Islands Chocolate on Family Business, Long-Term Thinking and Timing

0:14Hello 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's guest is Wilf Marriott, founder and CEO at Islands Chocolate. In this episode we talk about one of my favourite subjects, chocolate, but chocolate done the right way and what it really costs to make it properly. We get into sustainable cocoa, family business dynamics, margin as risk, and why being comfortable being uncomfortable might be the founder's greatest advantage. Let's get into it. Before we get into it, I'd love to hear your background and then the story behind Ireland's chocolate.

0:47Yeah, well, thank you for having me on the podcast. Really excited. I suppose they're a good place to start about me. I'm a family man. I had a great time growing up, had some great parents who looked after me very well and some siblings, which had a great time. I'm very fortunate to also have my own young family now, a great wife who's very supportive and two young kids who are probably giving me maybe three, four hours max of sleep each day, which is not great for when you're trying to run a sort of fast paced new business. But I think from a young age, I was always really obsessed with being outdoors and sport in particular.

1:27I realized quite early on that I was coordinated and that brought me towards cricket. And from the age of three, I was just getting dad to just throw balls at me literally all day, every day. And since the age of three, I think cricket was my sort of my main goal to play for England. and that was my real identity. And people knew me as sort of Wilf the cricketer, which I'm still trying to shrug off, even after sort of 10, 15 years of giving up cricket. And that gave me such good sort of experience of life, of being driven, of being processed, of meeting people who didn't have the same background as me, travelling the world, dealing with people who are much older than me.

2:12So it was an experience that I absolutely loved. and then I got to a point where and this is not to uh criticize anyone who goes on plays cricket professionally but I realized do I really want to be doing this for the you know for the next maybe two decades do I want to be chasing a leather ball around a pitch for maybe five days in a row with a potential of no results of it being a draw and the answer was no I think there's more to life for me anyway so I took a step back which is a real change for me a real big big decision it was definitely the right one at the time and also using hindsight and weirdly a couple of my family friends had chocolate businesses or were in cocoa and i said right i'd love to do experience with you and at the same time my father had invested in the cocoa business in saint vincent which was kind of quite mad at the time because he'd been in property for 25 years running quite a successful business there alongside my mother who was interior designer so they had a real sort a dream team and I thought it just sounded really exciting so I traveled to Malaysia for a couple of months worked for a big chocolate company there on the cocoa farms I worked for a smaller chocolate business here in London a sugar trader as well so I get a full sort of understanding of cocoa and chocolate and then I was looking at what dad was doing in the cocoa business and he was completely changing the way most cocoa businesses run and he was buying land sourced sorting through the best quality cocoa that brings out the best flavor but also hiring people at source which seemed like at the time the more sustained and still is the most sustainable way to grow a cocoa business and then I came to a point where I was like right I need to get a job here dad who's going to sell your cocoa this is this is a young man's game are you really wanting to be selling it and traveling the world he said okay fair enough so it came on board and had such a good first year traveling the world selling our cocoa beans so one in particular which you might know of is is pump street they make amazing chocolate on on suffix a big shout out to them they were one of my first clients i realized that the chocolate that they were making was so so good It seemed a real shame that we were spending so much money and time creating this amazing cocoa.

4:35And then we were selling to someone else to then go reap the rewards and create a brand. A good comparison is the wine industry. The best vineyards grow the grapes and they also ferment it and they bottle it up and sell it as their own brand. But that doesn't happen in cocoa and chocolate. What happens is the cocoa growers grow it and then it gets shipped to an intermediary and then a big chocolate company buys it. And there's not that fully integrated supply chain. And that was basically where the idea of Ireland was formed. There's a real gap in the market. There's a real niche here. We've got to do something about it.

5:16And still, Dad and I debate today about who came up with the name Ireland. He likes claiming my ideas. and it started very slowly sort of very slowly I basically took some bars back to the UK and for about a whole year was selling the chocolate on my own and it was tough I mean business is tough I mean I did not know and did not get a warning from enough people about how tough business is it did a business is and you know I was trying to sell chocolate bars for sort of £8.50. It wasn't working. So I took a step back and really thought, who really cares about provenance and flavour? And that's the chefs and the baristas.

