From Garage Brewing to Sainsbury’s Shelves w/ Emma Thackray | S5 Ep5 #fmcg #supplychain

0:00Did you have a team's call with Dolly?

0:01Emma Thackray:No. Phone call with Dolly? No, I missed out. Can you believe it now? I don't know what I was thinking. Gotta have a Dolly reunion. I do have a letter. I've got a letter from Dolly. Okay. One of the best things about hip hop, I think, is that we've made all the drinks ourselves from scratch. I have raised, like, millions of pounds of investment, and that's pretty cool. That's so cool. All the plans that I'd spent 12 months putting together for this big operationally successful move, like am I allowed to swear? Yeah. Yeah totally went to ****. Like we moved in and everything that could go wrong went wrong.

0:38Emma Thackray:We were basically just sticking cans in the back of my car which was affectionately known as the Boochmobile. Boochmobile. The Boochmobile. It had no air con. It was like this clapped out old banger and they had a couple of cans and my dad's like oh that's alright that. Yeah that's not bad which in Leeds means it's freaking delicious. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:04In this week's episode, I am joined by Emma Thackeray, co-founder alongside Kenny Goodman of Hip Hop Conventure. In this episode, we spoke about everything that she was doing before, which includes working alongside Dolly Parton, to everything in between, to exactly what hip hop is today.

1:21Emma Thackray:Let's get into it. Before we get into today's episode, I want to give a shout out to a special sponsor, Sam Lawrence Recruitment. We all know that finding the right people or the right job can feel really overwhelming. And that's exactly where Sam comes in. He really just gets it. It's not just about ticking boxes. It's about connecting the right people with the right opportunities. He takes the time to understand you and exactly what you're looking for, whether you're building a team or taking that next career leap. So definitely get in touch. Trust me, you'll be glad you did. At Getting to Grow, I believe that growth starts with connection.

1:56And that's where our sponsor, We Are All Marketing, comes in. I'm super excited to be partnering with Vic and the team over at We Are All Marketing. They're not just a marketing agency, they're storytellers, strategists, and your biggest advocates. Whether you're building a brand, launching a product, or strengthening your digital presence, We Are All Marketing helps you turn ideas into impact. With a personalized, results-driven approach, they ensure your vision reaches the right audience in the right way. Ready to grow your business? Visit weareallmarketing.com and see how they can help you thrive.

2:28Getting to Grow is also brought to you by the Coconut Collab. And full disclosure, as I'm sure most of you are aware, I work there. So I know how much love goes into everything that we make. We're all about creating delicious, dairy-free, plant-based treats that do not compromise on taste. From our creamy yogurts, our indulgent desserts, everything's made with coconuts and a whole lot of care. If you're looking for something naturally good but seriously tasty and my favorite is just our natural coconut yogurt I have it most mornings with granola and lots of honey trust me you're going to absolutely love it.

2:59Welcome back to another episode of Getting to Grow on this week's episode we have the co-founder of hip-hop Emma Thackeray joining us. Hello. I'm really excited to have you on please

3:08Emma Thackray:may you introduce yourself. So my name's Emma I am co-founder of hip-hop so the other co-founder is Kenny Goodman but he's not here today so I'm speaking on behalf of us both. So we're based in Manchester and we're hip-hop and we make healthier soft drinks. So excited to get all into hip-hop because this kind of category is like really blown up recently. Big time. Like hugely, it's all over social media, there's big brands out there doing it but I'm interested to hear your story and how it began. Also before you go into the I just love the packaging. It feels really like crafts, which I love. Yeah, I love.

3:44I don't know. I'm going to have one right now. Live taste test. Let's go for it. What should I have? Pink grapefruit or tropical peach.

3:50Emma Thackray:Do you know, I had a peach last night and really enjoyed it. So maybe go for the peach. And it's kind of interesting that you should say that because we are about to make some changes to our brand. I did hear about this earlier. It's always quite nerve-wracking when you're about to do a rebrand and someone goes, Oh my God, I love your brand. Well, I think it's just fun. I love the tongue and cheek of it all. I love the imagery. I love the colours. I love the font. The tone of voice of it is fun. Yeah, so we don't want to lose the tone of voice or the fun. It is very crafty, like you say. And we have come from a craft background.

