In short
Toby Hoppy, co-founder of All Things Dairy, explains how the brand built a challenger position in UK dairy—starting with viral “All Things Butter” content, then scaling butter into major grocers and launching cottage cheese in January. He covers chilled-supply-chain challenges, differentiation vs commodity dairy, supply constraints (including running out of pots), and a social-first marketing strategy using creator equity partners rather than paid ads. He also discusses an innovation pipeline (possible cream cheese/soft cheese expansion) and a US launch of butter via a national retailer from Sept 1, while delaying cottage cheese due to US shelf-life/shipping limits.
Guests
Toby Hoppy (co-founder, All Things Dairy). Background: growth/CPG experience at Harry’s, Away, consulting, and Trip (head of growth ~18 months). Creative partner: Thomas Straker (chef; “All Things Butter” viral series; ~6M followers). Equity partner: Emily English (“Queen of Cottage Cheese”; ~3–4M followers). Mentioned: Good Culture (US cottage cheese), Philadelphia (cream cheese), Longley Farm.
Key claims
dairy is “wild west” and ripe for disruption; quality + education drives repeat; cottage cheese launched 12 weeks ago and is projected to outsell butter by March; social content is a recipe/education engine; no traditional paid ads—budget goes to creator production and in-store promotions; vertical integration via buying 30% of a cottage cheese supplier to secure supply.
Notable examples
Notting Hill restaurant expansion (3 restaurants, 4th opening in New York); retailer rollout (Sainsbury’s, Tesco soon, Morrisons, Waitrose, SPAR; not in Aldi/Lidl yet); organic cream shortages and wastage risks; US butter export in 25kg blocks; New York pop-ups selling out in minutes.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOToby Hoppy's Background
0:45 to 4:30
Toby shares his unique career journey leading to All Things Dairy.
“So tell us about that what sparked the original idea for all things butter and where is it now?”
The Spark of All Things Dairy
4:30 to 8:15
Toby discusses the origins of All Things Dairy and its growth trajectory.
“And so as long as we hit those three points, we felt really confident in our marketing approach that we could then reach the audience to then purchase the product.”
Challenges in Dairy Category
8:15 to 12:30
Toby explains the challenges and strategies of modernizing dairy products.
“And the great thing and the data you really want to see is longevity, it's repeat.”
Rapid Expansion and Innovation
12:30 to 14:01
Toby discusses the rapid growth of cottage cheese and future innovations.
“And so that's when my wife hates me, where I'm having to deal with, as soon as five o 'clock hits, the restaurants open at six.”
Innovative Tasting Sessions
14:01 to 14:21
Learn about unique tasting events and product launches in the dairy space.
Expanding into American Markets
14:23 to 14:36
Explore the brand's expansion plans in the American dairy market.
“But I was going to run out of time to talk about all the new things you've got going on.”
Investment and Supply Chain Insights
14:37 to 16:32
Understand the importance of vertical integration and securing suppliers.
“But in terms of innovation pipeline, have you got things coming up?”
Challenges in the Dairy Industry
16:33 to 18:18
Discover the obstacles faced in the dairy market and the reality of starting a new brand.
“Finding, getting good relationships with manufacturers is just so important.”
Passion for the Dairy Mission
18:19 to 19:38
Hear about the brand's mission to revitalize the dairy category and support farmers.
“However, now, if you ask me, I'd say 100 % because cottage cheese is doing so well.”
Targeting Younger Consumers
19:39 to 20:29
Learn how the brand attracts a younger demographic to dairy products.
“And we want to get it back to that point.”
Show all 17 chapters
Marketing Through Social Media
20:30 to 22:38
Understand the brand's unique approach to marketing and social media engagement.
“So let's talk about how you've brought those people into Dairy and into the brand and your marketing strategy I know that social has been an incredibly important channel for you.”
Innovating Marketing Strategies
22:39 to 24:46
Explore how the brand innovates in its marketing approach and creator partnerships.
“They don't ever use any social media at all.”