5:58So we targeted early on a lot of Michelin star kitchens and we got such good traction from them. And not wanting to name job, but it's good context. We were working with the likes of Marcus Waring, Tom Kerridge, Heston Blumenthal, all of those amazing chefs. And basically, that gave us such confidence to basically prove to us, not that we didn't know, but just give us more confidence that we've got something really special here. And so we planted more cocoa. Dad and I travelled the world to find the best varieties in Trinidad. And Reading actually is one of the main quarantine centres for all the most sought-after varieties of cocoa in the world, which is very random but but it's there and yeah we just slowly just started gaining more traction started winning more business we got a listing with gales back in 2021 after covid and that was a real sort of boost to our business we started doing much more volume and to this day we are split between trade and retail and probably get into this during this discussion but we started off with trade because it was we felt it was slightly easier because we'd ring up a chef we'd say hey mate we've got some amazing chocolate amazing flavor can we come in and do a sampling with you and they'd be saying right i've got service in a couple of hours but come by and so we just pop in so zan and i my zan is a good friend of mine but also first employee we we probably had about 10 meetings a day just going around all the best sort of hotels and restaurants it was so much fun but yeah i suppose just summarizing all of that our mission which my marketing team would be pressing for me to share obviously is everything we do and every decision we make everything has to be bold in taste initially and then it has to be bold in character whilst being rooted in sustainable agriculture which is our core roots connecting those who grow it i.e the cocoa farmers with people who love it because they're at currently at this moment there is a real disconnect between cocoa farmers and the chocolatiers which is such a shame so we are doing chocolate and cocoa the right way because there's so many injustices unfortunately still in cacao lots to get into there lots of follow-up questions i've got but before we get into that i want to go back to the beginning of your almost professional athlete background um semi-pro cricket what what's the sort of venn diagram overlap there between semi-pro cricket and business what what did that teach you you might not realize i like that i like you're saying semi-pro because my mates always remind me of that you weren't actually pro you didn't make it sorry if that's wrong it's spot on it's spot on i i didn't make it and and i'm thankful i didn't because i'm talking to you now and i'm enjoying what i'm doing the venn diagram in terms of the crossovers of what I had to focus on in cricket, but also in business.

9:01I suppose it's being open-minded. It's being disciplined. It's never being too structured. You've got to be so adaptable. And one of the big things I often say is you've got to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And there's so many times in cricket where I was probably 16, 17, and have this 31-year-old first-class bowler coming in, bowling 90 miles an hour at me. And I'm quite short. I'm 5 '8". Probably was 5 '6 back then. And they'd be bowling bouncers at me. And it would be so uncomfortable and not very nice, but you've just got to get through it. And with business, there is so much that is uncomfortable about business, but you've just got to get through it because you are doing it for a greater purpose that's more than just you.

9:50it's not about you it's about all of your team it's about your cocoa farmers it's about your family and providing for them so it's bigger than you whereas if you go into a professional athlete or you are a professional athlete I think it's it's it's the same thing I mean in terms of other people relying on you but it's but it's more it's more individual you know I'm CEO of the business but I need everyone else whereas when you're an athlete it's all on you there's a little bit more control I'd say a professional athlete might disagree with me there so I wasn't pro so I wouldn't really know but I think it's really really helped me in business and given me that drive and I don't know where that's come from I think I'm a big believer in you are who you are from your conditioning and who you've surrounded yourself with and mum and dad always were very disciplined and worked really hard and you know when things come too easy funnily enough they're not actually as satisfying.

10:51I'd agree. So talk us through the brand's trajectory in a bit more detail. You mentioned some of those sort of building blocks, but you're seven years in, you've just moved into retail, just saw you guys are going into Tesco. Huge congrats on that. As you said, you started by supplying Michelin-style chefs. What were the kind of middle stages between those two things from Michelin-style to Tesco? Good question. There's quite a few things that happened. So initially started with the bars, though that was too difficult. and they actually melted a lot of the chocolate bars into buttons. I was like, okay, maybe we should sell these to kitchens.

11:24None of this was thought through. So when you start a business, you always think everything has to be so structured, but it doesn't. You kind of have to flow like a river. And just like if you hit a boulder there, right, where's the next route? So yes, started supplying the restaurants. And that was probably one of my most favorite times because we were getting such good traction and nobody had tasted a chocolate like ours before. They're used to the bigger brands, which are kind of more bland in favour, shall I say, because there's so many different origins that they sort of blend and there's a blending sort of roast.