4:23Emma Thackray:Oh, my God, that's so young. But we want to put our big brand pants on. Yeah, big knickers on. Yeah, we're working on that. Big trinity. Some changes. Exactly. So what were you doing before hip-hop? Okay, so immediately before hip-hop, I worked for Dolly Parton, which is quite different. Wait, hang on. Dolly Parton as in Miley Cyrus' auntie, the amazing singer, big blonde hair. The legend. Cool. So Dolly has got a charity called Imagination Library. Okay. So Dolly's dad couldn't read or write. So when Dolly, you know, made all her money and became a super businesswoman like she is, she set up the imagination library and it posts out books from children from the ages of birth to five so I was responsible for running that in the UK for about 18 months after I got back from living in America.

5:16Wow so you met Dolly Lourdes? No. What?

5:19Emma Thackray:I know I don't it's the biggest one of the biggest tragedies of my life I was meant to meet Dolly no I was I had the opportunity to meet dolly unfortunately the weekend it was happening i've got i had little kids then and we were moving house that weekend and i just couldn't make it work so no did you have a team school with dolly no phone call with dolly no i missed out can you believe it now i don't know what i was thinking we gotta have a dolly i do have a letter i've got a letter from dolly okay okay gosh but how cool it was really quite like very different quite random yeah nothing to do with food and drink so how a brilliant businesswoman really was it amazing to be under her and like learn what she was doing yeah because if you go to where she's from it's called um pigeon forge tennessee so i went out there a couple of times and she has completely transformed the town she owns dolly wood the theme park so because i so much don't know about her she's got hotels so she's got that thing where people sort of wrote her off a bit as a you know blonde singer who doesn't know much but but she is sharp as a tack.

6:27Emma Thackray:Honestly, total legend. Wow. Because it's funny, I mean, this is so bad, because I didn't listen to it. I mean, I know Dolly Parton's songs, but I literally remember I was young. I came home from school, it was like Nickelodeon was on, and there was one episode of Hand on Hannah, which, like, was so good. And Dolly's in it. And I then found out, I think, I don't know if it's auntie or whether it's godmother, but she's Miley Cyrus' godmother. Yeah, godmother. Is it godmother, yeah. And I remember her from that episode, which is an appalling way to know Dolly Parton through a Hannah Montana Nickelodeon episode.

6:55but I was quite young so yeah but it's fine and also now country's huge everyone's like there's all those like honky tonk bars popping up in like north london that I've seen everyone's got cowboy

7:04Emma Thackray:whites yeah it's coming around of that so yeah cool but yeah it was cool amazing yeah okay so you finished up with dolly um then how did you get your hip-hop moment so um I so before that I lived in America so I went out with my family I had a really young family then when the kids were babies and I went to live in America and when I was there I really got into fermented food and drink so kimchi sauerkraut and kombucha so that's where I kind of discovered it you know I went down the reason I've sort of got into kombucha and other fermented food is because I was pottering around pottering around the house with my kids I had the radio on this guy came on the radio started talking about fermented food and drink and I knew that bread was fermented and beer was fermented but I'd never properly sort of cogitated what fermentation is and then he was talking you know it's the transformation of one sort of food into another by the action of microbes that's pretty cool yeah so then I go down to the local grocery store and find some kombucha and some sauerkraut and and ate and drank those and then started to make it and then the whole kitchen was covered in random jars of bubbling stuff.

8:19Emma Thackray:Moved back to the UK. And then Kenny, business partner, other part of the brand. Kenny, we were looking to set up a business together because I was working for Dolly and that was great, but I'd always known, kind of in the back of my head, I'd really like to do something for myself. Yeah. I got really into fermented food and drink and thought maybe this could be it. So I basically quit my job and went to set up market stalls and was making kimchi, kombucha, sauerkraut, etc. And what year was this? Oh, God, like 2016, 2017. Okay, yeah, so at the beginning of the infancy of this big food boom of cool FMCG challenger.

8:59Emma Thackray:Exactly, and so I made some. Kenny and I were friends and were talking about, because he's really into health and wellness and stuff, so we were like, okay, what can we do? And we kind of set up a business together because I'd made him some kombucha. I made him some of the fermented stuff as well, and he loved it. He loved the taste of it, and it really helped his tummy because Kenny's got, like so many people I have since discovered, Kenny's got some digestive issues and it really helped. And so we were like, wow, this is cool. And obviously I'd been in the US when it was all just starting to kick off and we looked at the US, Canada, Australia, etc.

