How £100 Built Lumberjacks into a Cult Food Brand w/ Brendon Manders || GTG S07 E02

0:00Hello Dragons, my name's Jaden Manders. And my name is Brendon Manders. And today we're seeking£90 ,000 in exchange for a 20 % share in our business, Lumberjacks Food Company. Before Dragon's Den, when you hit that kind of milestone, what was that like? Before we talk about the den, I watch us on the den now and I think, if that kid stood there and knew what I knew now. Like, me and my brother are very much, like I say, no culling me background, no marketing background, no business background. we very much learned on the job and we have literally built ourselves up to a point through hard work and determination like we literally we went to every festival in the we traveled the country in our van every festival we got ourselves out there we got ourselves talking about our products we got people tasting the product 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.

0:59He 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. Charlie is a three-time founding member of Startup Brands, taking each from 0 to 1 million within 18 months across different categories, channels and countries, including launching operations in the US and Australia. He is now the founder of Plugin Brands, an award-winning, outsourced FMCG sales agency working with the fast-growth food and drink brands, and Dive-In Agency, a tick-top shop agency helping brands turn social commerce into real revenue.

1:43With a background in go-to market strategy, brand development and distribution through retail and wholesale channels, there isn't any one better place to help you supercharge your brand. Charlie and the Plugin Brands team work with a host of brands including Moju, Muller, Clipper T, Who Gives a Crap and Lovecorn so if you're in need of an extra pair of hands to really step on your growth this year Charlie is the guy you need to be in touch with Getting 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.

2:23From our creamy yogurts to 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 favourite is just our natural coconut yoghurt, I have it most mornings with granola and lots of honey. Trust me, you're going to absolutely love it. Welcome back to another episode of Getting to Grow. On this week's episode, we have the very exciting Brendan Manders, who is the co-founder with his brother of Lumberjacks, the amazing spices. I am so excited to get into this episode. Thank you for coming all the way down from Birmingham to London.