11:57So it's all quite consistent flavour. But after this, we probably had about 70, maybe 80 restaurants on the books. Then COVID happened and everything stopped. We had so many new deals coming on, hotels and all that sort of stuff that stopped, which at the time we're thinking, oh, crikey, this is bad because it didn't stop the cocoa pods from growing in St. Vincent. so how are we going to use them but it's such a good inflection point and we've been through multiple inflection points there happened after that as well but it was like right where can we put this chocolate and hot chocolate was an obvious route and make it into into buttons and make it small buttons because just like the chefs are obsessed with provenance of flavor funny enough so are the baristas who are as you know as everyone knows obsessed with their coffee beans and where they come from and chocolate unfortunately it's a bit sad poor little hot chocolate is a bit of like an afterthought and so that's where we're trying to fill fill the gap it's difficult at the moment because coffee prices are going through the roof and so we're here saying we've got a better value hot chocolate but it's going to be more expensive and you know so it's quite tough at the moment trying to trying to wangle that one but i suppose it's where we've we've enjoyed working with those people you're speaking with real artisanal people who are obsessed with their craft and that's infectious when you chat to the coffee people i mean they're sort of on another planet talking about coffee which is awesome and we're on another planet talking about chocolate too and when you when you meet similar minds from different industries it's sort of like a great synergy and then i suppose retail is something we've always thought we wanted to do, obviously we had a bit of scar tissue from the initial chocolate bars, but it almost acts as a sort of insurance versus the trade side of our business.

13:48The trade side of our business is very reliant on macro decisions. And sometimes you might have a great relationship with a buyer for two, three years, and then they leave. And you get another buyer who's actually more obsessed with another chocolate business. And actually it's 25 % of your business and overnight they can just change it so no we can't have that risk the great thing about retail is it's less about market conditions it's less about your cost of sales and all that it's actually about what is the customer willing to pay for your product and if you can prove to the retail buyer that the rate of sales doing really well at that price then they can't delist you they want to keep you right so yeah it's been a big learning curve you know started with the cardo a lot of the smaller smaller retailers like the balian sages all really great ones to get into so that was our growth but utilizing the fact that we supply a lot of the big cafes and and trade accounts helps proof of concept and pitching into those retailers because we basically say to them your buyers your customers are already drinking islands.

15:03They just don't know it. Do you think you've benefited from, in the last couple of years, this in several different categories, former commoditized goods like olive oil and beans, bold bean, that, I would say premiumization, but also a sort of growing education of consumers about where our food comes from. And I'm thinking about citizens of soil with olive oil and talking about regenerative farming. And before then, you just wouldn't even think about it. And it feels like there's quite a lot of parallels and whether this is like a shift generally that's happening cross category that all of that education about starting to think about where our food comes from.

15:40A hundred percent. You just labeled some brilliant brands, all doing basically exactly what we're doing. You know, you can add Perfect Ted to that, you know, all about sourcing, you know, great matcha. But the thing with Chocolate and White is different is to those categories you mentioned, like Bold Bean, for example, is it's such a habitual product. and there's such a small handful of so many big players and it's an incredibly difficult market to actually penetrate and to compete with because your pricing, for example, your commercials, particularly because we're sourcing better cocoa that's more sustainable and better flavour, is going to cost a lot more than those big businesses who are sourcing African cocoa, which is much below market price and much bigger volume.

16:38And it's about that education piece, and it's about what do people really, really care about. And I think initially we thought more people cared about where the cocoa comes from than they actually do, and a lot of that actually comes down to the price. But that's a challenge that we're taking head on, and it's a slow process where we're thinking chocolate is about 15 years behind craft coffee. The time will come and there's a lot of businesses do see it. Consumer needs to be taken on that journey because cocoa is such a foreign thing unless you've been to a cocoa farm. I mean, my first trade show, I had islands on the table and I had some cocoa pods behind me, expecting everyone to know what those look like.

17:24And quite a few people came up to me and said, are those peppers? Sounds like, oh God, okay, right, this is going to be a long journey. But I do think, going back to your question, all of those businesses, you know, Bold Bean, Citizens of Soil, Perfect Head are doing real good for our cause as well. yeah I think it's and also probably the rise in awareness around ultra processed foods and what kind of is chocolate inverted commas and there's been something in the news recently hasn't there where some chocolate bars aren't actually allowed to call themselves chocolate anymore because they have cocoa in them and yeah all of that I imagine will be you know helping consumers come your way in terms of looking for real food and what that means yeah exactly exactly it's The thing on the retail shelves is you're competing on price, really.