Paid vs. Organic Marketing
24:47 to 26:22
Discuss the brand's stance on marketing budgets and the use of organic methods.
“And actually what they mean is they don't do any like advertising.”
US Launch Plans and Challenges
26:23 to 28:00
Dive into the complexities of launching dairy products in the US market.
“both a restaurant and are you launching the butter, the cottage cheese?”
Navigating Dairy Regulations and Market Strategy
28:00 to 29:25
Learn about the complexities of dairy distribution and market entry strategies.
“They can only import a certain amount of dairy.”
Building Resilience in Business
29:25 to 30:26
Discover the importance of resilience and adaptability in entrepreneurship.
“I don't think that we will need someone yet.”
Quickfire Insights with Toby Hoppy
30:26 to 31:20
Gain quick insights into Toby's favorite dairy product and brand inspirations.
“I'm going to do some quickfire questions now.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:14Tom Straker:Hello and welcome to the Tomorrow Brands podcast, where we explore what it takes to build a brand of tomorrow. I'm your host, Ruth Vitock, and today I'm joined by Toby Hoppy, co-founder of All Things Dairy. In two and a half years, Toby has gone from a viral butter video to a multi-skew dairy brand stocked across pretty much every major UK grocer, and a cottage cheese launch that's been moving faster than anyone, including him, expected. Let's get into it. Hi, Toby. Thanks so much for joining us today. Before we get into it, it'd be great to hear your background and how you got to where you are now.
0:42Toby Hoppy:Ruth, thanks for having me. Yes, slightly interesting background. Being word of many businesses really started as, on the brand side, I was working for a company called apply to online which turned into ao.com whilst i was there which was a business in bolton which is where i'm from however grew incredibly frustrated by the fact that media agencies were doing a lot of the work that i was working in and so working on and so i actually ended up doing a few years in media agencies after that and then the last eight years or so i've been in kind of high growth CPG businesses started at Harry's as one of the first international employees there and then moved from Harry's to Away which is a luggage brand another New York or US based brand and then I did a couple of years consulting and just before I went into dairy full-time I worked for Trip so I was the head of growth at Trip for about 18 months and now I'm in the wonderful world of dairy originally butter and now I sell cheese at the same time which is not something I expected to be doing.
1:50Tom Straker:So tell us about that what sparked the original idea for all things butter and where is it now?
1:57Toby Hoppy:Yeah so always in the background I like to try and do something on the sides when I was a trip for instance I actually only worked I initially only worked three days a week and then I worked to four days a week and so I always had a day of doing other things and so we found I found that it was my best friend a guy called Thomas Straker who I've actually been working with for kind of six years or so he was a chef COVID hit as you can imagine that was probably one of the worst industries to be in and so me and him started working on doing content together he had about 500 followers and I felt and we were chatting about it the only chefs really on social media were Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay.
2:40Toby Hoppy:And then you'd have some like gym bro chefs who just try to do like high protein stuff, but not like it is right now where it's really saturated. And so we started just playing around with ideas initially. And now he has about 6 million followers across all of his platforms, which is crazy. But the ideation was always that we want to create brands. So he wanted to go down the restaurant route, I walked down the consumer brand route. And so we started with launching a restaurant about three and a half years ago, which is still there in Notting Hill. We now have three restaurants and just about to open a fourth one in New York, which is very exciting.
3:18Toby Hoppy:But my passion really was being able to create the consumer brand. So we went into butter purely because he had a series that went viral called All Things Butter, where he essentially was making compound butters and that's amassed over a billion views and so it was a perfect it was kind of perfect timing because when we were looking at categories of what to go into we felt that dairy was massively had a massive opportunity for disruption every clean label etc and so the fact that was when it really started and then i started scoping out the idea looking at supply chain etc and two and a bit years later you now sell cottage cheese as well but the core business is is butter but cottage cheese will be overtaken.