2:57No, thank you for having us. And please introduce yourself and tell me a bit about what you were doing before. Yeah, so before the business. Yeah. Yeah. So my name's Brendan. I run Lumberjacks now with my brother Jaden. I'm a husband and father of five children. Five? Five children, yeah. I'm kind of jealous. Yeah. I thrive of like chaos but i love that yeah keeps me busy and uh before doing lumberjacks i was actually a self-employed barber okay um so yeah i was just sort of mobile just going around house to house doing uh haircuts for people nice and stuff um yeah and then during covid my younger brother jayden decided that he wanted to start a business um i mean we to be honest we we looked at loads of options like what could we do what what's that what's our thing is is the key like because if we're going to run a business and we pack we need to be passionate about it absolutely um so we always found ourselves coming back to food um and then i sort of suggested the season thing to my brother and my brother being my brother was like yeah let's go for that let's do it so what are your personality types in terms of like yin and yang is it like that and we are very yin and yank like i'm very like i do all the marketing i do you know i know what's hot what's not and sort of see the see the market for what it is i'm very good at like speaking to a lot of people my brother he's very much jade and he's very much like to do what that kid does at his age is incredible how old is he so he's 23 now he was 17 when we started the business wow but he's like numbers you know stick him in a meeting with the the hottest of people and he he knows what he's doing and never cracks under pressure he's got like like this element of like relentlessness to him like he like you've only got to watch the episode of dragons then to see you know i was very as everyone knows i was very emotional in there and i probably was like called as a cucumber knew all the numbers so you can't promote each other very well yeah for sure for sure and tell us about the moment that kind of defined lumberjacks was it like a childhood barbecue that you thought about oh do you know what this is this really like resonates with me yeah for sure so we started with the seasonings and uh well we actually tried a barbecue sauce to start with uh failed miserably because we never knew anything about manufacturing a sauce so then we started i said oh why don't we try and do like seasonings and rubs because we've seen like these cults like barbecue scene forming online um and i think like our passion and love came because our granddad's got this brick built barbecue and he's still got it now amazing yeah he built it in the i was speaking to him about a couple months back actually and he built it in the 70s um and yeah he got like he's got like he built his own grill he built it out of like reclaimed cottage bricks he's got like a door on it so you can put your wood and your coal and store stuff in there how cool and we got really like looking back i've got so many like fond memories of like going around my grandparents house my nana be doing all the salads doing all the food and stuff like that and my granddad would be doing chicken and burgers and like he'd always do these like chicken legs and tip beer on them and we'd all argue over who was going to have the last couple of chicken okay so very good cooks yeah for sure and my granddad's like very old school in the way he does things so um yeah looking back that's where this sort of passion comes from i suppose and you launched the brand in 2020 with just 100 quid each yeah yeah how did such like a small investment um evolve into like what lumberjacks is today yeah to be honest it's been like it's been such a journey man like we literally started with 100 pound each we were selling them during covid when like a lot of people were venturing to their back gardens because obviously that was their sort of safe space in covid and we was i feel like within the first lockdown we was very fortunate that the weather was really nice so people was really starting to use their outdoor space yeah see that as part of their home and or i might buy a grill or i might do this i might do let's get a nice seating area for us to sit on who knows how long the lockdown is gonna last yeah of course um so yeah i remember it's so crazy now i remember just buying 100 tins off this website just like as in empty tins yeah yeah yeah yeah we was like how are we going to pack it like the key thing for us is we none of me and jayden haven't got a culinary background we haven't got a food manufacturing background we haven't got a marketing background we very much learned on the job yeah um and and we sort of bought 100 100 tins went to this really like dodgy high street like sticker company that probably don't even do labels to be honest and was like can we just buy 100 labels and I was like yeah um and we just like ramped up a bit of social media to say we're going to be launching this product um and you know we didn't even have a website like it was literally via like instagram or yeah yeah we just had an instagram account we were saying we're going to do this we're going to do this and then on a day we released it um and we released this products and before i knew it we'd sold 100 of them then we ordered more we'd sold 200 then we ordered more we'd sold a thousand and how did you get that social media following in the early days how did you like to get the buy-in we was we literally just like we've seen this cult like barbecue scene forming online and there was like various different things that were happening and people that were starting pages or you know barbecue shops that would existed before that was now starting to do things big a bit like unorthodox because covid was the thing yeah um and we just started liking all the pages and following all the people like and being like who's who and like okay yeah so really engaging like with a bit of a community yeah for sure and i feel like in the early days we really did build up a community within within the industry um it was really nice as well last was it yeah last week i've just done a headed back down to a festival called sizzle fest which is at one of our retailers so cal back down in uh southampton nice and as covid like started opening up they released this barbecue festival which was like a gathering for all the people that had sort of been speaking for like a couple of years through covid and they put a little festival together on their on their retail shop and i went down there uh last week having not been there for like two or three years and obviously a lot's gone on and it was so good just to see everyone yeah he's sort of been with us from the beginning and to be honest some of those people there were people that bought off us when we didn't even have a website yeah like proper like early adopted in the brand yeah and they all back us man like what what going going down there and seeing them all again and you know meeting everyone having selfies with everyone and like just chatting about what's going on like it sort of yeah it sort of hit home a bit actually that we have got this like army of people behind us that all back us to do well which is really nice absolutely and um if you could kind of sum up one sentence of what lumberjack stands for today what would you what would you say yeah so uh so we're all about we're all about families getting together yeah everyone enjoying food and just getting the whole family together around the dining room table cooking up good times and sort of enjoying food so what we really want to do now is we we obviously started our journey within the barbecue industry we want to bring everyone's got a barbecue right that they've been to that they enjoy or they they've got a memory of being at a barbecue and everyone's having a laugh and we want to bring that outdoor sort of feel and joy of an outdoor barbecue into everyone's dining room table and get all the family together cooking together enjoying food yeah so you're you're selling a product but without without kind of with the selling of the product you're ensuring that it brings like laughing and gathering and you're kind of giving people that sort of side of it as well yeah for sure there's such there's such like a social element around food definitely um and and we just the main thing for us is like i see it with my own kids like you know my son charlie like he never used to eat chicken now we put like our barbecue seasoning on it or whatever and we'll cook a bit of that with a bit of rice and bits the kids like like lapping up like chow and it died he loves it like he actually gets excited when we have those meals and i think just to use that as a way of getting kids eating like meats that they may not have before or like getting them a bit more adventurous or you know like we obviously it's our it's our business now baby right but like he want like he started one in sweet chicken drumsticks because we told him that lumberjacks was on it i think if we can get loads of kids doing that how cool is that yeah that's really cool and also like how cool that your your little one's gonna grow up being like this is what my dad did like my dad built this like that's quite special yeah for sure for sure um so in terms of like looking at your product you what made you say like we can do what's out there better um because there's obviously there asked i do you know what it's funny i don't actually genuinely buy that many pre-made rubs what i would buy is i'd probably buy like paprika and a bit of and i'd kind of probably do it together myself because my if i think about my spice coffee at home oh my god there's probably stuff in there from like circa 1980 when i wasn't even born like you know when you have like spices and it's never actually the same flavor and taste i probably never nail it yeah whereas actually if i could have one thing that just nailed those all those occasions that i'm obsessed with cape town my found i've got family out there and my grandma's south african and there's obviously lots of brais and there's lots of rubs and we always come back with like our favorite brai rub um when i'm out there but i couldn't really tell you what's in it but i just know it's that and i love it so yeah if you can recreate that then that's also like something that is so valuable in the kitchen yeah for sure i mean our thing is we want to sort of like we want to do the hard work for you so So whether it's you're trying to do an all-out meal for all the family that everyone's going to be impressed with, we tick that box.

13:17If you want to come in from work after having travelled for, like you said earlier, you'd travelled a lot. You get home, you just think, I just need something that tastes nice and it's quick. You can throw that in your air fryer, top a bit of chicken with some of our seasoning, throw it in the air fryer, done. We want to be that all-round that sort of, you know, can make your cooks quick easy simple we've done the legwork for you and this and you can use it in a multitude of ways really um i think what what sets us apart from what's on the market at the moment is we're low in salt and sugar we don't put any anti-caking agent in our product so it's an all-natural product um and our salt and sugar content's extremely low because and the reason for that is because we did a lot within the barbecue scene um if you cook with sugars it over fire it sort of chars um so we dropped the salt and sugar content um and we just want it to be like a clean product that's all natural um that yeah you know our thing is i want all the family enjoying it i want the man who wants to cook for his family to enjoy it i want the wife who wants to cook for her family to enjoy it i also want that gym goer who wants to meal prep who potentially don't want sort of chicken and that's boring all the time and then one of my jazz that up a little um to use it we just want everyone we want to be very accessible everyone can enjoy the product and actually i think that's a really like a good point because if you do look at back of pack on lots of rubs and sauces it's not very good for you and there's probably there is a lot of salt and sugar and especially with you know the rise of ultra processed food and everybody's looking at back of pack they are taking a bit more time to be like what is in my food if i'm looking at yours and And it's like, you know, just basically the herbs and spices.

