From Content Creators to Coffee Founders: The Rodd's Story

0:14James Rodd: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've got two guests, Will Lenny and James Marriott, co-founders of Rodd's. Will and James built huge audiences online before they ever built a coffee brand. This is a conversation about what happens when creators become operators, why attention doesn't automatically turn into loyalty, and what it tells you when 75 % of your Sainsbury's shoppers have never bought iced coffee before. Let's get into it. Hi Will and James, thanks so much for joining us today.

0:44James Rodd:Before we get into it, we'd love to hear how you got to where you are now, where you guys met, how you decided to go into business together, and what's the story behind Rod's? James, you want to take that one?

0:55Will Rodd:Yeah, I'll take this. I feel like we must have met somewhere around 10 years ago now. I can't remember the exact date. It was in an apartment in London. A joint friend of ours was playing FIFA and we had a game with one another. And we just knew that in that first 10 minutes, we knew that we'd be taking the FMCP game. It's been an interesting road for Will and I. I think we've met each other through content creation and through a somewhat of a shared platform online. I think gently and slowly realized that we work well together. and it reached a certain point a few years ago where Will and I had the conversation of we both have a very shared passion and coffee and let's see what we can do in terms of creating a new business together having made a lot of content with each other over the years and now here we are

1:40James Rodd:yeah and just to take it back to the very very start of the relationship especially the working one I think our very first interaction was James sending an application in to join my end team so it's just it's always started off on a very professional basis you ignored by the way I

1:54Will Rodd:I didn't even get a no. I got ignored for that, Ruth. Sorry, just by the way, I just had that down.

1:59James Rodd:Also, professionalism has improved since. That's good to hear. We'll get into the relationship dynamics in a bit. Sounds like there's lots to talk about. So you've both built audiences doing something completely different. What, you know, FMCG and has that been a kind of natural progression or does it feel like starting again? Yeah, so I think we always knew the project would be coffee-based. I think at the start, FMCG almost felt out of reach. I think we originally looked into kind of say our brain first went to say more like a Chamberlain coffee model where it was like beans and bags and whatever.

2:30James Rodd:And then we were just looking at the profile and demographic of our audience and thought maybe there was just too many barriers to entry to access and enjoy the product. So we were like we need something that's easy and right to drink in the hand. And then as soon as we looked at that we were like we just think all of the other competition here or there is actually a genuine gap of something that's tastes fantastic. It tastes like a coffee you would get from an actual cafe. and then we were looking at other things that were important to us, the plant-based side of things, the innovative flavours and whatever.

2:56James Rodd:And we took that and then we just talked to as many people as we possibly could to get pointed in the right direction and get our foot in the door. And how much did you actually know about the food and drink industry going into it?

3:07Will Rodd:Honestly, very little. I think what we did have was a wealth of people around us that were willing to teach us, be that from the people we partnered with quite early on in the development of the product, even when it came to going to AMC to get the product design for the first time and trying to work out what different types of things we wanted from each of the SKUs, of which we now have six. So I think what Will and I have is a strong eagerness to learn. We're always learning week on week with Antonius. Yeah, little at the beginning, but we hope we're getting there a year on.

3:38James Rodd:And did you have a clear split of roles from day one or has that emerged as the business has grown? I think we did. And then in practice, they all merge into one, I think, with James and I's schedules. it's becoming we're almost the same person we just pick up at different points when one of us is quieter and whatever but yeah very much still it's still founder but I feel like the role of founder kind of means doing a little bit of everything. I think that's fair. So let's talk about the launch your early numbers were extraordinary but that can also come with its own challenges when you know you maybe do better than you're expecting so I think you sold 100 ,000 bottles in the first two weeks why do you think it flew like it did?

4:15Will Rodd:I believe that when you build an audience over a period of time by offering them things that you have spent a lot of time and a lot of energy and have put a lot of care into. There's a level of trust and a layer of trust that's built with the audience where I would like to hope that they will give anything a go one time. So I believe what Will and I had was an audience that was curated to give something a go. And for us, our job was to make that thing good and so good that they would then be willing to have it twice. And I think that's what our main role has been in terms of flavor profile is we knew that there would be a good amount of people that would go into the store and try it out the first time.

4:56Will Rodd:But then ensuring that with every single skew, we build upon that and make people go, I wonder if this is the best one. And I think we, you know, fortunately and unfortunately underestimated the demand from those first couple of weeks and continue to sometimes under underestimate the launches since. But yeah, ultimately a good thing, I think.

