, I suppose, my upbringing and understanding it. My grandmother actually was probably one of the first um organic farmers in south africa. She, she followed lady belfort's book and she, she had this amazing product. The end product was she had a poultry farm and it was just incredible. So you know, seeing that firsthand and experience it firsthand was then, you know, when we were aligning what, what we had chatted about on our travels. It was always going to be an organic offer that we wanted to pursue and we then found the challenges around that, but it was certainly something we set our stall on, literally from organic from the borough market side and then obviously driving that on to a retail brand as well.
Speaker 2:Great and incredible and I'm curious with that. Um, you know, having an idea for a business is one thing, but I guess what? What was the moment where I guess patrick you looked at like karen thought right, let's do this. Or maybe karen you looks patrick and said let's do this was there a moment you remember thinking, right, we should actually give this a go? And I guess what was the first steps that you went through? Maybe, patrick, if you go for it, where you thought, right, let's just create something, how do you guys approach actually getting this launched?
Speaker 3:I think it was about a creation, you know, sort of when we set up the. You know, fortunately now for people that are looking to start up there, there are a lot of platforms that you can look to to help support you. I think when we set up our business, there weren't quite those platforms out there, and organic was a difficult area to move into. We could see growth coming in, but a lot of the let's say, the environments that you could theoretically take a concept and hopefully develop it, they weren't there. And so even though the, the platform, was there for maybe a non-organic offer, there wasn't. It wasn't there for organic.
Speaker 3:And we, as we looked in more and more into the organic process, into the organic um sort of philosophy of farming, we we believed it more and more, um, and so we wanted to pursue that. But you know what, where was the light bulb moment on that? I think it was literally saying, okay, we're going to go out there and we're going to do it. So it was. It was creating something. It was creating something tangible.
Speaker 3:We'd obviously been doing lots of juicing and and and selling products at Borough Market, but it was then hard to migrate that into a retail proposition that could go onto a shelf, and I think that was you know then. Fortunately, karen had this branding background so we could look at it from a marketing perspective, what the product would look like. We then were really focused on the consumer, on what the consumer wanted, and then we developed something and basically we just had to go out and do it and it was looking at how we were doing. We found some great partners along the way and we've had some of those partners for ages now. So we've been very fortunate to keep those relationships and grow those relationships as we've grown.
Speaker 1:I think in those early stages, I think a strength and weakness that we both had was naivety as well in the fact that we couldn't find the types of products that we wanted on the shelves.
Speaker 1:So, you know, going back to the drawing board and trying to do things and actually realising that at that stage of our lives, we just took a leap and basically decided that we don't do it now, we will never do it or we might put it off, said, finding those partners that gave us a break, that allowed us to, you know, create something with them, that enabled us to be different on the market as well, um, and in doing that, obviously we had lots of ups and downs, but I think the naivety of it made us ask questions and um allowed us to, to challenge things that perhaps, if we'd be more experienced in the food industry at that stage, we might not have done. But I think there's one thing, as Patrick said, creating a brand is completely different than running it as a food and beverage business, and there's a lot to learn in doing that. So we very much kind of spent a lot of time growing the business organically, learning, listening to customers, listening to consumers, getting feedback, doing samplings every minute of the day.
Speaker 2:Um, to get that feedback was really, really important in those early stages and always having kind of open ears and I want to go back as well, right to the very, very start, where it was like a market stall in borough and I originally think the concept was juices, right, that was like the main thing that you guys would focus on. So I'm curious, what was that first weekend like, where you decided, right, we're gonna open up the store, how does it go? Because I I'm, you know, there was just you guys right, there's no fancy huge budget to do all of this. This is just right. Let's just take it there, do a store how it goes, and what were the signals and feedback you guys got from the customers when you were at that store?
Speaker 3:so I think, you know, just take me one step back from that. As you know, we were looking. You know, as karen mentioned, we were traveling. We noticed loads of juice bars and, uh, in the states and in australia, um, and, and we thought actually this concept could really work. In in the uk, a lot of environments, you know, we were very coffee heavy and at that time there, you know, there was a, there was a massive penetration of coffee brands coming in.
Speaker 3:It was like why couldn't we create a, a juice bar concept? So, yeah, we went into this, as, as karen said, naively. We went into it slight, with slight ignorance in terms of exactly everything that we needed. We worked with a nutritionist to come up with three particular flavors and blends and we then decided, actually, this is our start, this is what we're going to do, and basically we then made the juices and we did sampling and it was as you know. It sounds as simple as that.