15:01And then like right at the end of the ingredients list, like salt and a bit of sugar. And a bit of sugar is going to kill you. And a bit is fine. But it's when like the first ingredient is like salt or like syrup or something that I'm a bit like, I don't want to eat that. And it's funny. Now I've kind of taken a lot of that out of my diet. Now when I do go out for like a Chinese or, you know, that type of food that is a lot of like, or even not even Chinese, like even like teriyaki stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so sweet. I'm like that literally just sugar syrup on my chicken. I don't actually enjoy it.

15:30Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, the way I can relate is like I drink a lot of like flavoured waters and stuff, but I'll always go for the non-sugar ones. But then on the sort of off chance that that isn't available, I remember buying the sugary equivalent and I couldn't drink it because I was that used to drinking the non-sugar one that it was like overly sugary for me. and if you look in sort of supermarket oils and things like that you know if you pick up 90 % of the products they are salt and sugar in the first two ingredients yeah and we and or they've got e-number this or salt or dioxide whatever and we just want to be we want to be a product that's all natural low in salt and sugar everyone can enjoy it um and yeah and just get all the family together enjoying foods because that's what it's about really definitely and how do you infuse that american style like barbecue flavor heart and soul like into your products so i mean i've i've been to i've been to america a few times and what i love about american live food is they do there's a lot of it yeah yeah but they do hot and sort of um hot and sweet very well they do sweet and savory very well you know like like ranch ranch dressing ranch sauce it goes with everything and i think what they they sort of do in like american like like culture is they live and breathe barbecue and they really push the boundaries with that and and especially like you know if you're doing like big lumps of brisket and things like that they take simple ingredients salt salt pepper garlic cover that over a brisket smoke it really well and a bit like greek food as well yeah like greek what i love about greek food is it's so simple but yet it's amazing yeah you know you get some chicken normally covered in like garlic avegano salt tomatoes cucumber a tzatziki sauce he's literally yogurt garlic cucumber a bit of salt yeah so effective in the way they use it um so just using like really simple ingredients and clean ingredients um can be can really make a difference for it and also letting the food like speak for itself as well so like letting also the flavor of like the chicken come out and the beef and the pork or whatever it is yeah you enhancing that i think that is actually the best type of food yeah for sure it's like our smokehouse beef seasoning so we do a smoke smokehouse beef seasoning in there you've got you know smoked paprika garlic onion powder there's a little bit of coriander in there there's um like salt pepper um there's some dried onion so but but what that but what we was very conscious of is if you're going out and spending x amount of pounds on a nice quality steak and you want to cook that at home we don't want to take away from the fact that you're buying a good bit of meat um so we want it to accompany the meat rather than take over it.

18:33Absolutely. I think you've got to let the ingredients speak for themselves as well. You don't want to, you're right, overpower it. Sure.

18:42So, 2023, you were stocked in 70-plus garden centres, butchers and farm shops. What was that kind of milestone like before, we can talk about the big Dragon's Den. So before Dragon's Den, when you hit that kind of milestone, what was that like and in terms of your route to market in the early days was it back a van we're delivering yeah i mean look before we talk about the den like i watch i watch us on the den now and i think if that kid stood there knew what i knew now like me and my brother are very much like say no culinary background no marketing background no business background we very much learnt on the job and we have literally built ourselves up to a point through hard work and determination like we literally we went to every festival in the we traveled the country in our van every festival we got ourselves out there we got ourselves talking about our products we got people tasting the product because i think that's like a really key thing like we can talk about our products and our seasonings and our sauces and our business as much as we want but the the number one way of getting people to sort of see what we're all about is to try the food um so yeah we traveled the country we slept in the back of our van like there was times where we did festivals and like obviously when you do the festival circuit you come to know a lot of people and a lot nine times out of ten you're bumping into the same people doing the same festivals and like i remember like looking back now like people would be like ah we're going we're going to our hotel blah blah about where he's staying and like me and my brother would half like lie about where we're staying because we were sleeping in the back of our van yeah um and yeah we'd like we go ah we're gonna go and do some shopping for tomorrow and then when everyone would leave we'd just put an airbed up in the back of our van and sleep in it uh and and you know like i think looking back that'll be like some of the best times of our life really like sleeping in the back of the van I remember one time we did a festival They had a Robbie Williams tribute act And we was We'd park behind our stand And we tried to sleep And this guy was just bailing out Robbie Williams Too early as of the morning But yeah A lot of hard work A lot of determination Making products in my mum's kitchen I remember us going to The Birmingham Wholesale Market I used to buy like 350 mangoes and I'll stand there and peel them for like eight hours a day, you know, things like that.