5:16James Rodd:So I believe your forecast was 22 ,500 versus actual sales of 100 ,000. Talk me through the realities of that, because it sounds great, but obviously there are operational challenges, like forecasting is a nightmare. Too high, too low, problems either side. When the actual numbers came in, how did that land? Yeah, good. Then week one looks absolutely amazing. And then maybe week three, four, five and six when you've got no stock and no availability not quite a prettier picture i think that was our first experience with fmcg and realizing how long lead times can be because you're like oh we've sold out that's great let's get some more and you're going oh timelines and getting things printed doesn't quite work as quickly as that so yeah it was good i think then we really found out we i think because we forecasted 22 000 but i think we probably knew that would be the easiest part we spent so long world building the product it was like two years in development So we knew we could start gearing the content and start telling stories.

6:09James Rodd:So from the very start, we were placing coffee in videos to the point where people would recognize the coffees. And then those whole videos built around meeting each other for a coffee. So we knew it'd start fine. But then when you sell out immediately and then you've got to wait for week five or six to see if people are going to come back and buy it again, when we knew that would be the real marker of success. Yeah, that was the anxiety inducing part for sure. What point did the excitement of the launch give way to the reality of running this as a long-term business? Was there a specific moment?

6:37James Rodd:Have you reached it yet?

6:38Will Rodd:I was going to say, I don't know if I've reached it. I think obviously we have challenges and they do come sometimes more thick and fast than others. But I still have so much excitement and so much imposter syndrome when I see our product on the shelf at Sainsbury's. when I go in to buy a Rod's Brown Sugar and I go and scan it and think I'm buying myself something that is mine. It's a very bizarre experience. I think the excitement is still there. And as founders, I feel like that's important. You should always have the passion for it.

7:08James Rodd:I think for me, it first hit when we were discussing rate of sale and kind of, sorry, for me, it hit long before launch. It was, I think we were first discussing, like, okay, so we're in San Francisco. Here's this thing called rate of sale. All right, cool. This is what you'll need to hit per store per week to keep everything good and above board and it for it to be a success and then i was looking to the end of the air oh we're gonna have to sell 400 500 000 bottles by the end of the year to keep things afloat oh god james how are we doing that's so many bottles that's how are we james yeah maybe still not a hit i think mine was many moons ago

7:42Will Rodd:i was slightly less confident yeah i think from day one there's been maybe a slight difference in the optimism levels of the group. But we went into it and I think I'm somewhat holistic. So for me, the bottles, I was like, they all taste great. And we know that people want to try them well. And then Will's going, but rate of sale, but rate of sale.

8:01James Rodd:That's probably a very healthy balance, to be honest. Yeah, it's a good dynamic. An optimist and a realist. Perfect. So we've talked, skirted around this idea about needing loyalty and repeat and that attention doesn't automatically turn into loyalty. is that something that you've learned from your background in content creation how early did you bake that into the strategy for rods yeah i think it's just core principles of everything we put out james across music myself across content it's one of those things where people see you put something out and they go if they haven't clicked it before you've already built that rapport i've clicked on that before i enjoy that that's good i think we couldn't change that coming into a product i think in fmcg that's just like that but completely amplified so we needed to know if we're launching with it okay this is amazing this is great quality where the manufacturing processes are in a way to make sure it's great quality but even then you make it you're like i think that's great quality and that tastes well and you can give it 10 people and like seven people might love it but sometimes when two people don't like you're like is it great quality or not but we just thought okay we've spent so long we've done everything we possibly can to make this amazing experience yeah we'll bet on that and this is probably a fairly leading question but do you think having in existing audiences given the brand and edge that a traditional FMCG founder hasn't wouldn't have?

9:16Will Rodd:Absolutely. I think again, I think Will alluded to earlier, a lot of marketing begins within FMCG when the product is already out. In our case, we were trying to build a world, I believe a month in advance, and there was a lot of noise over what it could be, if it's going to be a cafe that people can go to, if it's going to be beans, if it's going to be, we had a lot of different ideas going on online, and we were able to build this mystery around this brand well in advance in a similar way to how music is promoted in the modern day as well so i think that gave us a very unique entry point but now over time as we seek to increase the customer base increase distribution there are more traditional means coming through rather than simply just marketing

9:58James Rodd:from via the means of social media does that feel to you does that feel comfortable uncomfortable exciting do you feel differently about it between you just about started to calm down at the minute It's taken a year, but it's just my baseline level of stress has dropped 10 % for sure. I think as we grew up all the things, and especially since we brought Antonius on as our CEO, I think, yeah, we're starting to pick up a few things, but still quite a lot left. What do you think is the biggest thing about running an FMCG business that nobody told you?