Speaker 3:There was obviously a lot on the back end of making sure that we had the organic product, that we could continuously, you know, get that product as well.
Speaker 3:So, you know, if we created a blend of something, then maybe next week would we still have that same quality. So that was about working with the actual growers, but it was just literally going for it. You know, sort of pitching up, doing sampling um, but it was just literally going for it. You know, sort of pitching up, doing sampling um, and then just, you know, we felt we found that the week, the next week, there were the same people coming back that went to the market and then we found that they would come back and then we found that there was a queue and then I think I think the queue is interesting because before we started at borough market we used to walk through borough market and see the stalls that have the queues yeah and you go okay, they're doing something really well, or or they're not serving fast enough, but mostly really well, and I think when we started to have queues, that was a really great feeling.
Speaker 1:Um, I think also when we realized that we had something that we could um take from sampling into you, you know, something you could buy on a shelf, was really great. And I think one Saturday in particular, one Saturday morning, we had quite a few of our regular customers come back with larger bottles that they wanted us to fill for them. So we thought, okay, well, it isn't just something that they're drinking on the spot, it could be something that they want at home as well. So I think that was an interesting intern.
Speaker 3:We ran out quite quickly then, but yeah and I think very quickly that you know that that really channeled our, our energy into creating the retail brand and moving away from, uh, from an out of home proposition of actually saying, yeah, we can take this into something else.
Speaker 3:And yeah, that was. But then with that came another whole set of actually hang on a second how do we do this? And it was again going into the unknown, slightly blindly, but again, I suppose that created resilience from our side and it made us persevere through times that probably you wouldn't expect people to do and and you wouldn't do it now, because there are those platforms fortunate for anyone starting up that they can go and leverage off, and I think they're great mentor groups. Now as well, there's, there's there's some real fantastic initiatives out there that people can can launch a business. Um, maybe not as you know, the ease will never be there but it will give you the tools to be able to launch. But we went in there and I think it was just getting this feedback from our customers that really gave us the drive and the energy to pursue it down a different route as well and creating a retail brand.
Speaker 2:And Karen, one thing I want to ask about you is that you went to your employer and actually told them about the concept. I think for most people they think, oh, I've got to keep stuff a secret, I can't tell anyone. But you actually approached them and told them about it and you managed to negotiate a sort of combination of being able to, I guess, focus on work but then also focus on business. How did you approach that conversation and, I guess, how feel, I guess you could actually say what you wanted to say and maybe get the outcome that you wanted as well I think um, I had.
Speaker 1:I was really fortunate that I had a great mentor within the business, um, and I was with that business from a startup and working with them for several years, and they knew that I was really passionate about starting my own brand and helped me as well along the way doing that, which was brilliant. And I think that because I wasn't moving to a competitor and I went with solutions to them to say, listen, if I can do this, I can still do this work for you. And I kept a very open dialogue with them. I mean, at the start I think I moved down to three days a week, then two days a week, then one day a week, then two days a month. So it was something that I think everybody would see me there and say, gosh, you've been here for such a long time, but it was. It was a really interesting time for me also kept my finger in the fmcg world as well to kind of understand things that might have been happening outside of what patrick and I were doing. But I think for for them, it gave them the level of experience that I was offering them, but, you know, in a more compact way and you know I've still got great relationships with them all now, which is, you know, which is wonderful.
Speaker 1:But I think, you know, I was really fortunate. I had a mentor that gave me a break, that allowed me to do that, that then allowed us to start a business without getting um investment in the business as well, because we had a source of income coming in so that we could, you know, continue following what we wanted to do, um, and I think you know, going into those conversations, I think if anybody else is is doing that and they want to take that leap, I'd be really honest about it, because if you're trying to do a lot of the aspects of starting up a business outside of work or in the evenings, it can be, I think, quite stressful, quite taxing. I think if you're in the position to just have the conversation, it's um, you know, it's a, it's a great thing to do and and you'd be surprised, actually, how people respect that you do have other passions and desires that you want to pursue.
Speaker 2:And I think, patrick, you were touching on at some point some of the challenges you faced with, sort of growing, sort of maybe the operational side of the business. So I'm right in thinking that you were looking at sort of co-packers and they just weren't quite meeting your standards. So most people think, oh, maybe we've got to do something else. But instead you both thought, right, let's buy our own bustling line. So that's a huge decision. What was the thought process? Was there any framework that you approached to make that decision? And I guess, were there any moments where you were like, is this the right thing we're doing? What are we doing?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it was always a divorce on the car after that, which meant that when we weren't married, it couldn't happen. But I'll tell you what. Yeah, listen, it was probably not the smartest decision, but it ended up being. At the time it didn't seem, but it ended up being a really smart decision that we did do that. Why did we do it? Because no one wanted to pack an organic product.