21:24I think there's so much to be said for that. I think you've got to get your hands dirty at the start. You've got to, I don't think you can out, what's the word I'm looking for? You can't almost like, you can't skip that bit. Like hard work doesn't happen overnight. And I don't think you can, people, you know, when you see the success of people, you assume that like overnight, oh my gosh, they're famous. what you don't see is the years of graph that they've put in behind yeah um and i don't think you can teach that you can't teach energy you can't teach that entrepreneurial spirit you can't teach that action approach like you and your brother at that age you had it you either do or you don't yeah yeah and i think you guys are you clearly incredibly determined like individuals and you want it and i don't think anybody should start a business if they are not fucking obsessed with what they're doing yeah they are so in it that they like know that if they failed you know what they've done it yeah and like that you you are going to put your heart and soul into this product or this service or whatever it is that you're starting because if you're not obsessed with it people won't buy it because I think you have to show people your passion yeah and people buy into that passion into that personal god you know what I really believe in him yeah whereas if I'm selling something to you and I'm a bit half-assed and this is why I have such a problem for wholesale agencies yeah because I'm like I want to do it now because you're not selling it like I want to sell it yeah for sure so but that showing showing that in the early stages I think yeah you're on to a you've got the secret sauce thank you I think um yeah obviously when you're in it and for me and my brother like there was no alternative the reality it is there was no alternative yeah like we was in it like we'd started this thing it had legs my brother at the time i was a self-employed barber my brother was working for amazon and it was like this is us now like we're gonna make this thing happen so there was like no alternative really and like we're borderline i think i think for a brand to work and for you to grow a brand you have to be obsessed with it it has to be the first thing you think about in the morning it has to be the last thing you think about at night and like we would literally be like right what are we doing next week to make this happen like how will we you know even post then which we'll go into in a bit like we didn't just get an investment and was like oh we sit down now chill out yeah like our thing was like right we've just got an investment off an amazing person how are we going to demonstrate to that person and to ourselves that we want this like a hundred like 110 so we never like sat down and felt i think like we never really like celebrated like little wins we just was just like it was like expected almost remember you gotta remember to celebrate the little wins though yeah you do really have to it's really important like even with my business like my day job and my podcast you can get so wrapped up and then you go six months down the line and you think actually no all these things were quite impressive I probably didn't give myself enough credit yeah um but the den yeah dragon's den yeah so you went in and you got 90 ,000 pounds for 20 of your business we did from Emma Greed yeah tell me about the experience yeah how did it come about where did I start really so so we'd built the business up to a point and we was at a stage in our business where as i say we'd worked worked really hard to get the business where it was we were stuck in garden centers farm shops butchers we was now doing fire stages so we would rather than pay a pitch fee to go to an event we'd attend an event we would then provide like a demonstration demonstration stage for the event and we would show people how to cook on fire and cook on barbecues and use our products and stuff like that as a way of activating the brand um and then my brother in all his wisdom decided to apply for dragon's den and he's very he's very sort of uh happy to say how bad the application form was because my brother never watches tv like he's very like locked in like he's a numbers guy he's very forecasting what we've got to do he's very like focused and he never watches tv really so but he happened to be watching dragons then and it came up if you like to apply here's how you do it and he applied but he literally he was like things like this don't happen to people like us is the reality so he was very like one sentence answers to the questions send it off see what happens uh and then six months went past and he kept getting this phone call from scotland because all the production team are based in scotland and you know it's like when you own a business like you get all sorts of people trying to call you kind of do your electric for your office or whatever but he always says like this phone call from scotland came he was like i really need to answer that but i don't know why but at the time he was working in the tower at this like small airport in birmingham so like it's not the whole thing you can just go i'm gonna answer this call because obviously there's planes flying around and it's safety and stuff so he let it ring out and it rang again so he said to his colleague i need to answer this spoke spoke to the person on phone hi dragon's den blah blah blah love what we're seeing with social media come and talk more blah blah blah can you send this in can you send that in uh are Are you available in three weeks' time to come and film Dragon's Death?

27:16So at this point, I don't even know that he's applied. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I literally didn't know anything. And I set up to do BBC Good Food Show at the NEC, which is arguably one of our best shows of the year in regards to revenue and things like that. So I just set the stand up. It's the first day. The doors are about to open. And my brother phones me and he's like, Brent can you come away from the stand a sec I need to talk to you so I'm thinking all sorts what's he done, what's happened I'm thinking are my kids ok who's been hit by a bus I'm thinking all sorts so I left someone who was working with us on the stand came away I was like what's the matter mate I need you to sit down so I'm like go on just tell me it's like I don't really know how to tell you but I applied for Dragon's Den six months ago and I've just had a phone call we gotta go on Dragon's Den in three weeks time and I remember being like what he's like yeah we need to get a pitch ready mate like we're gonna end up on Dragon's Den I was like okay so as you can imagine the first day of the show I'm like thinking like my head scrambled I'm ringing my wife going Jaden's just said this to me um did you you knew what Dragon's Den was before yeah yeah yeah yeah and like I've watched Dragon's for years yeah i love dragon's den like going back like i always think this now like i've watched dragon's den for years yeah i loved it yeah even as a kid like i remember i remember the whole levi thing i remember you know the the countless businesses that have got an investment in dragon's there and to sit here now and know that we we would you did it yeah so yeah so did the show from that day we near enough because it's just me and my brother it's the thing so we've had to like we're now three weeks away from going to manchester to film arguably the biggest thing of our life we didn't have a pitch my brother's on the phone to their account and going can you tell me what our net profits are because i don't know can you tell me what this means can you tell me what that means and then we had the craziest three weeks of our life and in those three weeks we're not extending no stock out because we're like inundated with having to get this stuff done people are saying oh boy are you all acting weird what's going on and then next thing i know i'm studying manchester in the lift wait in the lift yeah wait which isn't the lift it's not a lift no no so it's not actually a lift it's all on one floor yeah whoa that's confusing yeah baffled Yeah, so waiting to go in the lift to go and have the biggest moment of our life, really.