18:17And if you're competing on price, you look at the products that you're competing against and they've got 10 % cocoa and you want to have something that's 45 % cocoa. And so it's really difficult. Are we willing to sacrifice our margin in order to compete with those prices? And the long story short is if you sacrifice your margin, that is making your business so, so risky. Margin is risk. you don't have enough comfort blanket your business is not going to work but we can compete on price the more ability we have to buy more cocoa to increase our or to get better economies of scale let's talk a bit about supply chain so you mentioned it's a closed supply chain so from growing through to making the chocolate on site and you say yours is fairer than fair trade what does that really mean and i know it's really tricky within chocolate and think tony's have done a really good job of sort of growing awareness again of like chocolate supply these are like big complicated things that are hard to manage i've got two things to say to keep it really simple because you could go down like a complete rabbit hole so what fair trade actually means for for cocoa and chocolates is fair trade will basically in in embed a 250 dollar premium on top of the market price just to explain you got the farmers they produce the cocoa and they sell it to the cooperative then the cooperative buys the cocoa from the farmers that cooperative will then sell the cocoa they will sell the cocoa for that 250 dollar premium i think it's about to go up to$350.

19:57There is no guarantee as we stand that that$250 premium goes to the farmer. Where does that money actually go? So with our business, particularly in St. Vincent, we have our own farms. We have our own team. We have our own fermentation. The money that is being paid to us is getting distributed fairly across that. and we would pay quite substantially more than fair trade. And I don't want a fair trade at all because they've done brilliant stuff and a$250 is much better than no premium. So they're doing good. We just feel like, because we actually grow Coke ourselves, we feel like there needs to be a lot more than that.

20:42There needs to be proper traceability of where that money's actually going. The second point is mass balance, which is, to give you an example, you've got a thousand tons of cocoa you've got 500 tons of that cocoa which is fair trade and you've got 500 tons of that cocoa which is not fair trade i.e it's been sourced from i don't know forested land in africa now because of the chocolate company's manufacturing facilities that cocoa will then be all mixed together called mass balance right and what the rules are is that then you would only be able to sell, of course, 500 metric tons worth of chocolate products that are fair trade.

21:24But there is no guarantee that that chocolate that you're actually receiving has actually got fair trade cocoa in it because it's a mixture of the bad and the good. Whereas when you're buying islands, every single thing is traced back and fully segregated and you know where that cocoa has come from. So every single bar that you're buying, you know it's come from the cocoa that we've sourced. It's not been mixed with some other stuff where we don't know it's come from. And so what does this mean to you and the consumer is really looking at that chocolate company and seeing is it mass balance or is it fully segregated and making sure that you trust that supplier.