4:07Tom Straker:Dairy tricky category to go into chilled is notoriously tricky and very much still a commodity category how have you modernized that? If I'm honest I was hugely
4:23Toby Hoppy:naive going into it i actually didn't know that butter was a commodity when i started the business and so i was on like this crazy learning curve from pretty much day one but i think that was almost our superpower as a business that we were naive and therefore we didn't mind going into this kind of slightly wild west world and for our side it was yeah in a way that we felt appealed to modern consumer because we didn't feel like anything was on the shelf there and then trying to hit a price point that whilst was slightly premium, but we really wanted to make it accessible. And so as long as we hit those three points, we felt really confident in our marketing approach that we could then reach the audience to then purchase the product.
5:07Toby Hoppy:And because we felt so strongly about what was underneath the wrapper, we were really fortunate that our repeat rates were incredibly strong. And there is quite a big difference between kind of a bad butter and a good butter particularly in cottage cheese where is a like a low price cottage cheese is quite watery and grainy where a high quality cottage cheese is very creamy it's almost like a stratticella with butter it's slightly more subtle but it's still significantly creamier it's got better texture and so for us we use social media to really educate people of what the differentiation
5:42Tom Straker:is so it's quite a quick pivot after launching the butter to go into cottage cheese you launched in January right and went into pretty broad distribution why the change how's that launch gone?
5:55Toby Hoppy:Yeah so it would have been May last year we knew as a business that we wanted to go into different categories it was just about which category we wanted to go into so all things was always trademarked and so then we always knew that we could use that as the platforms then bring in other verticals when we did the research on where we thought was the next move for us we look at a lot of US trends and we saw that cottage cheese is just having a huge moment in the US and it doesn't seem to be stopping we know that good culture for instance has just sold to El Castor or a majority stake 500 million valuation they're on going from strength to strength and then because we've got some great relationships with the retail buyers we also got their opinion we gave like kind of five options what do you think?
6:40Toby Hoppy:and all of them were aligned saying if you do cottage cheese out 100 % of the possibilities, which initially I was, I didn't really buy into it until our strategy guy on the team showed me all the data, showed me how the growth of it, where it is in the UK, but also where the US is, where we expect, where we think the UK currently is on that trajectory. And so then we just got to work to try and find, similar to what we did with butter, go and find the best plant, best quality, try and secure as much supply chain as possible because, sorry, as much volume as possible because that was always going to be an issue because there aren't many makers.
7:19Toby Hoppy:So we doubled down pretty early on supply chain where we actually purchased a line so we had our own exclusivity to supply because we'd already secured some listings from existing or where we are with butter. And to be honest, it has gone probably 100 % better than we expected from a rate of sale perspective, which has gone insane. Fortunately, we have the supply chain to be able to scale up, but it's surpassed all expectations. We will, in March, likely sell more cottage cheese than butter, and we only launched 12 weeks ago.
7:55Tom Straker:Wow. That can be outpacing expectations is obviously great, but that can come with its own share of headaches. I think you ran out of pots, didn't you, at one point?
8:04Toby Hoppy:A complete nightmare for about a month. But now we ordered 2 million pots, so we should be all right now. oh my god yeah it's slightly it is insane and where it's gone but it only seems we go from strength to strength and from what i expected with the existing retailers that we went in january and we start seeing a little bit of plateauing and say fab because january is very much a new year new mean and we're still seeing every week is increase on rate of sale so like last monday was the biggest monday we've ever had in the saints the week before was the biggest monday we've ever had. And the great thing and the data you really want to see is longevity, it's repeat.
8:44Toby Hoppy:And so we invest very heavily as a business into data. And so we have that kind of at our fingertips on a weekly basis of trying to understand repeat rates, et cetera, store rate of sales, so we can measure as best as possible.
8:57Tom Straker:Why do you think it's going so well? Timing, brand?