30:05Tell me about it. What was it like? It was such an experience, man. How long were you talking for? Because they obviously cut it and edited it and looked about your picture's two minutes. Yeah, so we got 18 minutes on the episode, which is actually a very, very long time. Yeah. They're normally anywhere from 10 to 12. I was in there for two hours. Wow. By the dragons. Is it a grilling? yeah it is a grilling it is a grilling i think like what was very unique about our experience was obviously we had emma on there as the guest dragon which we found out two weeks before uh so we actually had six dragons instead of five and i remember being stood in the lift for three and a half minutes roughly because they left us in there for that long and you can hear the dragons coming into the den chain and i remember thinking what are we oh my god yeah the stress like your heart must have been going at one point i like lent down like and i looked up at jayden and i said something that i won't have in the pocket there would be a few bleeps but and uh i remember standing there and the doors opened and obviously you everyone spent their life watching dragons then haven't they like there's chairs there's the fan going around in the background the scene is there and it was almost like am i dreaming yeah oh my quick pinch like what's happening yeah and i remember the doors opening and they're all sat there and then jayden started walking forwards and i thought oh it's moving and i just remember like walking forwards and standing on eric's and i remember like looking and looking down at them and obviously these are people that you've seen on the tv for years that are very successful business people and i remember just thinking what what are we doing in here?

31:51And then Jaden started talking and I thought, I need to remember what I need to say. Yeah. And then we knocked out the pitch. Sarah asked Jaden for the numbers and Jaden's like really, really good at numbers. That's his thing. So he smashed that. Yeah, he knocked the numbers out. And then Stephen asked about our background and I got a bit upset. Yeah. And a lot of people have asked me, well, I got upset. And I think it was a couple of things like, we've worked so hard to get here is a big thing this doesn't happen to people like us is another thing and what was very unique I feel is we did our pitch we did our numbers we set we poured it all out on a table and all the dragons came on side very very quickly and I think it threw me because I half expected them to sort of nitpick at things we've done or grill us about this grill us about that and they did they did grill us but as well as that there was all very like well done you and and i think it like knocked me back a bit and i thought oh i didn't expect that out of all the possibilities that was a curveball that i never expected yeah so it like knocked me a bit yeah i was like oh i don't know how i feel about that i think also it's probably like so much emotion as well like you'd there was so much build-up to this right So your adrenaline's going, you're ready to pitch, and then you say it all, and it's almost like a bit of a release.

33:19Yeah, yeah. And then it happens, and you release, and then someone... It's almost like when you know you're about to cry, and then someone asks you if you're okay. And you're like, oh, no, here it comes. And it's similar to that. It's like you've given it all, you've spent three weeks getting ready for this pitch, you've done the pitch, and then somebody comes in emotionally, and you're probably... Your barrier, your guard was probably here. like I am so bulletproof right now there's nothing you can't answer I don't know and then when you realize oh hang on a minute they're guards down I can bring mine down you probably went yeah so I so know what you mean when it comes to that kind of emotional I think I think as well like we'd had so many we believe for so long because we've had three and a half years before this moment that we've just you know people going what what so what do you do you sell seasonings like you think that's gonna work and we believed and like every time like there was something thrown at us we believed and like you know even like conversation i've got five children at home like conversations with my wife and stuff and she always like my wife is amazing right she she backs me in everything i do but like i'm having weekends away from home i'm doing this i'm doing that like like our kids are only young once and like i'm going to a like just but just trust me man this is gonna work and then for it all to for us to end up on the den and for it to go the way it went was just like amazing yeah so what changed after that episode for you yeah so so we was on the den and then obviously it went so all the dragon at one point it looked like all the dragons was going to reinvest or at least a number of them then they all started dropping out like flights and you probably see me and jayden on there looking a little bit defeated um and then emma uh gave us the investment and i can't thank her enough really like genuinely like we met her afterwards so so she gave us and i just remember putting my head in my hands and i remember thinking oh my god i can tell my wife and kids that we've done it and like yeah it was such a crazy feeling that we got this investment and like so so that happened and then obviously you see a hug us on the show we end up in the lift we do our post show interview um and then we get put in this entrepreneur room knowing we've just got an investment on dragons then and we're like what the hell and then one of the producers said oh emma wants to meet you so we spent like 45 minutes with emma backstage and like spoke to her and she's like amazing we'll like we'll get in touch we'll do this we'll do that um and then there's like a two month period after the show where we never heard anything um and they all told us that that would happen um and then yeah next thing i know we're on a call with emma going right we need to do this this this and this before the show airs so we had like an eight month period from from filming the episodes we're airing we had an eight month period um and And in that time, we literally remodelled.

36:26Looking back now, I don't know how we managed to achieve it in such a short space of time. Did she help with all the remodelling or have people that could help? Yeah, so I think... We've actually had a call recently, actually, about a week ago. And what Emma sort of said is, and it is true, she hasn't had to get involved. So we did a rebrand and she was very much like... I said, she said, what do you think about the branding? I said, well, we need to do this, we need to do that. She gave us some pointers, like make it more contemporary, really think about the colours, do this, this and this. And then it turned out my brother-in-law, actually, my brother-in-law, he's a graphic designer.

37:06Helpful. Yeah. And he's a graphic designer in London. He's done stuff for Rafa Cycling. Oh, wow. He's amazing. I have to say, my brother-in-law, this is amazing at what he does. He really is. And at the time, he was in between jobs. and obviously we come along and said oh mate this has happened come we work on our rebrand and it it's almost like the universe aligned a lot of things together because he was in a position like if he was in his current job he wouldn't be able to if he's in his new job he wouldn't be able to um but he was in this like period where he could so he did all the rebrand for us uh worked on that for hours and hours and hours with him um and then we sort of had a new website we outsourced production we literally remodeled everything um and then the week before the den we came to london we had a press week emma was actually in london because of she had press to do for dragons and stuff like that um so we met up with emma which was really cool had a few meetings forecasted what we was going to do post the show um yeah and then we traveled back to birmingham the night of airing and we had like Did you have like a watch party?