9:33Emma Thackray:And we're like, okay, we'll have a go. And did you, so you started with kombucha? No, we started with kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, hot sauce. We were testing out the market. So we were going to markets, you know, like the kind of street markets and stuff around Manchester and Cheshire and the North West. We were selling different things. So when we started, we were called Booch and Brine. Okay, yeah, of course. And then after, I don't know, like a year, maybe a bit longer of testing, and we'd started to get some listings and independents, we decided, right, we want to focus on one thing, and we focused on kombucha at that stage.

10:12Okay, and when, so then you changed to hip-hop then, like the name kind of went, no, okay. No, we had like an intermediate name, so we were, so we were booching brine, so we were

10:25Emma Thackray:thinking, we can't really keep brine if we're going to be selling a kind of, you know, delicious sweet soft drink, because people might get confused. I think it's like a salty water. Yeah, doesn't really go. Although you could lean into your sweaty Betty type vibe, which was one thought, but Yeah, of course. Or, you know, liquid death maybe. But Brian wasn't quite working for us. Yeah. And so we switched to Booch and Brew. Okay. Because we were brewing, because we were making everything ourselves. And we were there for a couple of years. So it's a kind of potted history. We were doing markets and stuff.

10:58Emma Thackray:We built a brewery in my garage. I was the sort of chief brewer and chief maker. Totally self-taught. Didn't know what I was doing. but you know was kind of learning yeah i mean as you like living in noivities like the total superpower right yeah just making making it up and making that we're probably on like chapter 10 000 of how not to do x anyway um so then we were getting some success in 2019 we moved to we built a a brewery on a farm in south manchester wow and then um and then it was going well and we were getting you know different local listings and stuff um and 2020 yeah 2021 was when we decided to change the name so we knew we also knew at that point that we didn't just want to make kombucha we wanted to branch out and make soft drinks with a gut health slant that weren't just kombucha so we needed a name that was you know could cover everything and it took us months and we had you You know, I must have read the dictionary like a million times.

12:05Emma Thackray:And we had loads of variations and did loads of trademark searches. And then literally, I think I was messing about with the word pop. Because pop's a really good word. Yeah. And because we're from the north, pop is quite a northern word as well. Pop is like Coke and Pepsi. Yeah. Just fizzy drinks. Yeah, fizzy drinks. Because we want to be, you know, we want to be accessible to loads and loads of people. and so I was kind of in bed one night on my iPhone playing around with the word pop and saw hip hop and was like oh okay and then we did a bit of a trademark search and nobody has hip hop so we trademarked hip hop and now we have it in the UK, Europe, America various other countries which is quite hip hop because it works internationally right you know everybody knows what hip-hop yeah it is amazing oh what a cool story from dolly parton to hip-hop which is kind of funny because it's sort of in music so you sort of stay close to it exactly yeah and i do i do really like music so i do yeah i do like that amazing okay so you've got the name you've built your kind of brewery i can never say that word properly brewery yeah it's quite confusing isn't it brewery it's not but i've just not yeah it's got yeah brewery and and also because people think sometimes people think when you say brewery they think you're making something alcoholic yeah naturally you do because of beer yeah because beer is like the first place people's heads will go when you probably say brewery and especially for something because because so we make two at the minute we make two different types of drinks so we've got the kombucha which is where we came from and we love but now we also make soda so we make soda that's prebiotic it's got fiber in it it's got all this good stuff everything's got the gut health slant but they're both kombucha less so but they're both pretty new to the UK so we just there's like an educational piece that we've got to do as well at the same time to get people to understand what they are and then if you throw in out we make it in a brewery they're like what yeah they're like what are you what are you selling me yeah exactly gosh yeah lots lots to be like working with so you've got your name as I said you've got your brewery and then how did like the next steps were to evolve in terms of right I've got to sell it um so so when we first started we were because I should say neither Kenny nor I have got a background in making in in FMCG in food and drink we which I think has been has been apparent at a number of times throughout the process so um And we were basically just sticking cans in the back of my car, which was affectionately known as the Boochmobile.

14:52Boochmobile.

14:52Emma Thackray:The Boochmobile. It had no air con. It was like this clapped-out old banger. And we would just drive around Manchester and Cheshire and try and get into independence and all that kind of vibe. And you'd go in and go, I've got this kombucha. And a bit later, we've got this prebiotic soda. And people were like, I have no idea what you're talking about. However, we're like, just try it. Yeah, give it a go. Yeah, just try it. So there was that side of it. Kenny's got a background in marketing and he's always run his own businesses. So he's really good at the kind of entrepreneurial. He's definitely made me a lot more entrepreneurial because this is the first business I've ever run.