22:05That side of the business, the fair and fair trade, you know, all of the business is complicated. Is it more of your kind of company internal values or how much do you try and communicate to consumers and how much of a sort of selling point of the brand is it? And has that been challenging because it's so complex? Yes, it's one of our main selling points when we're chatting to buyers. Like this is fully traceable. You know exactly where your money is going to. Here is the list of farmers that's on the traceability records. it's difficult to communicate that though to the consumer to to deborah and in dorset who's just bought our tin so that's where it's like an educational piece and you know there's a lot of it's particularly people are buying chocolates ignorance is bliss they don't really know the injustices that are there so that is just more process so you know coming on platforms like this to share is is is really really important but as i say fair trade have done some great things for for cocoa and just for raw materials and fruits and you know wheat and all that sort of stuff but for us bear in mind and this is what we will say you can trust us because we are cocoa farmers and we are chocolate makers we do the whole thing and in our eyes our way is the best way it's not necessarily the the cheapest way you get much cheaper than us but it's the best value for money what you're getting is the best value and this price is what it should be to grow and to make proper chocolate done the right way i think that's that's a big part of it isn't it is that this is how much it should cost and it's sort of similar with coffee and then the price is going up and people don't really understand why and it's annoying but actually it's like that is the cost of growing coffee that is a cost of growing cocoa and kind of a big job to be done sort of industry ride really and re-educating consumers of the cost of real food it's the same with ultra-processed food isn't it it's cheaper but actually exactly cost more and just circling back to that initial light bulb moment which was like why is no one doing what we're doing and owning their farm and like because it's so difficult and it's so expensive and it's so much easier just to buy chocolate off the shelf to remelt it and brand it as island's chocolate that's what all most chocolate companies do but that's not the right way in our eyes yeah so slow and steady growth over sort of rocket ship i'm sure it's felt like rocket ships at various points but seven years in has that been intentional especially kind of constrained by your supply chain or has that just been the organic way the business has grown it's really organic i think i've got a mate who runs a podcast called hungry dan pope who used to advise me one of his saying is slow is smooth and smooth is fast so the slower you go and the more conscious you are about the decisions you're making and making sure it's sustainable will mean that you're actually going to move faster and i think often in life and also in business you think you're actually is your choice about how quick it goes but it's actually not i mean look at matchup matchup has just completely taken off what would that have been like in 2010 it would potentially been a lot slower we're going as quick as we can i mean we've grown about 100 each year we've wanted to grow 200 but the market has dictated and you know there's been so much in cocoa that's gone absolutely crazy the market's been all over the shop as i say that river analogy we've gone with the flow and we've been processed about how quickly we go but we've also said yes to a lot of opportunities which at the time is like this is going to enable us to grow really fast but in hindsight it slowed us down we've basically gone with the flow and this is where we are and our main focus is to run a proper sustainable profitable business and we're at that stage now and it's one of the good reasons of why we've kept it this size currently is because me and my family own most of the business we've got a small handful of investors we can do it our way we haven't gone and got you know five ten mils worth investment from private equity and have you know five people on our board telling us what to do we've done it our way which has been nice i do you think it's sort of a very underrated thing timing in fmcg to your point with the matcha boom recently if you'd started a matcha brand 10 years ago but if you started a matcha brand 10 years ago and then hung on until this point is a lot of it is sometimes just hanging on and waiting for the yeah stars also also what what what is success success for everyone is is different you know some people would start a business to sell out in five years and go and live on a beach i think maybe when i started it that was probably in the back of my mind but actually what you realize and i've chatted to enough people is that is that the success or the making money part isn't isn't the thing that is actually the be all and end all it's that without saying this sounds really cliche but It is that journey that you take on it, the people you meet, the new business you get, the team you bring on, the people you can help.

27:37That's all part of it. It's not just about money. Sometimes we've won big deals. In my brain, I've said, when we win that deal, oh my God, I'm going to be happy. We're going to go out and have loads of pints. We're going to have like, it's going to be such a good couple of months. You win the deal and within two hours, you're dealing with something else that's gone wrong. is it's never as high as you think it's going to be and i think that's the same with life we're getting too philosophical but if you look back at the journey to get that deal that's where a lot of satisfaction comes you've you've been challenged by the buyer you've had the answer you've gone to tender your products won in taste now it's about price and then you negotiate you get it over the line that's that's just as fun as as winning it so success in dad and i's eyes for example is to run a profitable business and how profitable that is is is up to the up to the gods basically i think a lot of people resonate with that and spoken to a lot of people who've exited businesses and i've been in one of those businesses and it's so weird the next day even you know and how rare how often is it that people do just go and live on a beach they don't they do another thing because they miss it.

28:55It's like it's not... Dad always brings up the example because he was in property before. And property, basically, you're doing up property, you've spent the cash, you've got the house and it's going to take a year and a half for you to sell it. So there's a lot of pressure on it. And he'd say, after he'd sell the house, he'd run into the kitchen. He'd be like, mum's called Dinah. Dinah, we've completed. We've got it. And she would say, that's awesome. That's brilliant. Do you mind taking the bins out? So it's literally that moment and yeah, quite funny. You've mentioned your dad. I believe, is there four family members in the business?

29:33There is four. We have myself, dad's chairman, myself, Ned and Claude. So four of us. And then my sister Lily and mum aren't in the business. But sometimes around the dinner table, it sounds like they are. Yeah, they feel like they are. They feel like they are. I think they're a bit fed up with the chat Christmas Day. So that's interesting, sort of true family business in this day and age. What's different, do you think, about building a business with your family involved? So many good things, so many things that are also very nuanced. You know, so much about business is about loyalty and trust.

30:13And when it's the fan, you know, are people going to be in the trenches with you? And like you look at your family and you know they're going to. And when things aren't going so well or if there needs to be one of my brothers to focus on something and it's actually a bit of a rubbish job to do, but we've got to do it. It's quite tough to say because fundamentally they're your brother and you love them and you want them to be happy. But then the business is really, really important. In that moment, they need to do that job for the business and they've got to do it. And I actually know that if they do that quite tough job and we succeed from it, they will grow from it as well.