10:28Will Rodd:I would say probably lead times for me. Lead times was something that I think I wasn't expecting, be that with with campaigns that we're running or even products mpd i think that is the thing which you have to go into the year almost and start picking out the dates very early so yeah for me i'd say lead times and i think we're now coming to the point of becoming truly adaptable to that but obviously it being just the end of our first year that was things at times which was confusing

10:56James Rodd:yeah i think just to build on that as well as i had no idea i did but until you see it in practice just the scale of the operation of supermarkets and whatever because you'll go okay we're launching a new product we're launching it april 1st but obviously you've got to get all of that product in the store in different stores and all of these different layers it goes through and you're like we're all launching on april 1st but they don't all go out on the on the shelves on april 1st or sometimes you'll you'll get it in the system and the label will go out a couple of weeks beforehand so especially from the background we've come from oh you launch a big video or you launch an album or a single you go this is the day you work towards it you build all of this hype towards this one day we try to take that approach to make it a product and you go okay April 1st and suddenly after 16th of March and you know it's the flavours out or it's the week before and they're on stock or whatever so yeah we've realised we we can't be quite so granular we've got to maybe roll with the punches on that a little we've talked about how your creative background has helped with the

11:50Will Rodd:brand do you think there's anywhere it's gotten in the way funnily enough I think simply as a point of comparison with music, which is that sometimes there's an idea that if you were a content creator at some point, then that means that your music cannot be trusted. I do feel that within the music industry. So I think the fact that I don't feel it anywhere near to that level in FMCG makes me feel like perhaps not. I do feel like people are willing to give the products a go, maybe even if they're not huge fans of us, but a friend is and a friend's talking about the coffee, at least from the kind of the stories that I've heard.

12:28Will Rodd:So no, I would say I feel pretty confident in saying not really.

12:32James Rodd:And you talked about how you allocate roles and you're both doing a bit of everything. Are you doing what you expected to be doing a year in? Do you think there's going to be a kind of like division of labour in the future? We very much do the same thing maybe at different points of the year more and lean on each other a bit more. I don't think we expected to have as many flavours and be as far down the line as we currently are. But yeah, It's worse, the job descriptions haven't really changed. It's very much both still in that founder role. So 75 % of your Sainsbury's shoppers are completely new to the category, which is an amazing category creation story.

13:05James Rodd:Buyers love incrementality and bringing new customers in. How do you build loyalty with people who've never been in a category before?

13:13Will Rodd:I think for us, a big part of that is NPD. If we are able each time, as Will was alluding to earlier, the idea of if I know I like this, but I'm unsure if other people are going to like it, if seven people like it and two people don't. I think it's a great point. I think as time goes on, Will and I discuss the different NPDs and have different favorites. We always have. But if you build loyalty with the customer base and you know that every time that you release a product, they're going to give it a go once, they're also creating their own tears in their head of which one's the best, which one's, you know.

13:46Will Rodd:And I think what I've noticed, at least with my friends, when they go and they try. The new one always tends to be in the upper echelons of those rankings. If the customer base agrees with us on the idea that as we go, we continue to improve the new SKUs, we continue to improve the product and learn from previous errors, I believe that builds loyalty in the space.

14:06James Rodd:You've mentioned MPT. So you've got, how many SKUs have you got now? Six. Six is the plan to keep innovating, to keep bringing out additional SKUs, to rotate through them. Yeah, we see our role in the market as being the forward thinker ones a core part of our business is to be on the forefront of flavor trends we spend a lot of time working with researchers we'll spend researchers out in new york city and different things to go and make like a pdf of okay what are the flavor profiles cafes are working with and what's the kind of new things and have people taste test them and review them and say what can we bring to the uk ready to drink market so yes it's probably one of the most core principles of our businesses how can we set ourselves out differently as a challenger brand where there's maybe a little bit less red tape and go, okay, let's take a chance on a slightly more left field flavor.