Speaker 3:We had found amazing partners to do the startup part, and we're forever thankful and grateful and indebted to those partners that. That got us sort of to a, to a level. But then to take it on to the next level, um, we needed to do something. So, you know, we looked at setting up our own production, our entire own operations, um, and with that, we needed a, we needed a bottling line, and one came up and it was on auction, so it, we had to move quickly on it, and we did, and then, and then we didn't have any way to put it. So, um, we then found a partner to to put it somewhere, and they were amazing again and and we then had a fantastic partnership. So there was a massive silver lining in that cloud, but I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1:There was a cloud over our house for a little while um, so, jay, when, when um patrick said he had to move quickly on the bottling line. So I got a phone call before a meeting to say, um, I'm going to an auction to look at a bottling line. It's like, okay, great, you know, make sure it packs everything that we yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. I came out of the meeting to a message that we bought the bottling line because it was such a great deal and um and was, but in hindsight it was a great thing to do, but yeah, there was a little tumbleweed moment for us, I think.
Speaker 3:There wasn't a little tumbleweed, but it's those.
Speaker 3:I think again, it's the risk reward of starting a business and sometimes you have to make these impulse decisions and sometimes they go wrong and sometimes we, you know, we felt that this was the wrong decision for a little while and then suddenly it became right because it gave us an opportunity, a little bit down the line, that we had this asset and we could then work in a partnership with somebody, and that gave us the ability to take the business to the next level, which was amazing, which really started us on our journey of understanding as well, and I suppose the knowledge that we gained especially, you know, as we mentioned, not coming from a food and drink background of then understanding exactly what goes into making a product on a larger scale than, let's say, from a market store and taking it to that next level.
Speaker 3:It really gave us that insight and it stood us an incredible stead over the years of the ability to go into maybe a partner now and look at it and maybe just give some advice into something that maybe we had done to shift the production in a certain way. And that's, yeah, it's been amazing, but sure not to any wise, because it's an interesting time.
Speaker 1:It took us from like a three-day shelf life to a 12-day shelf life in quite a short space of time. So that was great. So it meant that we could then, you know, go into retail, you know, with a lot more surety of shelf life, which was which was great. But I think, going back to patrick's points about you know the support that's, that's um available now for people starting up. In the past, a lot of contract packers, for instance, didn't want to deal with startups. They didn't want to deal, you know, they didn't want um to have that challenger mentality within the factories because it was, you know, they didn't want um to have that challenger mentality within the factories because it was, you know, they were larger scale and I think that a lot of that's changed now.
Speaker 2:So, um, you know, there's a lot more ability, I think, to be more innovative in environments and during that time as well, sort of the sort of the juices are now sort of changing, maybe to be more geared towards children, sort of pip organic starts to form. What was that insight? We started to see the opportunity in that space and how do you guys just think, was it a natural decision to just go right, we need to concentrate on this market now. This is where we're going to drive the business forward, and I guess how formative it was you having a family during this period as well I think it's charlotte and william. How how much do they inform sort of like that choice to take the direction that way?
Speaker 1:definitely I mean the, the.
Speaker 1:I think a pivotal point for us was was having kids and um, the, you know the.
Speaker 1:The products that we were producing before were very much kind of geared towards us, those people in our, in our time, in our time of lives.
Speaker 1:At that point, when we had kids and we started to really look at the labels much more, we recognized that there was this gap for very clean label products for children that were organic, that were fun, that were healthy, engaging, um, and when we had charlotte, I think it for us, it for us it was a really big turning point to recognize that actually the ability to be able to create products that very much were kind of the champion in the family was really important.
Speaker 1:And that's why our kind of focus and our mission then was very much focused around making products that make it easier for parents to say yes. So, you know, building a brand that has that inherent trust, not just because it's organic but because the ingredients that are within the product as well are clean label, you know, kitchen ingredients, not things that are difficult to you know to read or understand what they are, and very much that became the kind of dna for for the brand and our children, charlotte, and will very much kind of led that um, from the perspective of us wanting to produce products that we'd be pleased to give to our kids, that you know, the other parents must be in that same situation as well.