9:01Toby Hoppy:It's a perfect storm. I think timing was perfect. I was on a mission to launch on the 1st of january i really did and it was going to be a really tight turnaround so we only had the idea to do it in may and so from may to getting on shelf with a brand where branded parts etc by first of jan from having no experience in in it at all but i do think that what helped us is that we already had the chilled logistical supply chain set up so we essentially just as soon as we found the manufacturer we could essentially plug it into our current network we already had everything set up with our retailers tone.
9:36Toby Hoppy:And that has been like two and a half years of pain to get us to the point of where it is just because, as you said before, chill supply chain is really difficult. And then I think the brands really resonated well. And then from a product perspective, we are slightly different to what's currently in the market. I wanted to make a cottage cheese that I felt was more appealing to a foodie demographic rather than it being going down the cheaper route of it, slightly watery, more grainy, where this is a lot more luxurious in the way that you would spoon it out. Yeah, perfect storm across the board.
10:12Toby Hoppy:And we've been really fortunate that pretty much all retailers have been interested in it. We can't launch everyone at the same time, just purely because of scaling it up. But we're now in, we've just launched in Morrisons. And so we'd be in Sains, Mizzicardo, Morrison's Waitrose with a more to come throughout the year
10:35Tom Straker:I mean and the business is what two and a half years old in its total?
10:39Toby Hoppy:Yes
10:39Tom Straker:Wow that's pretty rapid
10:42Toby Hoppy:Yeah and that's just cottages in we're just about to go to Tesco and the most recent accelerator program that launches in May and then we are I think we're in everyone apart from Lidl and Aldi because we're just about to launch into SPAR as well.
11:00Tom Straker:You must have had to rapidly build out a team in that time then to manage all of those accounts.
11:05Toby Hoppy:So we have, we're 12, two people are part-time, so there's 10 full-time. Sales team, we have three. But from a manufacturing perspective, because most of it we just outsource, in fact all of it we outsource. So we don't, from an operations perspective, it's, it would need, we would need significantly more if we were to invest more into supply chain actually start integrating a little bit more. And we have been fortunate that essentially we've only ever, we've only lost one person who went back to America and everyone's pretty much been there for the last 18 months or so. And yeah, it was different.
11:42Toby Hoppy:Hiring has been probably one of the hardest things to do to get the right, to get the right people. But I'm sure that you, but so far we touch wood. I've got a great team in place but it is very high pressure particularly at the moment i guess it is a very
11:57Tom Straker:specific sort of person that you need because you have a lot going on more than many brands because you've got you've expanded from the butter to the cottage cheese which is now flying but you also have the restaurants and you have knives as well right yeah we do like cookware yeah it's slightly
12:14Toby Hoppy:bonkers but they all weirdly live in the same eco ecosystem so for me i would i would say that i I spend 90 % of my time on the dairy business. But then the differentiation for the restaurants is that we're mainly operational in the evenings. And so that's when my wife hates me, where I'm having to deal with, as soon as five o 'clock hits, the restaurants open at six. So then it's like the evening of stuff going on.
12:39Tom Straker:But you get an hour off in the middle.
12:42Toby Hoppy:Yeah, get an hour, yeah. Yeah, I don't think it's sustainable for a long period of time. But I feel like I'm in the years right now where I can just about manage it.
12:52Tom Straker:You mentioned they're in an ecosystem. How does that work? How do you think the restaurant drives the dairy business and vice versa?
12:59Toby Hoppy:They all live in the same sphere, but for us, we do kitchen knives. We're just about to do pans and things like that. But it's more of an online-only play. We've got a small team. We have a couple of people working on that business. But then the restaurants really manage themselves because each restaurant has essentially an MD who is the general manager who manages the P &L. who manages all the HR stuff. And so it's not a huge, hugely time. It doesn't take a huge amount of my time. It's more just like firefighting if something significantly goes wrong. For us, we use all of our products in the restaurants.
13:34Toby Hoppy:And if people go in there, we always have open kitchens. And so from that side, it's like people can see the products in action. And then from the other side is that we utilize the restaurant a lot for kind of introducing the brand we do tastings we do for instance yesterday we had on Wednesday we had a full we had a car to win all day and we have a private dining space next door and we just did it entirely we just did an entire tasting session and then we had lunch and then and yeah it was just a great day so we utilize it in that way a lot and the same thing for America we'll do the same because we're launching in America with butter in September.