15:31Emma Thackray:But he was always dead good. He was like, right, come on, we'll just walk in the shop and you'd go in and I'd be like, oh my God. But you just get into it, don't you? So it's very much like organic, like literally from my garage into an independent and then we got into Booth's which is a kind of yeah the northern waitrose who have to say have been the most supportive fantastic um group of people in supply chain and honestly I think they're really keen to showcase brands that are from from the north essentially because that's their heartland so they've been fantastic so we got in there I think the other thing that we've done because we're not from food and drink and we're not we don't have that background so we kind of we know what we don't know so we have made a point of bringing people into the brand who do no more so one of the first our first advisor is somebody called Juliet so Juliet Barrett so she's the founder co-founder of Grenade yeah she's yeah she's amazing isn't she shout out julia well she puts on touch yeah exactly and she's a total legend and she's been with us since we actually met her about um two weeks before lockdown funnily enough so i met her and then i didn't and then i didn't meet her in person again for i don't know 10 months yeah but we by that point we'd spent so much time on zoom and calls and stuff so yeah it was quite funny that one that that's how it worked out but she's she was really helpful with the name as well you know she said look if you you want to get beyond kombucha and branch out you need something that that works and you need something fun and obviously you know she built grenade and look at that so i know yeah so that's been that's been a key part of our growth story we've got other advisors in the brand as well as we've gone along and kind of brought people on board I'm sure we can talk about it in a bit but yeah.

17:28So was there ever a point in your journey where you thought this is too much I don't want to do it anymore you made a like a big error and you thought no perhaps then because I think so many founders get to that stage where they're just overwhelmed and they're like I can't I can't do it it's too hard I don't want like I don't have the time I'm out. Yeah the men are few okay so get

17:48Emma Thackray:I drink ready. Yeah, get ready, get prepared. One of the biggest, hardest moments, I think, was about 18 months ago. So I said that when we built a sort of facility on a farm, we did it because it was, you know, easy. It was cheap as chips and we needed somewhere to start. We were literally in these tunnels and we built buildings inside. And, yeah, it just kind of knocked this thing together because we wanted to make like a food safe space in a tunnel so we did all that but it was pretty small and we had outgrown it easily outgrown it by 2022 and we needed to move and we'd found somewhere to move into and that fell through so then we had to very quick this is in 2023 we had to really quickly find somewhere else to move to and by that point and we were getting big contracts and we were, you know, we were just totally over capacity.

18:43Emma Thackray:So we'd found somewhere, so we found we took over a brewery in Manchester, no, a beer brewery actually, if you're not enough, that we could adapt and make changes to. And because it was very, very last minute, all the plans that I'd spent 12 months putting together for this big operationally successful move, like, am I allowed to swear? Yeah. Yeah, totally went to shit. like we moved in and everything that could go wrong went wrong and it was right at the time um when we just landed some big deals and so we were like running like had our legs going trying to fit everything but some of the tanks didn't work and the cannon line didn't work and and i've got in my car um we'd been in for like a week or something and i remember the day i got in my car By that point, I had the second Boochmobile, which was still crap.

19:34Emma Thackray:2.9 was out. Yeah, yeah. We've moved on since then, roughly. And I got in, and I drove, and I just had to leave and go sit in the car and just have a bit of a yell and a cry, because I was just like, oh, my God, what are we doing? However. Oh, it's stressful when you, I mean, so stressful, especially when you've poured your heart and soul into it. There's also money. There's people you've hired. like yeah this isn't like oh I won't do it because you know I don't like my dinner I've cooked tonight yeah this is like a different this is a big deal because we just we worked like we'd got into Sainsbury's and we'd worked so hard to get on future brands and that was all going really well and and we we'd raised investment by this time so we've got investors who've put their hard-earned cash into their business and you don't want to let them down and and you've created this thing and and you feel like you can almost touch the brilliant next step but then everything is just is not going to plan but however was actually the best thing that could have happened to us okay for a number of reasons so first of all we reached out to a couple of our biggest investors and asked for help and they have both run and scaled and exited super successful businesses and they got stuck in and helped us, which was amazing.

20:52Amazing.