38:22Yeah I went to the Perfect Heads one Oh really? They hired a a big cinema in like near Old Street Shoreditch Way and they invited like their friends their family and they had like green popcorn they'd like done all like natural cocktails and stuff and it was a bit it was really good fun and it's quite pretty amazing like seeing them there Yeah Well to be honest and obviously Perfect Teddy if you ever watch this we obviously we had dragons and we didn't know what was going to happen and at the time Stephen posted an episode around Perfect Ted and I remember watching it knowing we was going to go through something similar and it gave us such an insight to what to expect and it literally went like near on the same as what they'd said on this episode which was amazing really but we had this watch party, we had like 150 people there, friends, family some retailers that we've been stuck with for years my wife, my kids Jaden's girlfriend and our family were there and like obviously we've never watched this episode and you don't know what they're going to edit and not edit out right they can paint you out you know that you won the investment obviously but they can still paint you out to be a bit stupid yeah exactly so you're like what is going to be shown is my wife still going to want to be with me at the end of this episode what have I bloody said yeah for sure and the thing is we knew how dramatic our episode was because obviously it's not very often you see a big ginger geezer on TV.

39:51Yeah, and then I remember watching the episode and I was sat here with my wife and my kids and that. Jaden was sat there with his missus and there was tons of people behind us. And my nan did little chicken bits in the products and popcorn and stuff. It was really cool, actually. And we watched it and I just remember like it was such a unique thing because like for us it was like this is the moment that our life changed forever and we've talked about it and told you what happened but now you all get to watch it with your own eyes which is such a unique experience because like we've told my granddad my nan my mom this happened that happened but now they get to watch it with their own eyes um and it was such a crazy thing like the uh how we went we had our website rebranded and tom jaden's school friend again can't thank tom enough we spent hours and hours and hours sat in a mcdonald's rebranding this website like coffees and like rebranded do you like this do you like that no like it really worked hard on it and there was such a lovely moment in the watch party where as soon as like the dragons like tried their stuff and said they liked it i remember tom like walking up to us while it was airing like crawling up to his laptop because he brought his laptop just in case and there was 127 000 people on the website and like obviously it was amazing for us i was like oh my god but just to see how happy tom was yeah 127 000 people on this website that he's been spending months and months and months build it was such a moment that was i was did your yeah i can imagine did your orders go yeah yeah so it just kept going and going and going and going and it's like we turned every so we was advised to turn every single notification off on shopify but what we didn't realize is we turned every single one off apart from people being able to message you so we was having so we had like thousands of messages people saying oh my god how nice to see bromies on the tv i've never cried at my tv but i'm in floods of tears like there was so many like there was thousands of them and our phones would go bang bang bang bang and it was like constantly really special yeah it was something i'll never forget man like yeah crazy and also so fun that you've got that footage forever yeah yeah like when you're older and your kids are older you can be like that was me when i was ex-old doing that and look where the business is now like you've got that really really special footage of you and your brother walking in being like i need help yeah when you're a multi-million pound you sold out to unilever you know exactly i still remember actually wait so they never told us that basically because obviously you're bound to non-disclosure agreements you're not allowed to say this you're not allowed to say that and remember season one um episode one of our season started and obviously of course we're going to watch it and it came on and it was literally like bam dragons then these are the dragons and then there's just like a two second clip of me crying like holding my eye crying and like literally for like seven weeks until our episode aired my son ollie would just go dad and like rubble is asleep and do this and i'll take the mick out of it that's brilliant that's jokes what continues so suppose the episode what continues like that doesn't make sense what continues to drive you and keep you like laser focused on what you want out of this business yeah so i think for us it's like we've had this amazing thing happens to us and like it's gave us an amazing platform like i hear a lot of people saying i you know dragons then you want to get you you want to get yourself away from a dragons then business and i'm like i get what you're saying but also that's like let's be real that's what's give us an amazing platform um so like we've just been in the thick of it is the reality like it's gone it's gone a level a level a level and our thing was like i didn't just and emma knows this as well i have to say emma's been absolutely amazing since the show like a lot of people saying oh they'll never hear of her she's doing this she's doing that like we're in close contact with her we text her all the time I had a Zoom call with her a week ago, got another one booked in for the end of the month.

44:37She's been really hands-on. To be the person she is, in the positions she is in in life, is incredible. Like, genuinely, like, she changed my life. And like, when the show aired, as I say, we had a two-month period. and we was like i said to jayden like look like we've given our heads a wobble we've got this investment emma's involved now like but our thing is like yes emma's given us the investment but we now need to prove to her that it's worth it and get her invested and i think they're two very different things so in the two month period from the dent airing to meeting her and having a conversation we was like what are we doing to show emma that we mean business because the reality is we are two lads we did start with nothing we're not a huge business we'd got an investment on a tv show emma gave us an investment but commercially emma gave us an investment through heart is the reality like commercially was we ready for investment we needed an investment but was there enough in it i don't i'm not entirely sure so our thing is like right we're not we're not only just proving that to ourself now we need to show emma that we mean business so so in the two bit two months we managed to get ourself in one of the largest distributors in the country and we got ourselves into selfridges and i remember meeting emma in london and saying look like and we've got ourselves in selfridges and she was like so over the moon that we'd managed to get into selfridges without her it was like it was funny she was like she couldn't believe it she's like fair play to you and like that's what drives me really like and my brother we're like we don't just want to be this in we don't just want to be these two lads that went on dragons then they got investment we want to be these two lads that went on dragons then got given an opportunity grabbed it with both hands and worked our absolute backsides off to run with it and like my thing is like we do a lot in our like city now like so like we've been back to our primary school we've been back to our secondary school i'm due to go to the birmingham children's hospital like our thing is like if we can do it and we are just two two lads that just give it a go anyone can do it and I think a lot now like a lot of people just need a bit of self-belief really I think yeah I mean I'm really touched it's like quite special because I think you can tell like even just with you speaking about it you are like uber passionate it's not It's a whole thing.