14:17Toby Hoppy:So we'll do the same thing. I know it's slightly bonkers.
14:21Tom Straker:All right, we'll talk about that in a second. But I was going to run out of time to talk about all the new things you've got going on. Just to circle back to, you've just launched Scottish cheese. You've now switched from all things butter to all things dairy. So obviously that broadens out the scope. You've just mentioned you've got lots going on. But in terms of innovation pipeline, have you got things coming up? or are you just going to focus on these two SKUs for now?
14:45Toby Hoppy:Yeah, so we're about to close a big investment round, but also from that investment round, we are actually investing into our supplier for Cottage Juice. So we're buying 30 % of their business and therefore we essentially will be vertically integrated although we will not be using our team over there. And the reason for that is firstly we want to guarantee supply and we do think these guys make the best cottage cheese in the uk but also when you're making cottage cheese you start with skim milk and then through the process you're actually skimming off cream and to make butter we use cream so it's essentially and then also other products we want to do so there's lots of opportunity within the soft cheese space whether it's cream cheese whether we go into like cheesecakes with whatever route we want to go so it feels like the perfect kind of narrative from our side it's like a no way story but also there is huge opportunity that's across like cream cheese has a single uh brand which is philadelphia there isn't any other brands we want to be across every single vertical within dairy we just wouldn't go into speciality cheese because it's significantly harder from working capital.
16:07Toby Hoppy:The options are endless for us, but right now we just have to dole down on it. Be the new brand that comes out and wins. Obviously, the likes of Longley Farm aren't going to be going anywhere, but we feel like there's a big opportunity for us to be that kind of standout new brand that comes through.
16:25Tom Straker:If I had Philadelphia, I'd be a bit worried, I think.
16:28Toby Hoppy:They have got a big bank account.
Read the full transcript
16:33Tom Straker:yeah they haven't been they haven't been challenged though that's the thing isn't it
16:37Toby Hoppy:maybe there's a reason maybe there's a reason for that but let it go i think it's because we are naive and i try and stick to that to be like guys naivety is a good thing providing we back it up with data and it's going to be tough but that's what's got us to where we are right
16:54Tom Straker:now so we've got to keep it going it's interesting because you've said naive a few times and we've had lots of different people on the podcast with different backgrounds but your background
17:02Toby Hoppy:you've got a lot of experience in fmcg i think it's more naivety within dairy like dairy is there is a reason why there are not many new brands in dairy which i didn't realize until i started a business we have been there have been moments we're very fortunate right now we're in a really good space but the last two and a half years it may look better than it is we had some real ups, real downs. The stock situation is so difficult. Finding, getting good relationships with manufacturers is just so important. There was complete UK organic cream shortages last summer where we essentially couldn't have any stock for a four-week period.
17:48Toby Hoppy:No one could get any organic cream. And so it's so relationship-based and as we're the new kids on the block, I think we get looked down on a little bit. I think less so now. But it's really difficult. Wastage is a huge issue as well. And it obviously spoils very easily, being chilled. It's, yeah, it's been really rocky, to be honest. And if I knew everything that happened, if you asked me six months ago, would you have gone into the dairy world? If you knew everything you knew now, I would probably say no. I would have gone a different way. However, now, if you ask me, I'd say 100 % because cottage cheese is doing so well.
18:22Tom Straker:so obviously it's taken like a lot of persistence and it's not been easy what kept you going
18:30Toby Hoppy:during those times yeah I mean we had a last I would say in May last year there was lots of sleepless nights and for me the main thing I'd probably say is fear of failure but also just like I have 10 employees who there were points there have been points at the time of where we're trying to close a funding round and we're running out of runway where it's there is a real there is a genuinely real point that they may not like we may all not get paid and so for me that i would say is probably the biggest driving force for it but i also just feel incredibly passionate about the industry that we've become to love and feel like the mission of the business which is essentially trying to get like younger people or we call them more like modern consumers back into the dairy category, really supporting the British dairy industry, supporting the farmers, having probably like the roughest time, particularly over the last couple of years.
