How The Modern Milkman Built a £60M Business w/Simon Mellin || Getting to Grow

0:00Like how did we move away from the milkman? Because I had a milkman when I was younger. I remember him. His name was Malcolm. He came every other Wednesday and then every Friday. So we went through quite a lot of milk. And he came in his little cart. But then I guess one day we just stopped. And I don't remember why. So we started Modern Milkman like around October 2018. We bought the domain name when we set off, you know, modernmilkman.co.uk. We couldn't buy.com. And we're like, hang on, someone had already bought modernmilkman.com. All of a sudden, like, what's going on here? Who is this other Modern Milkman?

0:28And that led us to a fifth generation dairy farmer in Ellington, Connecticut, who'd also started a business called Modern Milkman. How have you found like scaling when it comes to employment? Extremely difficult. You know, I think that's probably the hardest part of growing a business is you go through ups and downs. You know, we scaled up significantly in after COVID in terms of like team headcount. And I think wrapping people around you that are willing to challenge you and say no or challenge your thinking is really important. I think it's easy to get surrounded by people who just say yes to your ideas because you're the founder.

1:00And that is the worst place to be. I think a massive area for us where we messed up was we once tried to produce our own oat milk. It was like a terrible outcome. I remember a customer writing into us saying it tastes like piss-soaked cardboard. Oh no. That was a bit of a moment in time where we were like, hmm. And what's a piece of advice you completely disagree with? That's a good one. 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.

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3:53If 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 Simon Melon the founder of the Modern Milkman welcome thank you I'm really excited to have you on because I actually like not in kind of in line with my day job working for a dairy free company I really like milk I kind of love milk in my tea I don't know how people can have plot based milk in their tea like oh don't love it I love coconut yogurt actually like that is something I do eat a lot of I actually love the taste of coconut um but I do need I'm a dairy girl I need I need milk in team.

4:39So I'm very excited to hear all about how the idea came about where you were, you know, all the kind of stuff in between. So tell me a little bit about, I guess, what you were doing before Model Milkman and what led you to start a milk business. Sure. So I very much grew up in the food industry. So my dad was a butcher and had a butcher shop with my granddad. And my granddad had been a farmer previous to having the shop. So, you know, as a kid worked in the shop, learned about the food industry, served customers, got a good understanding of retail food. But then when I left school, and by the way, I hated school, I wasn't an academic person at all.

5:13So I've always been someone that likes to do things and learn through doing. So I ended up becoming a mechanic and getting into the motorsport industry. Travelled for six, seven years building racing cars. And that was a huge moment for me where I realised I'd learnt so much about food. Food was being lost. People didn't really understand it anymore. It was disconnected from farmer to consumer. And I wanted to go back home and start doing something with the knowledge I got as a kid. and so started building various food businesses and they were like a culmination of learnings that sort of brought me to modern milkman okay nice as a where do you remember like the exact moment that you were like i'm gonna do this yeah i mean i remember my brother speaking to me because my brother had continued to work with my dad and continued in the in the family shop and he was talking about free-range chickens and you know there's a big food movement in like the early 2000s where people really started to care again about where food came from and i think they'd realized like through the 80s and 90s how they've made a lot of changes to how we bought food and it was the wrong direction and that was like the starting point I think of when people like reversed that and started to really want to understand provenance and where things were coming from.

6:20So was your idea when you started the business were you trying to solve a big problem here were you looking at the industry going there's a really big disconnect between like product and customer? I think there were two things in my mind right one was people are disconnected from food how do we like shorten supply chains and connect people direct with products or producers or farmers and then the other was i'd had a big recognition recognition around like waste so by elongating supply chains by putting things in supermarkets we'd wrapped everything in plastic and we created all this unnecessary packaging so i was like how do we one connect people better and two remove all the waste that comes with that and were you when you set out was it uh like how do i find this question was it like was the milk delivery business at the core of like the idea not at all no okay so the idea was like you know how do we create this like circular system and let's close loop if you will for food and then when we started researching like you know we recognized the note round and we thought hang on a minute this thing that existed like in the 90s or even before that you know early 1900s onwards that was so far ahead of its time you know delivering fresh products direct from farms in returnable packaging on a regular basis way before subscriptions existed or anything like that it's died you know this this is an industry that supported 85 percent of uk households and about 40 of american households in the 60s and 70s and now it's like three percent what's happened yeah what did happen like how did we move away from the milk one because i had a milk when i was younger i remember him his name was malcolm and came every other he came went every other wednesday and then every friday so we but we went through quite a lot of milk so we had him obviously for the weekend and then like he would do like a bigger delivery and then obviously a little smaller one in the week and he came in his little cart and yeah you left all the milk bottles outside and you could then you could start to add on like orange juice but that was it there's no bread eggs it wasn't like to that level it was orange juice and milk but then i guess one day we just stopped and i don't remember why well i think the supermarket is a big driver in it you know they changed the way milk used to have a controlled sell price and run by the milk marketing board and then all of a sudden supermarkets came along milk became a lost leader right so you know it became a tool that people dragged people into shops with because it's such a it's a staple of most households right you know everybody uses it on a very frequent and and random basis and so once that happened i think that then killed the milkman because you know it just took all the margin away from milk and um and everybody's then used the supermarket it's a shame really because like it was a nice you saw malcolm in the morning i mean he was eye levels up he was up there at like five o 'clock lesson but yeah mum would always be like oh yeah have malcolm's one it's like it was a nice thing to have to your door they're part of the community weren't they yeah hugely and what made you then believe that customers i guess were ready for this how did you how did you gain the traction because you're right if if milk is a cheap thing that brings people into store how did you get people buying milk from you again but then also at a premium in a time of cost of living in a time when we're up against so many cost pressures yeah so i think well the first thing we did is we went and bought the local milk round so we thought let's let's test this and see if we can make it work so we bought a local milk round you know we paid two and a half thousand pounds for a truck we got about 100 customers and this book and this book every page was a customer it took me three weeks to learn this milk round so the guy that we bought it off i drove around with him in every morning and eventually learned this route which straight away baffled me thinking you know how does this work in the modern in the modern day i was meeting milkman that had worked you know not had a holiday for 15 17 years so i'm like you know that's not again that's not going to work at the same time we started testing ads through through facebook so we were putting ads up to see if there were interest and there was huge demand but we had no way to connect it together and so that was the idea behind building a platform that could connect people to products and was like the starting point i suppose of of what modern milkman is today and where was where were you based at that point so i'm from colme in the northwest of england and we were based up there and just really fortunately found this this milk round for sale at that point when we had this idea to start this business.