14:52Will Rodd:And I will say also the MPDs that happen within Rods, I get this feeling that in a lot of other traditional companies, it's 20 people in a boardroom going around and going, here's the data for this one. Here's why we should do this one. I feel like some of the best MPDs that have come up that have happened within Rods have been from conversations about taste or just, oh, what if we did this and i think there's a real natural element to that and a real kind of tiramisu for example was something we hadn't seen in the space but was an ongoing joke within the community that we have and we did a lean in there but also had a product that we believed tasted amazing and wasn't overly sweet despite being a kind of dessert flavor and i think that also gives us a little bit of edge that we're willing to be a bit tongue-in-cheek and sardonic in that sense take a

15:40James Rodd:risks by the sounds of things yeah yeah and so talk me through your npd process you get like a trend someone might be out they spot a trend they bring it back to you guys that sounds good do you take it back to your community do you do friends and family taste testing we keep it internal quite a lot we have big spreadsheets of okay we start with it because it's also like it can taste amazing but does it sound good does it look good does it feel like a fit with the brand so we'll vote on naming we'll vote on packaging we'll vote on well the first round of flavor profiles and then iterate and iterate on them.

16:10James Rodd:So yeah, it's something we keep more in-house.

16:12Will Rodd:In-house to the point where I think brown sugar was called brown sugar brulee for the longest time. And I was every single time I saw brulee, I was like, why are we calling it brulee?

16:22James Rodd:I liked the brulee name, but he said they don't use brown sugar on brulee. So that's incorrect and we can't use it. I thought it was nice and fancy and modern. Maybe there's a brulee coming. There's a brulee. Space for a brulee. I won't hold my breath. have you noticed a difference between customers who are buying because they're already aware of who you guys are and they're part of the community and then someone who just comes in fresh sees it in store picks it up yeah it's hard because you're not there to see it i think i've heard you heard through friends of rods is their business i've been trying that i like it i think we had a really good moment we were handing out bottles at wimbledon last week and obviously when you have someone try it you think okay you're there you're in front of them you're thinking whatever opinion you get maybe like i don't want to i might they might love it or if they don't love it they're not really going to tell you so we were at wimbledon last week and we were handing out like 10 000 bottles and we were walking with the crowd as they were trying them and you were in amongst people like crack oh that's not bad or whatever or we were driving past on the way out and someone would crack it drink it look at the bottle and then drink it again and it was just like that was the nice one because you don't really get to see those unless it's data and And then it's even then it's not easy to track.

17:34James Rodd:Yeah, look, the biggest difference between who buys one because of who we are and what they make is just how long they stick around, right? If they buy it because they're like, this is something, they've made something amazing, they're going to be there for a while. You kind of, with this audience, you have that one opportunity. If they'll try it once, you've got to deliver then or they're not going to buy it again.

17:49Will Rodd:I remember someone at the Wimbledon tasting we did, I remember someone saying, it's like Bailey's without the alcohol, which felt like a grape. I thought that was great. I love that compliment. I would say also there's this thing I've noticed where, bit of a story time. I met a man the other day in a cafe, one of my favorite cafes in Brighton. If you're from Brighton, do you know Komodo?

18:09James Rodd:Yes.

18:09Will Rodd:Yeah. So I was sat outside Komodo and drinking a cold brew, the best type of coffee there is. And he was sat next to me. And I just had this feeling as a man who tours, I believe this man is on a tour right now. Because the way he was looking at his phone to find out the cafes, I was like, this man clearly has a list of coffees. So I ended up having a long chat with this man. Turns out he was TMing a band called Banks arcade that the synth metal band so i ended up going to the show that evening which was really interesting definitely not the usual type of music that i'd listen to but i absolutely adored the show anyway the next day i found all of their socials and followed them all and he messaged me and he said i can't believe you're one of the rods guys i've been raving about this coffee for two weeks because as people that kind of travel with work sometimes it's not they can't they don't have the time to go to a cafe, but they are coffee lovers.

19:00Will Rodd:And for him, it was insane to him that there was no good plant based option. And he saw the branding, he saw that it stood out. And he'd been buying the brown sugar one for the rest of the crew and raving about this coffee to people. So I think as time goes, obviously, there are we do have that kind of punchy social media start, we do continue to market it in that manner. But also there is word of mouth, there are more natural and traditional forms of marketing out of home in store. And we find that we are gently building loyalty within customers that actually don't care about us or don't mind who we are