47:35It's family. And like the way you speak about Emma, like you are so thankful for it and grateful for it that you are going to work above and beyond. And I think that's probably what she saw as well. She saw, yes, they need the money, but they're going to, they are going to work for this. They don't expect things to fall on their lap. Like they know that this is hard work. And that's, as I said, is something you can't teach. And if people can see that, she's onto a winner because she probably knows that you are going to, you know you are going to do incredibly well you two so she's thinking that but also she's thinking i want to work with people that care yeah and you guys totally care yeah for sure i mean emma said it in a pic in a sort of speech before she gave us an investment that like she feels like she's built herself up that she wants to pay it forward yeah i feel like she's given us an opportunity and now it's down to us to build ourselves up and like i'll be honest i want to see my kids go and do well absolutely I want to see my kids do tenfold what I've done yeah and you're giving them that kind of like look look at me look what I'm doing entrepreneurial home in port yeah yeah for sure like things that are my nan my granddad and my mom ingrained in me and Jaden is if you want something you gotta work for it yeah you need to work hard yeah you need to care about the people around you yeah and I want to be exactly the same as that so like yes yes I want to be in a position to give my kids a platform, but I then want them to run with it and I want them to do tenfold what I've done.

49:03And then I want to build ourself up. If I can get to a position where we're in a position that we can do for somebody who probably isn't even born yet, what Emma's done for us, I'd be like, we've done it, I think. Yeah. Yeah. You can sleep happy. Yeah.

49:29what how do you I guess balance it all like five kids you know a wife as well like that's a massively important relationship you know your relationship with Emma you're you know growing your brand all your people that are inbound being on podcasts how how do you do it all good question uh do you sleep yeah okay probably knackered you're probably like i'm out you probably had hits the pillow and you're gone i'm actually one of them people as well where i need my sleep yeah uh or you're grumpy and not um yeah i'll hold my hands up to it i'm not very good at like doing lack of sleep or stuff like that um how do i juggle it all very fortunate that my wife's my wife's a district nurse so she works uh three days a week and on those days i'll do uh the school it's very important to me that i do the school run because i want my kids to remember me taking school so i'll do the school run on those days i'll pick them up on those days i'll do admin in between do some marketing stuff in between and i just try and schedule my week in a way that i can like monday tuesday wednesday i can work around the kids and then the rest of of the week if it's pretty much free reign if i've got to do stuff i've got to do stuff but we're very i'm very fortunate that my wife like i've been with my wife since we got together in school like and i'm very fortunate that like she gets it like yeah i think i think the thing with us is like i like like a lot of people i'm sat here saying this is only us like we're just fighting for some what are we fighting for we're fighting for a good life and i think a lot of people in the uk are fighting for a good life at the moment but she gets it like i get that she knows your mission and your vision and she's for sure yeah and like i want my kids to be in a position where they have got a platform and haven't got a struggle like we have so you know so i had i had my son when i was 16 i was living in a house by 17 and had another baby on the way like it hasn't been easy by any stretch 16 yeah yeah i found out well we found out was having my son two weeks after prom and like i remember back then yeah yeah i remember back then people like writ us off and said oh they'll end up this they'll end up that and i was like no way am i gonna do that um and now so how old is your oldest 15 15 yeah because you have an adult don't you really like he's a big boy yeah when he leaves school this year which makes me feel so old and then I think oh I'm only 32 but yeah that is actually mental I'm struggling to get my head around that yeah but is that it's funny because he's like my little brother yeah more than anything and like you know he's been on like Riley I'm saying that me and Jaden have done all this stuff the reality is Riley's done it as well I'm a son.

52:34Yeah, is he involved? He slept in the back of the van. He's worked on the stall with us for years. He will sell anything to anybody. He's probably, at his age, he's an amazing salesman. You're instilling, like, unbelievable value in your kid because, you know, having that experience of working from such a young age just puts them above so many other children. Like, he will be so employable, whether it's at Lumberjacks, which I'm assuming is probably his path of education. But even if it's not, right, and he does, like, he'll be so employable because he's got hunger he's got drive and you know you yeah it's something that as i said you can't teach so he's getting it taught from a young age as such but i think that's slightly different yeah for sure he's just he's just the very he's just lived it man yeah experienced a lot you know um and yeah that's just like a circumstantial thing really i don't even really know if i fully uh realized that that's what was happening yeah um but then obviously as well he's seen like the whole den thing like he's seen us so something that i haven't mentioned is post then so we knew we got an investment we got eight months we've never shipped any tins from china we rang our uk manufacturer uk supplier who haven't got enough tins in the country for what we need so all of a sudden my brother jayden is navigating going to a manufacturer in china that we've never done before finding a factory that makes our tins and shipping them from china which we've never done before we the we outsource production yeah we couldn't guarantee that they would manufacture it in time for when the den aired.