30:52Dealing with dad is brilliant. I mean, you know, definitely one of my heroes in business. I mean, he's got an engine like I've never seen. And I think all of our team will testament to that. And just got such good experience in all the legal side and the technical side of business and banking and all that side of things. I've mentioned legal I mean not much needed in legal but the finance stuff which is which is where I didn't have much experience he's really really helped but I think he'd agree that we sort of learned off each other I mean he wasn't in food business either so we've got real good sort of working relationship and but you know it's been worked on it wasn't easy at the start you know he's my dad I'm his son that relationship did occasionally like slip into it just like oh I'm done.

31:42F off. You know, you can't do that. And I wouldn't want to. You've got to keep it professional. Got to keep it professional. You almost, you walk in the office, you walk into the office and I look at them as my brothers.

31:59But I also have to park that, kind of leave that at the door. It's easier said than done, though. I'm chatting a big game here. It's quite hard. Well, what happens on Christmas Day? You've mentioned already there's too much chocolate chat. Well, we try not to chat about it. So I say, Dad, we're not talking about business today. And then it'll be a couple of hours in and I'll just be itching to talk about something. Like something's popped up into your mind. You say it and he's like, I thought we were talking about chocolate today. No, I'm not responding. You know, it's just, it's fun. But I wouldn't change it for the world.

32:30It's definitely brought us closer together as a family. We get to spend so much time with each other. I think that's one of mum's jealousies, I suppose, of dad is getting to spend so much time with his sons. But, you know, when it all works out, it's going to be so fun. I guess you see other sides to each other as well beyond the sort of normal father-son or brother dynamics. Do you know what? I've worked with dad for so long. That's all I know him as. He's my dad, but he's also my colleague and my chairman. I chat to him every day. I might know him better than mum knows him, but I've got big.

33:05I know exactly when he comes on Zoom, I'll know if he's had a good night's sleep or not, or if he's just had a coffee or not. And it would be the same the other way. So yeah, it's fine. It's quite rare. But to be fair, there's a mad stat about family businesses. In the private sector, family businesses make up 85 % of businesses in the UK. What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay, so looking forward, what's the future for Ireland? The future for Ireland is not wavering from our roots and from our values and to constantly making sure that our business is growing, people are eating and drinking better chocolate, sauce more responsibly.

33:48The bigger market share that we get, the better cocoa farmers are going to be looked after, end of. And constantly challenging the status quo. like we said before we started recording like how do we make hot chocolate more of a ritual coffee's such a ritual it's what everyone looks forward to each day i mean for me i look forward to coffee but i really look forward to a hot chocolate too how can we make that everyone's thought process so constantly thinking right everyone's doing this why don't we do it another way because that's that's how dad and i's brains work is is trying is not just not following the her just trying to do something differently that doesn't mean to say that it's the wrong thing i mean certain times it will be the wrong thing but sometimes it will come off as something great and we get some more functionality into chocolate i mean health is not going away it's getting more more limelight as it should i guess having more of an impact at source we've got some other origins we work with now we work with peru dominican republic nicaragua we've got obviously the the lifeblood of our business with which is saint vincent how can we take what we've learned there and spread that across our origins and make a real impact at source.

35:01And I've got a fantastic cocoa sourcing manager in Jonas. He wears a CocoaPod necklace, for example, that shows his dedication and making sure that he's at source as much as possible to make everything better. Do you believe that ethical supply chains can ever become the default rather than the differentiator? I think it'd be very hard in cocoa. I think it'd be very, very hard. I mean, the majority of the world's cocoa is sourced in Africa. And unfortunately, most of the farmers are relatively old, the trees are relatively old. And there isn't a really diverse sort of agri-forestry system which is used to sort of diversify the ecosystem, which in our eyes impacts the ability of the cocoa tree to keep yielding consistently.

35:52So I don't think it's going to be possible. I mean, there are certain things like EEDR, the anti-deforestation laws, basically, which are going to help. But it's going to be an uphill battle, unfortunately. If you were starting again today, anything you'd do differently? I think I'd get really nerdy about the numbers just initially before doing anything. just right analyzing a balance sheet analyzing a pnl what it actually means what gross margins we need you know i won't be ashamed to admit it but for the first like few months i was instead of doing gross margin i was doing markup i think it was annie from spoon cereal who came in to basically tell me the difference so basically i was under charging so that'd be the first thing getting really sort of on it about the numbers i mean i am now but i think we've probably left a bit of money on the table, which could have been used for other stuff.

