How Bio & Me Grew 15X in 4 Years - Without Losing Their Gut Instinct!

0:00We don't want to be, you know, a super specialist, super premium brand. We want to be as mainstream as we can because everybody deserves good gut health. If you're going to be a challenger brand, you have to be the best at something.

0:16Buy On Me is one of the UK's fastest growing gut health food brands. It was co-founded by Jon Walsh and renowned gut health expert Dr Megan Rossi. And the brand offers a range of award-winning granolas, porridges and live kefir yogurts, all built around the principle that diverse plant-based ingredients are the key to better gut health. The last time I had John on the show was four years ago when the brand was turning over just a few million pounds in sales but now Bio & Me is stocked nationwide in UK grocery and food service and has annual sales of between 15 to 20 million pounds. John and I talk about the different phases of business growth and what you need to be obsessed with at each stage and about their laser focus on product quality and just how difficult it can be to find the right balance between communicating around health and taste.

1:02Let's dive in.

1:07John Walsh of Bio and Me, welcome to Brand Growth Heroes. Hello Fee, nice to see you again. It is lovely to see you too. Have you got your coffee or your tea or whatever you're on these days? I've got my tea. There it is, my big mug of tea. Good man. Thank you so much for coming back. It's been four years since we recorded our first episode. It has. Yeah, you and Megan, and you were, I think, just hit, I think you just hit one million in either revenue or RSV at the time. And now you're a big, successful, scaled gut health brand. Where are we at these days in terms of size or scale? We were just talking about being a paranoid CEO.

1:45I mean, we've grown a lot, but you can't use the successful word yet. uh we've got still got so much more to do but i mean but it's been amazing for you if i look at consumer reaction like the number of fans comments we still get you know we were just talking about the importance of consumers and how big the gut health trend is you know it's amazing if i look at retailer support you know just because the trend is so big because we're growing so fast it's incredible you know i just didn't you know yeah i mean the retail has just been extraordinary for us. And then, yeah, the money side's really good.

2:20So, yeah, we were remembering, weren't we, that we were about a million back then. We're now, we're a tiny bit coy about what we share, but we're about between 15 to 20 million, let's say, you know, towards the higher side of that. So, you know, it's growing really well. And if you think that's only four years ago when we were around about a million mark. Yeah, no, I mean, Megan's always telling me, by the way, when we're talking about Megan, that's Dr. Megan Rossi, my co-founder. She's the gut health doctor. So she, you know, she makes all of our products, does lots of our socials. She's my co-founder.

2:53She would have been here today if she possibly could have been. You know, we do most things together. We, you know, we're co-founders. So Megan would have been here today. Oh, yes. She's always saying to me, don't sound surprised. You know, sound like this is exactly what we expected. And of course, you know, we believed it. You know, I've given up my life for the last five years, so is Megan, to make this happen. So I believed it was going to work. But nonetheless, I mean, the joy in how well it is going and, yeah, to have those kind of revenues coming in and that kind of support from retailers and our fans, it's honestly, it's amazing.

3:35Welcome to Brand Growth Heroes, the leading podcast for the founders of Challenger Grocery Brands. I'm your host, Fiona Fitz. My 25 years at global giants such as Nestle and Challenger brands such as Goo Chocolate Puds, Chobani and Strong Roots, as well as coached to over 400 scaling brands, means I have the experience to ask the questions that truly matter and get you the insight that will inspire you to think differently and drive serious growth for your brand.

4:06so how does it split between cereals and dairy and anything else that you do in between channel let's give listeners who are not in the uk a picture of what this business actually sells and where it sells it okay so um look i know i know most people listen but look there is a pack of bio and me there's our one of our granolas and here is one of our kefir yogurts and that pretty much summarizes our range. So on the granolas and porridge and muesli side, Megan designed those first because they talk about her principle of plant-based diversity. So the more different plant fibers you get into your tummy, the better.