19:31Toby Hoppy:We genuinely feel passionate about that mission. And we think dairy is massively, it's not where it used to be in the 80s, 70s and 80s. And we want to get it back to that point. And don't feel like the brands that are in the space have done a particularly good job of trying to drive innovation and trying to get new people into the category. You can just see from the data, if you look at our age demographic in Sainsbury's, for instance, 60 % of all of our customers are under the age of 45. Where if you look at the category in general, all the other brands is more like 70 % of the customers are over the age of 45.
20:10So we are double from a percentage perspective
20:13Toby Hoppy:what all the other brands are. And for me, that is purely down to the fact that there's been very little competition and their rate of sales are still strong and people are still using it rather than looking further ahead of actually the future.
20:28Tom Straker:I see why the retailers love you so much.
20:30Toby Hoppy:Some do.
20:32Tom Straker:Mentality. It's like the dream, isn't it? Category growth.
20:36Toby Hoppy:I have some killer slides on that. I bet you do. I try and sell that dream a lot.
20:41Tom Straker:So let's talk about how you've brought those people into Dairy and into the brand and your marketing strategy I know that social has been an incredibly important channel for you. How did you launch it? How are you building it?
20:54Toby Hoppy:Yeah, as you say, social is by far our biggest marketing channel. It has been built with the brand through social media. So there's an authenticity of story that it was created from the series that Tom did on social. And so initially, we utilized Tom's, I was in my business partner, Tom's social to give it the boost across social media. but I was also really conscious that I wanted the brand to be bigger than him. I wanted to be bigger than his name. And so it wasn't something like we plastered his name all over the branding or anything like that. We just tried to subtly always bring it into all the videos.
21:32Toby Hoppy:We did a lot of collaboration stuff in the early days but now we do very little. And I wanted to also bring on other equity partners. And so we now have four food creators. who all have humongous followings, who are all equity partners in the business, take content for us across the board. And then from there, we ladder down into about 100 creators who have somewhere between 10 ,000 and 50 ,000 followers who make videos for us the entire time. And so for that, we pull a little bit on our social media. We also use social not to be like a place where we're putting fancy pack shots or anything like that.
22:12Toby Hoppy:It's very much like recipe content. It's ideation for, we want to be essentially a recipe book for dairy across social media and done by real people. So people can genuinely connect with it. That was really the way also that when we were speaking to the retailers, where we were trying to show differentiation. Because a lot of the early stuff that we used to get was like, are you essentially just a butter in a fun pack and that's it. And that was fair. It was a fair call out to start with. However, for us, we really went down the story of, look, obviously the incrementality piece, but we are essentially, our marketing playbook is in a bit of a white space because Learnapack, Yoval, they all have 10 ,000 followers on social media.