36:50But other than that, I think you can always look in hindsight, but every decision you make at that time was the right decision. I feel I'm still confident of that. And I don't think I'd change anything. I mean, maybe what I would do is potentially start retail a little bit earlier because it's gone well for us so far but i don't think we were ready our business wasn't ready we didn't have the right people on the on the bus we do now maybe it's going well because now is the right time yeah exactly you get one shot at retail as well that's the other thing isn't it so timing is timing is important exactly i do think nothing inspires you to get deeper into the numbers and the feeling of leaving money on the table so maybe that was also necessary yeah this is true in order to have the motivation to gain margin more deeply.

37:43I'm going to do some quickfire ones now because we're coming to the end. What's easier, being an athlete or a founder? I would say an athlete because, as we mentioned earlier, I didn't actually go pro, but I feel like there is so much responsibility on one's shoulders if you're running a business because, and there's so many macro things and micro things that could go wrong you've got a team of 20 people they've got families they've got mortgages you've got cocoa supply chain you i'm just talking my experience there's 70 people inst vincent that we're employing you know cocoa markets gone bananas you know there's so many variables that can go wrong and yes if you're playing cricket you are reliant on the umpire making good decisions you're reliant on making hoping that the pitch is going to be good and so there are variables there as well but it's a little bit more under control i think it actually it's going to be it's going to be a photo finish but i'm going to say athlete would be slightly easier i think you've convinced me to be honest with that answer people on the payroll is that's that that swings it yeah favorite product in the range 65 it's our saint vincent 65 chocolate button and it's just got an explosion of flavor and nuance you have sort of banana notes at the beginning and then a little bit of citrus and then you probably get raisin notes at the end is just so good and some people might say that's not chocolate mate I want my milk chocolate which is fine but this that's our sort of like real hero product which brings out flavors which are inherent in the cocoa often the cocoa has been over roasted because you're not sure where it's come from what's been fermented and then it's sort of like a bland cocoa powder flavor that's not real chocolate in our eyes Brand you're watching right now?

39:33Any category? You kind of mentioned them earlier. I'm always watching Bold B and I'm always watching Perfect Head. I mean, they're very good at LinkedIn, which kind of helps. That's where I see them. Citizens of Soil are doing great. I make, it's running Punchy, that's doing really well. It's got Stockton so many different, you know, MS and a couple of the big multiples as well. and I think anyone who's willing to take a risk and a punt and star a food or drink brand is someone I'm watching because I'm all with them. I know how tough it is. Business hero? I think I'd probably say dad. I'd say dad.

40:11That sounds really sucky and he's going to say, you're trying to get pay rise or something, but I think I've been around him so much and seeing the ups and downs, we both experienced ups and downs and how he constantly just dusts himself off and is on to the next. He's brilliant and he's just relentless. He's like a Duracell bunny. Really, really cares. And he's very direct. I mean, he grew up in a different era, you know, where it wasn't, hi, how are you doing? Hope you had a lovely weekend. It's like, hi, straight to it. Sometimes that would maybe seem like he doesn't care about you. He cares about you deeply, but it's never personal.

40:49It's sort of like, right, this is what we need to do. It's not about person. It's about the business. And I've learned that from him initially when this first launch island, you hire people and you want to hire people that are like you, that you get on with and are just going to maybe agree with you more than others. But that's not the right hiring strategy. It's hiring the best people who actually are going to disagree with you and actually are better than you. Someone told me it's called Russian doll syndrome. You're just hiring little miniature versions of yourself. Yeah. Wow, okay. Yeah. Why have I done this?

41:20or if I surround myself with people just like me, it's a nightmare. Chaotic. Chaotic. If you weren't doing this, you would be? Well, the thing is, if money was no issue and I had a little bit of savings, let's say that, I would love to be managing a little farm in the country and writing a book. Doesn't that sound nice? One day. One day. One day. And finally, a question we ask every guest. In your opinion, what makes a brand of tomorrow? Being unapologetically, authentically human, the human element and, you know, everyone knows about AI and all that sort of stuff. I feel like the best brands are going to be the ones who are showing how human they are and how responsible they're being for the planet and trying to make everyone's lives better.