4:45And that's why we do the cereals because if we talk about purpose, we talk about vision, our whole raison d 'etre is to be the best for your gut health. And, you know, like on your MBA that we were just talking about, you know, some brands really have to work through what they stand for, why they are better. Because if you're going to be a challenger brand, you have to be the best at something. For us, it was always obvious from day one, it's about gut health. And the cereals, the way we do that is through the different diversity of fibres. I love the way you just said that. You just said, and the way we do that is da-da-da-da-da.

5:23Beautiful, because that's one of the things we actually do. It's one of the exercises we do in the mini MBA is, so this is our vision, this is our purpose, this is where we want to be, and this is the change we want to make in the world. And the way we do that actually is our mission. Every day we make and deliver the very best cereals that are going to deliver the best gut health or whatever it is. So thank you for that live example. We were talking through different roles, like big companies versus little companies. And believe you me, strategy is important. And if you are just starting your own company, working out how you're going to be better is super important but once that is done it is all about execution so on the cereal side yeah all about plant-based diversity then on um on the kefirs it's um about the number so we have 18 uh we we add in 18 particular um good for your gut um live and active culture strains um but two of those especially um have the most scientific proof that they actually do some good.

6:21So we might come on and talk a little bit about brands who are just hoying, you know, different bits and bobs in where there's no scientific proof at all, you know, but Megan would never, you know, she just selects the very, very best strains that go in. So that's how, and it's, I mean, I really don't want to sound arrogant or complacent, because we work incredibly hard, and at times it's very difficult to do. But what gets me out bed in the morning is I know that our kefirs are the best for your gut health in the market. I know our granolas are the best for your gut health. How do you know that?

6:54Because we can test versus all the other brands. So you test what you give them to people over a period of time and see how their gut health improves the diversity of bacteria in their gut health or how do you do it? Almost every food has to put their ingredients on their packaging so we can analyse what they've got in there. On the culture side, most, not all, but most brands claim how many cultures they put in there. And we can see that we put in more. So, but that is, you know, it's not, it's not to be arrogant because, because, because that is our role, you know, like, you know, let's, let's compare versus the big companies, you know, they're very good at managing the middle of the categories.

7:35That's where the volume is, but sort of by definition, therefore their products have to be average. That's how they dominate the middle ground. You know, as a challenger brand, you've got to come in and be the best. And in granolas and porridges, when we came in with a gut health proposition, we were the first into that category. So it was relatively easy to be the best for gut health in truth on that side. On kefir, we weren't the first. You know, some brilliant brands were there. Biotiful were there. Yo Valley were there, et cetera. So, you know, to earn our space on shelf alongside brilliant brands like that, you know, you've got to have something different about you.

8:17And in our case, you know, it's gut health and you've got to be the best. So we obsess about it. By the way, we've talked a little about gut health. You've also got to taste nice. Like we are, we're a food. So we, we obsess about two things. One, the gut health side and to the taste very often they can go together so what was lovely on our granolas is the more different nuts seeds fruits you put in the diversity also makes it taste nice the thing i didn't understand at all is on with live and active cultures they also because of the fermentation process can really impact like the creaminess taste texture of the of the yogurts as well so the two things go together i mean that's the that's the joy of food which i i love so much so So yeah, that's where the magic happens.

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9:39Recently, I asked managing partner Paul Chappie, why does a scaling brand need a corporate lawyer? So you definitely need someone that's going to have your back, that is going to be looking at those pitfalls that may be coming in the future, preferably someone that knows the industry because having that context is really important when negotiating be that commercial agreements or funding arrangements and at the end of the day you really need to have someone that you can trust and obviously can can negotiate hard when they need to huge thanks to brown growth heroes podcast sponsors jolson now let's get back to the show One of the things that I think I struggle with and everyone I have worked with over the years struggles with is when you've got a product that has a health functional benefit how do you balance, first of all, how do you work out which is more important to communicate?

10:35Because obviously taste, everyone says, you know, taste is the most important and of course taste is the most important because if it doesn't taste nice no one will eat it. But when you're communicating that how do you find the balance between communicating the health benefit and the taste? It'll be different for every category and it'll be different for every brand because obviously at dinner, you know, you want to err more on the taste, a lot more on the taste at one end of the spectrum. And at breakfast, people potentially want something a little bit more tasty or earthy or functional or kind of like worthy tasting in inverted commas.