54:20So we had to opt to manufacture it ourselves and line this up for the second run, which meant we had to hand-stick us 60 ,000 tins before the den aired. So in between filming and airing, we had me, my brother, my son, my daughter, my grandad, my nan. Literally family were sat there in a production line. And I've got photos of it, yeah. Our whole family in this unit, stickering tins, and we stickered 60 ,000 tins in roughly five months. And we literally, that's what we did, stickered, manufactured, stickered, manufactured. That's quite special, though, because it means that those 60 ,000 customers were practically getting a handshake every time it was being delivered.

55:06Yeah, for sure. It was like, this is customer service. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember the day before it aired, me and Jaden went to the unit just to see, like just to go right we ready and we had we had all these tin like the 60 000 seasonings we had we had the 30 000 sauces we'd made and we had cardboard boxes this that the other we'd been away for a week so my son and my uncle went to the unit and started boxing up gift boxes into outer cases so we had a thousand ready to go of each product um of each bundle sorry and i remember standing in there going and jayden went let's just hope we shift it i remember being stood in there and it was so full and i was just like oh my god oh my god look at all these spices yeah what what's next for you guys then where what's on the horizon new products new launches global reach everyday barbecues what's what's next so we've done that so since the show we've done southridges we've launched with ocada and we've done a two source special buy with aldi which was amazing um they're still in store at the moment but it's been incredible like that's been that's been the thing really like even with the aldi launch like so many people like sending us pictures holding the bottles in the stores or you know i've just bought this and cut this it's been like It's so nice to have so many people backing it.

56:35For us now, we'll continue to stock in garden centres, farm shops and butchers. And I really don't want to lose that because that's like our roots, really. That's where our product is. We've always sold into those and I want to try and keep that. Maybe get into some supermarkets. can't really say too much yeah of course you can imagine and then yeah we've had some amazing calls with Emma we're due to go on QVC the end of the month so fun my mum's on QVC oh really yeah she's a presenter oh really yeah yeah yeah what's her name Fiona Fox okay see if I see her have a look for Fifi yeah yeah so we're going on QVC the end of the month which will be funny and then just get ourself out there so we're doing a lot of like demonstrations at events and talks and like you know things like bring like speaking to other people that have got an idea or a business that they want to do and sort of giving them the knowledge that we've learned because what we've learned in the past eight months compared to what we'd learned in the prior three and a half years has been incredible and like I say I look at our pitch on the den now and I think if them two knew what we knew now it would be crazy yeah um and then yeah I suppose see what happens go overseas, Emma's in America who knows Lumberjacks takes over the US you're en route guys if everything fell apart tomorrow what legacy or impact would have been the most meaningful to you that you'd left or what would you have been most proud of

58:30I've crammed a lot into 32 years on this earth right more than a lot yeah so like I'm married I've got five children do you want any more kids or is that it no that's it that's what we've done now because like having like having five kids we've decided to go and get an investment on the TV yeah do you know what I mean and then well basically Lumberdacks is your sixth baby Yeah, for sure. So my, I think my thing is we're, I would want to be known for the fact that I always tried my hardest for my family and we are two kids from our area that broke the mould and did what we did. Yeah. You came outside of like, you stepped outside a comfort zone and you know, sometimes the best things are outside of your comfort zone, right?

59:21Yeah, for sure. I mean, we've never been scared to like, never been scared to go where we need to go. Like if someone said, our thing is like, if someone said to us, to make this happen, you need to go to Scotland and back five times by road in two days, we'd do it. yeah like we'd always you set me a challenge or tell me what i need to do to make something happen and we'll do it like every time emma said ah you should try this we haven't say we're here we haven't gone to here we've landed up over there somewhere because if you set us a challenge we will work our absolute hardest to knock it out the park um so yeah i think my what would i want my legacy to be that I always broke barriers and I did right by my family yeah love that to end the episode I've got a few little kind of quick fire questions what's the season or sauce that you cannot live without mango and chile moonshot and mango it just works with everything chicken pork seafood put it on rice salad dressing it's like sweet and heat i feel like the us do that extremely well um and at the time we released it it doubled the size of our business wow okay so it's a good skew yeah if you could switch places with a founder for a day who would you choose good question if i could any founder in the world yeah any founder in the world

1:01:01Emma I'm going to say that Really? Because I just think To do what she does And be the person she is She must have an amazing Structure around her Yeah But I think UK based If I could do If I could switch with Switch for a day with someone I'd probably say Teddy If I'm perfect Ted Do you think? I just like the way they operate I just think what they've done is amazing Yeah I'd love to just, obviously one day, you never know, I'd love to just go for a coffee with Teddy and just go, let's chat. Yeah, 100%. I'll sort that out. I've got his number. Yeah, absolutely. He's great. You'll love him. Favourite barbecue memory outside of the family grill?

1:01:45Oh, favourite barbecue memory outside of the family grill.

1:01:53this is gonna sound really silly but we we do these fire stages demo stages and uh i remember us doing a demo at a festival and we was cooking and we was doing all the demos and my son riley had these waffles and he really wanted to eat these waffles but they were like just like boring waffles yeah so dave who was doing the fire stages with us hungry foxes check them out they're actually really cool he showed riley how to squirt it with water put nutella on it wrap it in tin foil and throw it in the fire and it was like it changed okay like that became his party trick like at the end of every festival then he'd like wrap up eight waffles put nutella on them spray them and he'd like feed everyone with these like with these waffles oh yeah they sound great i'm hungry now um and finish this sentence barbecue to me means cooking up good times with your family love it thank you so much for coming on getting to grow it's been such an amazing chat and actually like a really in-depth one about like family and kind of passion that um i haven't i haven't gone into depth before so really appreciate that thanks for having us thank you so much

1:03:13Thank you.