Speaker 3:And I think also at that point there was the baby food market in the UK specifically had migrated to organic in an extreme way. I think at one point it was over 80% of all baby food in the UK that was sold in retail was organic. So there was this massive nurturing of young people in our world on organic and then sort of when it got to 2.3, it sort of fell away down to you know 1, 2% of the market. So this massive drop off and we you know we were living that with our children and actually that really inspired us to to focus on that area, to say actually why can't we keep um this, this wonderful nurturing nature, into into products that that can then take them on into into um adulthood?
Speaker 3:And that's what really we focus on in terms of you know where pimp and obviously where it comes from. If you've got a pimp or a seed and you plant it and you nurture it properly, it's going to grow into something great. Um, if you've got a pit or a seed and you plant it and you nurture it properly, it's going to grow into something great. If you don't look after it, unfortunately it'll wither. And what we really focused on was actually, how do we nurture these young people, especially in the UK, and help them grow? And that's where the brand came out of.
Speaker 2:And one thing I've heard you guys speak about is um. Well, I guess the test is would we give this to our own kids with a smile? So I guess how important is that for you guys to focus um on that sort of quality? And I guess, does it create any constraints for sort of building out new product ranges or building products when you have that such high standard of actually what the product has to achieve?
Speaker 1:I think definitely. I mean, um, I'll let patrick answer that in a moment but yeah, the things. So we have a range of frozen products, like ice lollies which, um, when charlotte was about three, um, my mother and I were at a leisure park and, um, and we couldn't well, she couldn't find, um, an ice lolly in the freezer that didn't have colorings, additives, stabilizers or sugar added into the product. Um, and we make really they sound very simple, but our frozen products are literally just organic fruit and veg, which sounds very simple but actually really difficult to make, and they're obviously a lot more expensive to make because they contain only 100% organic fruit.
Speaker 1:So, yes, some of the categories that we'd like to work in, we may not be able to work in, because if we want the product to be completely clean label, we can't replicate those products that are positively nutritious, that the kids love and that are fun as well, without making them too sweet as well, with ice lollies in particular. So, yes, there are some products that, because we're organic, we would never be able to include certain ingredients within it, because there's very high standards of what you're allowed and what you're allowed and what you're not allowed to put within an organic product, but I think you know, within the ranges that we're developing and the restrictions for us are how do we keep it as clean as possible? How do we make sure that it's, that it's good and fun, um, but also it's organically certified?
Speaker 3:and I think we you know, we went into this with never any compromise. So whatever we did, we weren't going to compromise on it. And it actually took us an age to launch an organic orange juice that we were proud of. But when we did, we were certainly proud of it and it's won great taste awards. But what we were finding is that we just couldn't achieve that quality um to start with. So if we couldn't find something, we weren't going to launch it um.
Speaker 3:But certainly, you know, the challenge of being organic, 100 organic the challenge of finding quality, the challenge of something that we would be over proud of, sometimes meant that the simplest things took the longest, and I know when we were looking at our frozen range, it took such a long time because, effectively, what we were seeing is we were seeing um, the, the, the partners or the packers saying actually, why on earth are you putting so, so much cost into a product? You could be using water, flavorings and sugar, which everybody else does, and that's the difference. And unfortunately, as Karen mentioned, sometimes it means that there is a premium on it. But what we try to do in terms of democratizing organic is make sure that there are affordable products that we put onto the market. Yes, they might be on the top end, but we strive to be best and we're coming with a product with incredible values but coming at be best and we're coming, you know, with a product with incredible values becoming a great value. And I think parents see that. And certainly what we were seeing is coming out of the baby food market into the children's market. People, you know, are continuously looking for that value.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, sometimes these simple things, I think, are snack range as well. I mean, it is such a simple product but it took us us, I mean so long to get that. First of all, to make sure we have the right supply, make sure that we we know we could work together with the partner, make sure that we could get the right pricing into the marketplace as well. So you know what size it was going to be, um, and it's a very, very simple product, but it did take an age. Yeah, and sometimes it's very frustrating and people can't understand, like, why is it taking such a long time, even from a sales perspective? You know, trying to get it to market sometimes it is frustrating, but you know, I think we as a business will not compromise it three, even four categories. Now that gives us that breadth that Karen is talking about and that scope to drive I suppose an agenda, post-toddler and baby that you can feed your kids with healthy products as well that are fun, which they will enjoy, and you will enjoy giving them that.