11:05Where have you come out with that after 30 years in consumer packaged goods? 30 years in consumer packaged goods fee, five years doing Bio and Me and guess what? We're still debating it. Okay, great. We're still debating it every day In fact, we're just kicking off a new project now that I'll talk about. Can I just say that is bloody brilliant news because everyone out there thinks, I'll tell you why, because everybody, including me, thinks that there's an answer and they're getting it wrong. Yeah, no, it's a balance, obviously. And I remember being quite shocked and pleased. Anyway, when we first first launched, because beforehand we'd made everything, our USP was gut health.

11:46We knew it had to taste nice, but everything was zoomed in on gut health. And then as soon as we went online, as soon as we went into Booth's and Whole Foods and Planet Organic, we started getting messages from consumers. Almost like 100%, like there was probably one or two that spoke about gut health. They were all just like, oh my God, you taste nice. Because I think there is such this massive consumer impression still. And if one thing we could change, it would be this, which is healthy stuff tastes like cardboard. Healthy stuff doesn't taste nice. So I think we know from a product point of view, you've got to taste nice as well as be healthy because whilst people will try you because of the health benefit, and that's what hooks them in, if they're going to buy you again and again and again, and the convenient truth for us is, you know, if we want to do good for people's gut health, you need to eat us, you know, if not every day, then, you know, five, six times a week, you know, whether it's our kefirs, our granolas, it's that regular consumption that's good for your microbiome.

12:48That is also, of course, incredibly good for our revenues because you've got to, you know, so it's all about repeat rate, all about frequency. And if you want that, you need to taste nice because if you ask people to compromise on taste, they won't. I mean, we, you know, you know that, I know that, you know, the world is littered with examples where, you know, brilliantly healthy products that tasted awful and they tend to fade away. Especially when it's a little bit more expensive than other alternatives in the category and I mean breakfast alternatives for example. Countless times you know I've tried to be really good with my gut health and my extra plants and my you know seeds and I feel like almost guilty saying the word seeds because there's so many people banging the drums at anti-seed oils but I suppose they're transformed seed oils that they're complaining about.

13:33But you know all those like co-enzyme co-X whatever milled seed stuff that you can buy in packets and you're supposed to sprinkle it into smoothies and sprinkle it into soups. And like, I mean, great and everything, but it tastes like shit. You know? So people do it once. And you do it once. And then the packet is kind of slightly half open in your, if you're me, you zip it once but then somebody opens it in the house to see what it is and then they don't like it and then it doesn't get closed properly. And then the next time you go in, everything's rancid and then you throw it out and that was seven quid down the drain.

14:07so it puts you off your point about a premium by the way just uh because the thing we work really hard at is you know we do have to charge a small premium because we put the best quality ingredients in we really do and your your point about seed oils so one of the things i think megan is most proud of is we only use extra virgin olive oil it's just because that is the highest quality, the lowest antioxidants, et cetera, et cetera. It's just so, so important. But we're only about, you know, the nice thing is we're not as expensive as you might think we are. We're about a 10 % price premium versus, you know, the other, you know, very good brands.

14:47Is that per pack or per 100 grams though? Per 100 grams. Oh, really? I didn't realize that. Yeah. So, you know, we're not, there is a premium, you know, we're in a way, well, what we are proud of is how small we keep the premium. There has to be a premium because of the quality of our ingredients, but we want to keep it as small as possible because we don't want to be, you know, a super specialist, super premium brand. We want to be as mainstream as we can because everybody deserves good gut health. You know, the more our volumes go up, the more that really helps on the cost of good side. In terms of the buckets of revenue still available to you in the market, right?