20:52Emma Thackray:And off the back of that, we set up a board. So we now have a board that we can talk to and who are made up of those investors, plus Julia and a couple of others. So that's really good. And then we also realised that, because I'd been doing all the operational stuff and my background is not operations. I used to, you know, promote books for a charity. Yeah, it's Dolly. It's quite different to running a, because effectively we built a factory so I have built a factory I've never built a factory before yeah so we we reached out to a guy called Graham Beals who was the COO of Grenade so obviously through Juliet that's the connection who's an operational genius wow so we brought Graham in and he began to sort everything out and it was brilliant yeah that's lovely isn't it it's like yeah it needs someone to like come and just also like there's no point hiring um you know someone that you've always got to hire better than you exactly because there's no point hiring that they're not because it's like well what are you learning and especially if you have no idea what you're doing yeah literally so we brought graham in he was brilliant and then the universe kind of made everything happen because graham is now our ceo okay so we've got a ceo which i think we're quite young we're quite a young business to be doing that but I think what we learned from that experience is um we needed to be we needed we've got the business to that point we'd got into Future Brands in Sainsbury's we'd moved we'd got all these other customers so we've done really well and but what Kenny and I are really good at is being scrappy and getting things going but now we needed somebody to come in who's got that experience of running a big and growing fmcg food and drink brand so so that was fantastic and i think the other thing it made us realize is we don't one of the best things about hip-hop i think is that we've made all the drinks ourselves from scratch so I know that liquid like I just know it inside out and and now we're at a stage where we're starting to do some outsourcing and co-packing because we've already you know we moved into there last year and we've already outgrown the site which is brilliant so what do we do when we next scale up do we move to a bigger factory and spend loads of capex and go through all that again or do we work with co-manufacturers who can help us scale rapidly and have amazing equipment and can take some of the stress so there was sort of those three things board ceo um do more outsourcing don't try and make everything yourself yeah so transformational wow so yeah and when you were raising investment and going through that process did you have did you find being a woman although you did have obviously Kenny with you so it was different because you did have a male presence but did you find that if you ever went to a pitchfake on your own or anything like that that you had a bit of like was it harder I think being a girl than it is being a man or were you really lucky and didn't come across any kind of like kick-ups there's a few things so I think not wanting to stereotype but I think Kenny is more comfortable at reaching out and putting himself out there and I know lots there are lots of women who are equally comfortable with that for me I am less naturally comfortable with doing that sort of thing but I've learned to get a lot better so I'm you know in the we first raised investment two and a half years ago and I'm a totally different person now to what I was then not just because of investment because of other stuff yeah of course I do think so I think it's really and we were talking before we kind of started chatting on the podcast weren't we about putting yourself out there on LinkedIn and trying to do all that stuff and female founders and investment I think is tied into some of that ecosystem and getting involved in female founder communities and events it is really London based as well so I have to come down from Manchester quite a lot I think so I think there's a lot of stuff going on that helps female founders which is fantastic I can I'm really now making a point in the even in really only in the last few months but making a point of of trying to learn about that and get myself in there because I think I could learn more people and grow I also think I've got something to offer because um with and Kenny and I've done all you know we've worked on investment together and stuff but I've now I have raised like millions of pounds of investment and that's pretty cool that's so cool and yeah it's cool yeah it is bloody cool and also we've done it from a perspective of you know we're not from it's not like I worked in investment banking and I was at a VC and I understand how any of that works and I've got amazing contacts like literally we did it from when we first raised investment we were sat in a shipping container in the farm contacting people on LinkedIn like hello we're hip-hop and my name's Emma and this is Kenny and would you like to invest in our brand and this is what we do so we've and you know our first investor um put in 10 ,000 pounds and our first round of investment we had 10 ,000 pounds and 5 ,000 pounds which is amazing because those people believed in us and then in our kind of latest round of investment well you know some of our biggest investors are putting hundreds of thousands of pounds so it's kind of and we've been learning and so yeah I mean there's so much to unpack there and one thing I am really interested in as well is of the you know 80 odd people on our cap table um less than 10 % of them are women so what's going on there why is that it's a man's world still it is changing and i do see it with all the founders i speak to like i've been i've been so lucky to have the like the plethora of founders i've had on the podcast has been phenomenal and how cool that this is also what i do on top of my day job but so still heavily men really heavily men and and you know to all our investors are fantastic i think our investors are our superpower yeah because it's funny because the men that are investing are amazing men.