Speaker 2:You touched on some constraints there about sort of like the organic and how it constrains it but may lead to a better product. And I guess some people may view a constraint as like being, um, sort of a family-run business where you're a husband and wife and then you've got a family to run as well. But what I love work with my research here is how you sort of turn that those things into a superpower. And I guess one, one question I have is you you get a lot, I guess, from having children about what products to go for. How do you balance the insight from the children are giving you but then also taking sort of like CEO, business leader and sort of driving what choices to take forward? How do you balance that?
Speaker 1:I think there's a couple of things there.
Speaker 1:One area that we do quite a lot of work on and I don't know if we've introduced this to you previously has something called the Pit Parent Panel, which is a range of 250 families across the UK. Wow, they're part of a community and it's a really important community to us. We undertake insight pieces with the Pit Parent, the parent panel, about every three or four months where we'll talk to them about the things that are important to them navigating being parents, basically, because something that Patrick and I are really keen to not do is just assume, just because we've got two kids and these are the things that we're facing, that that's a universal issue. So, to kind of continue listening to to the families, because our children have now got a little bit older, some of the things they're looking for slightly different, um, so the parent panel really kind of helps us um make sure that both you know we're understanding the challenges that they are considering, whether that's how they're eating out, how they're traveling, the types of food that they might be consuming, but also, um, looking at, you know, from from our perspective as well.
Speaker 1:Does it fit with? We have something called the pip line, not the pipeline, which is our mpd line. So we're constantly kind of sharing things with them. It might be a bit of packaging to say you know this, you know, is this something that you feel is part of the PIP family? Might it be a new category that we go into, or it could just be asking those questions.
Speaker 1:So our children constantly give us feedback, as you can imagine, and all of their friends and they are the leakiest buckets that you can imagine, because they tell all their friends about the MPD that we're doing um, which means that we're constantly asked at school gates you know when are you launching this thing?
Speaker 3:actually, I'll tell you the one thing very quickly we, we, on our fizz range, we, um, we have been we are launching a cherry, an apple cherry for them.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you now, because you've probably heard it at school gate already um, but this was told to all of our sons' mates and actually our daughters' mates, and we are quizzed on it the entire time, and what we've been trying to achieve coming back to the no compromise is really focused on a cherry taste, not an artificial cherry taste, and so we've had so many goes of actually getting this taste right that people are going hang on a second, that doesn't taste like an x cherry and we'll be going like, yeah, but that's, that's not what cherry tastes like. So so it's taken a little bit longer and it's gone all the way through to the parents. The parents are now asking us. It's like oh no, so we finally got a day that we're producing in a in weeks' time. So it's loud.
Speaker 3:We've gone through so many sort of formulations of it that we've now got something that we have very important. So sorry, yes, we have that. So part of this whole thing of having a very engaged family and very enthusiastic children is that sometimes things do get out maybe a little before they should so, but it then hurries us up which is good, and um, you guys started at like a market store.
Speaker 2:You're now like over 10 000 distribution points across the uk and this is all self-funded. So I guess, patrick, there been any challenges with, like scaling the business by being self-funded, and I guess, have you guys thought maybe we should have taken investment? Or are you proud, like glad, that you've just kept independent now?
Speaker 3:um, there are two routes, obviously, you know one is the, the game that we played, and the others is obviously getting investment early and scaling quickly. I think one of the things that we are super proud of is obviously, you know, maintaining 100% ownership of the business. But you know, sometimes that comes with limitations, that you might not be able to scale quickly in your early years. But I think what we you know what we set out and why we set up this business and what we continuously do, is we believe we're a patient business and through that patience, you're rewarding your consumer and your customer. So the customer being the operator and the consumer obviously being the person that consumes our product. And we've got to work with both of those. And I know we mentioned it earlier on in terms of us being very heavy in the out-of-home market as opposed to the retail market. I think going into the retail arena sometimes takes a lot of investment right from the outset. So therefore, I think, if we're going a different route and maybe taking investment, you could probably launch into those areas slightly easier. But, having said that, if your concept isn't right, you're going to burn that money very quickly and you will not have a business afterwards. So we took the approach of a patient longer game, also in terms of working with our growers and working with our entire supply chain, of making sure that sometimes you can't just turn on something to a certain level very quickly You've got to work together in a partnership and also working with real fruit and real produce. It's about actually what the harvests are giving you and what the crops are giving you and making sure that actually you have that scalability through that supply chain. So would we have done it differently? I'm sorry I've probably gone off topic at all, but should we have taken investment earlier? We're glad we didn't, but sometimes obviously it's really really hard Sort of.