15:23Because I like to see everything in terms of buckets. of revenue that we haven't yet tapped into, right? So you're in retail, you're in food service. Are you in all the retailers yet? We are. I mean, I think the thing that's not completely different, but a bit unique about us is we're in two different categories broadly. We're in cereal and we're in kefir, kefir yogurts, kefir drinks. So, you know, if we were a single product category, you would probably say by now we'd have maxed out distribution and it was time start thinking about international, et cetera. For us, that's just not true. You know, we've still got lots more that we can do within our cereal portfolio, within our Kefir portfolio.

16:06So our focus for the next, you know, however long it takes, one, two, three years, however long it might be, is to continue to focus on the UK to max out, whether it's with the retailers, you know, we were talking about, I mentioned at the start, just how supportive, you know, the Tesco's, the Sainsbury's, the Morrison's, the Waitrose, the Asda's, the Vocado, just honestly cheap. So by the way, it's my favorite time of year because it's Taste London this week. Almost every single retailer will be there. And it's just such a nice occasion to be able to say thank you. So we still got lots to do with them.

16:41We've got lots to do on the food service out of home side as well. So we think of that as our discovery channel because we spend relatively small amounts of money on marketing as in communications and marketing. We do lots of sampling at events, et cetera. But we think of convenience as one big discovery channel because if people can have one of our porridge pots or our bars, or we're just launching kefir toppers, so little single serve kefir yogurts with a granola topper on top. If they discover us on a plane, on a train, at work, We do a lot through our offices. It's brilliant because then the next time they're in a supermarket, they buy us.

17:22And we can see that. We can see where in high-density office locations, the supermarkets near there are our best sellers. So, yeah, we spend a lot of time focusing on that. So, in terms of getting into that level of detail then when you're executing your where to play and how to win strategy, Are you getting down into kind of geographic hub levels and looking at neighbourhoods and seeing which ones are working, just like you've outlined there? Yes, it changes by retailer, to be honest. So if I take the most extreme geographically, the co-op, you know, where you who have famously a store in every postcode.

18:03I think they've got something like two and a half thousand stores. I mean, incredible. you know we probably only suit right now seven eight hundred of those so working with them to make sure we pick the right one so that that works for them and works for us is really important you know if you take you know a Sainsbury or Tesco in truth you know we've pretty much maxed out on distribution on our biggest SKUs because they do work everywhere so you know so it does change by retailer but yeah absolutely we get down into that detail. Okay and then you're talking about in the retailers where you really work really well, I would love to see the side of fridge door packs, as I call them.

18:41You know, the square one kilogram packs of yogurt from, who am I thinking? U of Alley. A big tub, like a one kg tub. Yeah, but you see, I think that undersells the actual opportunity for it because the fact that it sits in the side of your door is the big winner. Oh, I know what you mean. Yes, yes, yes. Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For your heaviest users. Yes, I wouldn't want to give away all our secrets. No, but... But you just have, boom! Just for you, Fee. Thanks, thanks, thanks. So, okay, so this is great. So how many people work for you now or work on the team, work with you, should I say?

19:21Fifteen. So, yeah, so we are small. What kind of roles are they in? And the reason I'm asking that question is for those listeners out there who are scaling their brand, coming up behind you guys and they're thinking, right, you know, when do I need a head of sales? When do I need someone who's looking after ops? You know, what point do I stop doing all of this work and hand it over? How have you built that business in phases in terms of who does what and where? It definitely has gone in phases. I mean, just as a reminder, because we launched in 2019. So we conveniently launched four or five months before COVID.

19:58So that massively impacted are the way we grew the team and the phasing of it. And by the way, if we are now talking, say, to other startup founders, I think that phase at the start where you do all the jobs yourself is brilliant. Because I still love it that every single job inside Biome, I have done. So important. I always say to people, don't ever recruit for a role that you don't know how to do. right right i mean by the way there are some people that i will pretty much there's 14 of them who will do a better job of me at those jobs but at least i understand when they come and talk to me now i've got a frame of reference about what they're talking about and i understand because again we were comparing versus you know being a founder versus working in a big corporate because i spent 20 years working at nestle and procter and gamble and places like that and it's it's having that all-round view because you know You and I were pretty much marketing specialists at Nestle.