27:19We're not saying, we're not taking that away at all, but it's like, it'd be great to see, you know, but women, by the power of, like, nature, we have to have, we don't have to, but, like, are, you know, we are genetically programmed to have the kids, right? The men can't do that part. And that puts us just behind years of, like, career progression than men do. And that's not our fault. But I think also that does, because lots of women do want babies, and even, like, you know, it does kind of, sometimes halt things and I think that's potentially where men can skyrocket a little bit further than women can and therefore have more earning potential therefore to invest it's harder I think um being a woman potentially that would be my perspective but then at the same time it's been like that for generations and generations and changing societal you know

28:07Emma Thackray:norms is so difficult yeah and it's a work in progress right and and also I think that you've just I think this is a bit of a female trait you just gotta crack on like that is that's the world and that's how it is and so let's just crack on and try and chip into it a little bit and make changes I think you're totally right about um you know babies I mean you know I'm running this business whilst also trying to bring up two kids yeah who are absolutely amazing because they're so because their dad my husband their dad he's got a job where he works he's away three three days a week wow so somehow we've had to manage running the business he's got a busy job but the kids are you know and and I never let in you get all the mum guilt I'm like oh my god I've not giving them all the attention that I could.

29:05Emma Thackray:Yeah, but I think it's cool. Like, if my mum was doing that, I mean, my mum's amazing. She's not a founder, but she's still 10 out of 10. I still look at my mum like, yeah, but it's given me so much. Like, I want to do what you do. Like, you're inspiring to me. Like, I think they're seeing it in their sponges when they're young. I mean, I don't know how old your kids are, but, you know, when you're young, you're just looking around being like, oh, that's information, click, click, click. Like, that's how your brain thinks. And if you're seeing that and they're growing up, they probably will be very entrepreneurial.

29:30Emma Thackray:Definitely. And it is, you're right, it's by osmosis. And I think all mums get mum guilt. Yeah. But I do see, because they're a little bit older now, so my daughter's 15 and my son is 12. Okay. And I just see these little nuggets, and I do think they're really independent because they've had to be. Yeah. So I'm not, like, everyone cannot believe how lucky I am, but I come home from work and my daughter has cooked dinner and she's washed up. Okay, yeah, no, that's rare. That's legend. What's her name? She's called Tess. Tess, you're a 10 out of 10 she's a legend that is phenomenal and my son is a legend because I was reflecting on this the other day because they've been I go, what does she cook you?

30:09oh, like she'll cook things in like chicken or she'll make pasta sauce from scratch

30:16Emma Thackray:or she'll do salads like she's really good at cooking someone out there listening to this bit of wife Tess up quick she sounds amazing she'll be really embarrassed I won't be able to show her the podcast she'll be like you'll play it in the car and she'll be like, mum, I'm on the radio, like all that, you know, the stereo, like what is my name? I'll be like, well, you know, we're saying all great things. She's a great girl. Yeah, no, she's awesome. It's funny actually because there's been about a three or four year period where she's just thought I'm the most uncool person in the world but now she comes home and she's like, oh, so-and-so said that they saw hip-hop in this shop and she's like, oh, that's actually quite cool.

30:55Emma Thackray:It's like, that's my mum? Yeah. Yeah, that's quite cool. And my son thinks I'm cool still, which is good. He's 12, so he's about to tip into the full-on teenage times. But he's funny, he's always giving me marketing advice. Oh, I love it. Fabulous. And Kenny's kids are the same as well. Because, you know, your family's where you are. And it's not just founders. It's anyone who's got a crazy job. I think your kids are in the modern world, where we're all working and you bring work home, and your kids are inevitably involved, aren't they? And there they are. They're our first testers. they're also our biggest critics so if I give any one of the you know them a drink and they try it and they don't like it they don't hold back but I think that's really important like you need really you need brutal honesty at this like if you're bringing out anything like if there is something wrong you don't you shouldn't just go oh yeah it tastes good because you want to upset them you have to say like you know that doesn't taste nice which is beneficial because if that's going out like thousands of customers you're like why didn't you say it wasn't great like I want to know um yeah but yeah that's important so sainsbury's future brands obviously an incredible incredible achievement for any brand um talk me through that kind of process and getting onto it how did you reach out to them did the electric to you like you know all that kind of stuff um so we kind of reached out we ended up getting in there in a bit of a funny way to be honest so they did a um they kind of put out a call for feedback for brands like tell us how it is trying to get in for brands that weren't in future brands talk to us about how accessible it is in the program and stuff so kenny um sort of wrote and said talked through our experiences and he was and he was honest and they were amazing because they were really open to feedback and so we got a call saying oh you've you've won the feedback competition and do you want to come and meet with us and we'll have a chat and so we went to see them and they were just lovely and we obviously They talked about the brand and that was how we kind of got that introduction with the team and then we went and showed them the product and they were really, you know, enjoyed it.