Speaker 3:We've had very, very low days in terms of not having money and remortgaging and doing sort of the classic entrepreneurial route of how do we fund this business. As Karen mentioned earlier, unfortunately she still had a role in another business that we were getting some income from, but there were long periods of time where we didn't have massive sort of income coming from the business and it was hard and there were challenges and you know listings can take a long time. Everyone knows that in our world you don't just walk into a shop and they go yeah, we'll take yours and we're going to launch you into a thousand stores. It does take time. There are fantastic stories that things do happen really quickly and they will happen to every business.
Speaker 3:But it's about that hustle and, and I think you know very importantly, sometimes you've got to slow, think a little bit on times which obviously what we did a lot over covid um being an out-of-home business and then obviously having 90 percent of our our customers close their doors. There was another time of real challenge and put a lot of pressure financially on our business as well, but fortunately we had managed the business. Let's call it in an old school way that making sure that you had reserves and that we could get through those times. So you know that was through that financial management of the business as well.
Speaker 1:I think also because we went into the business not coming from the food industry as well. We wanted to prove ourselves and not let anyone down in those early days as well. So taking investment wasn't something that we ever considered. We just kept going and, as Patrick said, there were times where it was really really hard, um, but I think we've always tried to make decisions on how we spend our money, how we invest in the brand and the business in a way that's sustainable as well, because, looking back, there could have been ways that we had spent maybe money um that wouldn't have been right for the growth of the business at that stage.
Speaker 1:Um, but it um also, I think, starting in those earlier days, the investment opportunities were less than I think now. Um, and you know the, the ability to be able to prove a concept I think was more difficult to prove in the past when you know these were very new products to the market as well one final question which I have for you, which is, I guess, a final like philosophy thing about was I, I wrote a quote from you, I was.
Speaker 2:It was uh, you only get out what you put in. What does that mean to you too, and how do you apply the ethos to, I guess, your business and maybe other things?
Speaker 3:I think that comes down to to if we're talking about what our business is in terms of our um, you know the makeup of our business. It's it's it's a lot obviously an accent coming in in terms of the product. Um, as I said to you earlier, always put the consumer first in terms of what the product is. So if we're putting something fantastic into our product, our consumers are going to be happy. As I said to you earlier, always put the consumer first in terms of what the product is. So if we're putting something fantastic into our product, our consumers are going to be happy with it and it's going to give us the ability to grow the business as well. But it's also putting in in terms of a team around you as well, and I think that comes with time of growing a business.
Speaker 3:If you can grow your business with an amazing team, then what happens is what you're putting into your team and allowing them to drive a business forward. I think a lot of the time it takes to put in is going to be rewarded by an incredible team that puts the business first and puts the philosophy of the business first and lives the dream of, let's say, the founders as well. So I think what we've always tried to do is instill an element of entrepreneurism into our team to allow them to consider things, to make sure that actually there is the hustle element of it. You know, sort of, you're going out, you're considering what you're doing, you are putting in what you want to get out if it was your business, and I think that comes over time and as you grow your business and as you grow your team, I think that's a really important one of trying to create that culture in a team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think also, you know, just to add to that, I completely agree with what Patrick said. I think to create that culture, um on a team, yeah, I think also you know, just to add to that, I completely agree with what patrick said. I think something that we've always tried to do with, you know, that kind of philosophy is to not take anything for granted. Um, you know you've got to put the effort in and the half miles to be able to understand the your brand inside out, the opportunities that the brand has got. But also, I think you know we've always had this kind of very focused um opinion that you know we won't, we don't take things for granted, that we actually realize that it is based on hard work, um, and and then doing that, challenging ourselves, trying to always improve um, whether it's a piece of packaging, whether it's working with a supplier. That's kind of very much in the kind of DNA of the business.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Well, I want to thank you both so much for coming to the podcast. I also want to say thank you for delivering an incredible product. I spoke to you before and basically said how shocked I was when I was going down the aisles and seeing just the amount of just preservative nonsense on the back of these packets and people just realizing actually what's on there. So for you guys to be creating a product that is just so phenomenally good and doing such amazing work is really great. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing that journey with me and our audience. It's a real pleasure and honor. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Johnny.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much for having us, as always, guys. Thank you. Thank you, Julie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for having us, 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'd really appreciate it. 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.