22:56Toby Hoppy:They don't ever use any social media at all. And so for Rose, that's like the most that we've built around the brand is we think obviously product quality, et cetera, is what a lot of people can do. marketing strategy and where we've got ourselves to is i think we're like 125 000 followers just for a dairy brand on instagram and that is not something that you can just recreate overnight and and so for us we really stick to our guns there and and double and don't really i think one of the really important things is not like resting on our laurels for it and ensuring that we're there and we're always trying to innovate on there so for instance when we did cottage cheese we could have just gone out with ruby or tom doing posts but i was really adamant that we wanted to add more strings to our bow and so we managed to deal with em the nutritionist who's called emily english on social she has about three or four million followers she's also known as the queen of cottage cheese and so in october we crashed out a deal where she became an equity partner in the company and a part of that you essentially you could work that they kind of have to hit but the reality is that we want them to feel ownership of the business and so we just send em just gets like a weekly delivery of cottage cheese and butter to the house and so we naturally see in her other content she's using our butter she's using or her butter now and cottage cheese in just a natural way anyway and so when she's doing the content for us that's like a paid partnership it actually authentically looks like it is part of her because it really is know and it's something that we will not stop doing we will bring on another one i'm sure when we do next another category and we'll keep on evolving because i feel like if you start with particularly with social when you start losing a bit of momentum it really starts to die down and so i think you've got to continue to innovate you've got to continue to bring new
24:46Tom Straker:people on have different ideation etc for you guys is it mostly organic or do you is it been
24:52Toby Hoppy:paid ads yeah we don't actually do any we don't do any paid it's amazing isn't it because it goes
24:57Tom Straker:against the modern collective wisdom on how social works these days and how it's all pay to play
25:02Toby Hoppy:yeah i mean for reals i think it's also like we don't we don't really want to send anyone anywhere we just want people to see the bit the brand and so when i say we don't pay when i say we don't do any paid we do paid in the sense of we pay creators to make food and because we don't whilst they have small followings like particularly the micro influence which takes most of our time they have small followers but we're also not like most of them you just send product to and they make a video for you because they for sending the product but for us we also think like even if it's 50 quid for editing time the time you don't film it that that's where we spend our money from marketing budget but when it comes to actually using facebook ads manager doing google ads and everything like we don't do we don't do anything i'm glad you clarified that because
25:52Tom Straker:It's like when some brands say, we don't do any marketing. And actually what they mean is they don't do any like advertising. And then you're like, oh, all of that social content. It's like time and money, isn't it? Even in the resource of the team, it's a choice.
26:05Toby Hoppy:And also think about all the stuff we do in store. So that's marketing. And that costs an absolute fortune. The promotions cost an absolute fortune. All these things. So we certainly have, our marketing budget is certainly not zero. But from a purely social perspective, So we don't actually do any like traditional paid.
26:22Tom Straker:So you mentioned earlier that you're launching in the US, both a restaurant and are you launching the butter, the cottage cheese?
26:29Toby Hoppy:Yeah, the butter. So we can't launch the cottage cheese, sadly, because they would take, anyone in the US would buy a handoff for cottage cheese if we could get it made. The reality is that there is a huge shortage of cottage cheese currently in the States. You can't ship it over because the shelf life's too short and you can't freeze it. And you can't air freight it because it would just cost an absolute fortune. It's not particularly good for the environment. So cottage cheese, currently no, but butter, yes, because butter freezes with no impact on quality. And we'll essentially, we send over 25 kg blocks and then we wrap it out there, pack and wrap.
27:07Toby Hoppy:And so we're going into a big national in from September 1st for butter. And then if we think the product market fit works, not really product market fit i'd say more like brand market fit our people resonating with the brand over there then we would look at doing something or exploring cottage cheese more of do we do a j like a jv with someone out there to make it something along those lines but that's still a while away that brain can't comprehend thinking about building 5 p.m till 6 p.m slot
27:38Tom Straker:between running the uk dairy business and the restaurants openings when you do the us launch
27:43Toby Hoppy:it's slightly bonkers it's all good fun though and i genuinely think it is a privilege when i have i'm significantly happier than i was when in previous roles of where i knew i had this the ideas i wanted to get out and do something on my own and i feel a significantly more content now but certainly a lot more stressed practically supporting that launch in the us have you got someone out there who's managing it for you at the moment no so because it's only a single retailer So you have to have a dairy partner out there because there's lots of weird and wonderful old rules around dairy that you have to go through.
28:18Toby Hoppy:It's a specific dairy distributor. They have to have a dairy license. They can only import a certain amount of dairy. We work with someone from that aspect. but because all like Tom for instance 50 % of Tom's following is from the US we will essentially and a lot of our other people that we work with have got really large US followings so we will likely bring on an American kind of food creator so we're talking to a few at the moment who will help us with the launch but because Tom's audience is so large out there and that's really why we're doing the restaurant out there so we've done quite a few pop-ups in New York over the last couple of years of where they literally sell out in five minutes for a whole week residency.