21:02And that was the, you know, we were broadly told, stay in your lane. That's the bit you do. And I didn't appreciate the retailers. I didn't appreciate the operation side. Well, I think you were probably way more marketing specialized than I was because I was more business development, I think, all the way through. Yeah, you probably had a better view of it than I. And I, you know, I've loved getting that full rounded view. It's also great, isn't it, that when you're recruiting, you know what questions when you're actually interviewing someone. Yes. You can ask a question and you can tell whether their answer is brilliant or not.

21:35Yes. Because how would you know if you hadn't done the job? How would you know whether that was a really, someone had a really great understanding and way of thinking about something? Practically, it also means, because, you know, we're human beings. People go on holiday, they get ill. you know, if there's a crisis, I can drop in and I can sort of pick stuff up because I know it. Like, but the one I still do the most is our customer service answering the emails because I love it. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think because we're talking about consumers and, you know, we've just done our first ever brand sort of equity rating study, which was brilliant.

22:10And it felt like I was back at Nestle doing the good old, you know, and it was the results were were very, very positive. They beat our expectations a lot. But even with that, the richest feedback, you know, we were just talking about doing a larger yogurt size. We know we need to do that because we get asked it on the emails and on socials. It's brilliant. You know, you don't, you just need to listen. You don't need to do the big studies anymore. So I like dropping in and doing that. How did you measure brand equity? We used YouGov. We went out to 2 ,000 consumers. consumers. We rated our brand versus about 20 others.

22:45Was it in terms of propensity to purchase or in terms of how do you feel about it? More on the equity side. But what's the question? Because I don't understand how you actually asked that question. So we had some quite soft, well, there was one about, you know, do you plan to buy? But then there was, you know, is it a brand you love? And then we asked them to rate on things like, is a brand that tastes good? Is a brand that is best for your gut health, etc. And we went, through those. So they were the aspects that we were most interested in to know. I see. It's like a composite. Do you get a composite score at the end?

23:19Did you? Yes. You do. Okay. Pretty clever. And did you design this equity rating? Myself and Mike, our marketing director, did. Okay. Brilliant. Yeah. Because it goes back to that point about, you know, I know, we know our products are the best. That's one thing. And again, don't want to sound arrogant, we work very hard to do it. but then it's like is that translating through like do consumers believe it and you know are they seeing the difference because that's what really matters if they're not if they're not getting the difference and by the way then you know for the people who do see the difference are they going on and buying is their purchase intent higher or lower so when you ask to be asked the person that we do but we ask it last because we want to know first of all you know what do they think about us and then we can see does that change purchase intent and happily it does.

24:08If this episode is inspiring you to think about new ways that you can drive growth for your business, don't forget to click follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app and even leave a review. Your small gesture has a big impact on me and my business and will be truly appreciated. So John, I'm really interested though that you didn't use net promoter score. Everyone talks about net promoter score as if it's like the absolute dogs whatever in brand marketing. I feel like that is really reductionist, you know, using net promoter score, which for anyone who is wondering what it is, it's you add up all the scores of the people who've spoken positively about the brand and add up the scores of the people who've spoken negatively about the brand.

24:46And then you end up with some kind of average. Yeah. Which is fine and everything, but it's quite global, right? And it might be great for, you know, tech and service and all of that. But if you want to know whether how the brand tastes and how the brand people feel about it, you've designed something that's particular for your brand. I just feel like that is much, I was going to say writer, much cleverer in food and beverage, you know. You know, this is the first proper conversation I've had about it. It just felt like a very logical, obvious thing to do to us. I mean, the points I suppose I'd make are we didn't do it until year five.

25:20You know, we really, we just spent the first five years making sure, you know, we were executing our strategy. You know, if we were going to say we are the best, then you better go out there and do it. So it wasn't until year five. And then when it came to measurement, we had such precise questions we wanted to know about that using a sort of generic study wouldn't have got anywhere near. So, I mean, it wasn't cheap. It wasn't that expensive either. But, you know, it was two, three, four thousand pounds, you know. So it's an investment, which is why we didn't do it until year five. How will you use the results?