29:00Toby Hoppy:And so that was where the ideation for New York came. And if you quite easily, you cross analytics on social media, you can break down by city. And New York is Tom's second biggest city that follows him. Only London's first and it's New York and then it's loads of other places in America. And so there was like, there was method behind that. So yeah, we'll do a very similar play really, but because it's that single retail and we've given them exclusivity for nine months that we're not, I don't think that we will need someone yet. If it goes well, I would assume we're going to have to get some boots on the ground pretty quick.
29:36Tom Straker:What's the biggest thing you've learned about yourself whilst you've been building all things dairy?
29:40Toby Hoppy:I'd probably say resilience, to be honest. I didn't, there was, as I said before, there was a couple of real touch and go times where I was up every hour, kind of stressing about it, but then really getting through it and getting to a place that we're at now, which is, look, we're still, there's a long way to go, of course, but we're in by far the best place we've been since we launched as a business from the numbers, from bottom line numbers to the margins. And so getting through that period to where we are now, you don't know you've got it until you go through it.
30:15Tom Straker:Any advice for early stage FMCG founders? Don't do it! i wouldn't say don't do it but i'd say you've got to really ride the punches
30:25Toby Hoppy:this is i know it's about as cliche as possible when you draw that line of where you think that the success like where how you perceive success to be but then it's very squiggly along the way and and it is you like persistence is so key but also don't be afraid to make mistakes we've pivoted a lot like for instance the cottage cheese pivot was early than initially anticipated but we thought not butter's growing but it's not growing as quick as we'd like it to margin profile of butter is by far the worst in dairy and so like we made that quick pivot of going okay we're going to go into different categories sooner sooner rather than later and we put a lot of capital up front for that which essentially shortened our runway by three or four months but felt like it was like we didn't it wasn't that we didn't have a choice but it felt like from our side is that it's go big or go home.
31:17Tom Straker:I'm going to do some quickfire questions now. Favourite dairy product of all time?
31:22Toby Hoppy:Salted butter.
31:23Tom Straker:Founder superpower?
31:26Toby Hoppy:Compartmentalising.
31:27Tom Straker:Brand in or outside of food inspiring you right now?
31:31Toby Hoppy:Ooh, half say bold bean.
31:33Tom Straker:Last product you tried that blew your mind?
31:35Toby Hoppy:Ooh, turmeric kombucha.
31:37Tom Straker:And finally, a question we ask every guest, in your opinion, what makes a brand of tomorrow?
31:41Toby Hoppy:Thinking long term rather than for short term wins. Nice.
31:45Tom Straker:Thanks so much for coming on, Toby. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Tomorrow Browns podcast. If you did, I'd love it if you could rate or leave a quick review. It really helps other people find the show. And if you're curious for more, check out the other episodes. We've had some brilliant founders and operators share their stories. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
From the publisher
"You don't know you've got resilience until you go through it."
Toby Hoppy co-founded All Things Dairy with chef and content creator Tom Straker, building a brand that started with a viral butter video and has since grown into one of the most talked-about challenger brands in UK grocery.
This is a conversation about what growth actually looks like when it's faster than you planned for...
We cover:
- Why Toby knew nothing about dairy when he started - and why that turned out to be a superpower
- How a chef with 500 followers and a lockdown experiment became the foundation for a multi-SKU grocery brand
- The cottage cheese launch and what happens when you're 4x your own forecast
- Building a creator-led marketing engine with zero paid social
- Why 60% of their customers in Sainsbury's are under 45, and what that means for category growth
- The equity creator model: how they turned creators into genuine brand partners
- The US plan: butter first, New York restaurant next, and why cottage cheese isn't crossing the Atlantic yet
- Where All Things Dairy goes next and why naivety is still a superpower
If you're building in food and drink, obsessing over growth strategy, or just want to understand what a genuinely modern FMCG brand looks like from the inside - this one's for you.