10:41And this guy that you bought the milk round off, was he like, what was he like? Was he an old guy that had been in the industry forever and ever and ever? No, he was a roofer that were looking to earn some extra cash and he was doing a milk round in the morning and then going out roofing in the day. Okay. And I think he just realised he'd also just bought it from somebody else and this milk round was getting passed around because it wasn't enough of an income to sustain someone full time. But also like dragging a working day from like, you know, 3am till 6pm was not sustainable for most people and most people yeah they look at a milk round and think oh quite old-fashioned what did you see well you looked at it and you i guess all the future you were like actually no this is the way that we're going to like progress in the food industry how after you bought the milk round and that's kind of annoying the dogs are chatting to talk about there be quiet i'm filming a podcast guys um what i'm i'm interested to understand how you financially made this work as well and also from a sustainability point of view because you must have had to begin to have poured cash into this to make it work yeah so if you come back to like the start in thinking it was all around how do we create this infrastructure to connect people to products and reduce waste and we got this milk round and we realized that there was demand and I think I realized at the point where customers wanted it but couldn't interact with it technology was needed and then by realizing technology was needed we then saw the way to get to the end goal of what we'd set out to be okay so once we've got a platform it becomes really easy you know you mentioned before that you could only really buy orange and milk through the existing milk round that's because it was a paper-based like all in your head system so having 100 different products couldn't work because how do you remember what you put on each doorstep Yeah.

12:27So when you say platform, you mean a website? Yeah, we went away, we built a website, an app for the consumer and then an app for the driver. So, you know, we could collect an order from a customer and we could take a payment. You know, sounds pretty simple, but that didn't exist. And then the back end was a driver app that told the driver the route so he could have a week off and also where to put things and what to deliver where. Which honestly, like you think, how was that never a thing before? like that's kind of mad that they did run off that for years just like in your head writing down paper yeah um it's mental how businesses worked in the kind of early days and what did the first six months look like because i guess you actually had a very different journey to a lot of the founders that come on the podcast because it's like right i have this product now i want to get in supermarkets you were like the anti-supermarket so how were the first six months so we were just really focus on like can we build any form of scale with this so obviously geographical expansion is really important you've got to build density of customers get them close together so that you can deliver like profitably so we would have slowly started to build routes up in east lancashire to see if it could work and we spent the first 12 months doing that with like a core range of what you'd expect from a milk round and then covid happened you know and that was like a huge enabler for us because obviously we'd spent a lot of time like we did a lot of knocking on doors to sell the products and sign customers up and we'd obviously knocked a ton of doors where people didn't want to sign up but they were sort of interested but on the fence of it all well covid was a reason for them not to be on the fence all of a sudden so we just got this huge influx of customers and that then taught us how to grow faster because we'd had to grow faster through through covid yeah i guess covid was like a huge like pivot for you guys in terms of growth like you have to have gone what were you doing like rough revenue pre-covid and then covid or how What was the life?

14:16Within two weeks, we 4X'd. So you can imagine, there was just a flood of customers coming in. We were really scared. We were like, do we switch it off? Do we just let these customers keep coming in? We made the decision to just let them keep coming in. I think the big benefit we found is that, obviously, all of a sudden, nobody could work. Everyone was out of a job. So we were advertising for Milkman to come in. And we were getting all sorts of really smart people applying because they wanted to help the local communities and they didn't have anything to do. So we found ourselves in this really fortunate position where we had a load of demand, but we also had a load of support to deliver that demand, and it enabled us to just grow really quickly.

14:52And what about stock? So fortunately, we'd built an infrastructure where we were working with lots of different small businesses. Okay. So instead of what you'd find in a big supermarket supply chain where they consolidate volume into one large supplier, because we'd broken that up, it gave us loads of flexibility to give people volume where they could handle it, but also if they couldn't pass it somewhere else. So the model we'd thought about was just perfect for the market when COVID happened. Yeah, just like right time, right place. Yeah, absolutely. And how many customers do you have to date now in the UK?

15:28In the UK, there's about 130 ,000 in the UK. Wow, 130 ,000. And what's the revenue now kind of in the UK area? It's about 60 million. Wow. Is that mad to think that like... Absolutely mental. Yeah. Yeah, mental. Do you sometimes go, oh my gosh, I look after 130 ,000 households living in their commodities every day? Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. A lot of people have asked me, did you ever expect it to get to this? And absolutely not. You start off with this idea, you think you can build a nice regional business. And before you know it, it's just blown up. Yeah. Because actually, in terms of your competitive set, I can't really think of many that are doing what you're doing.

16:07and especially like you know you're modernizing as well you're bringing like the cool innovative products like i saw you know you've got some nice brands that you're stocking but also you do your own like own label delicious granola that obviously works really nicely with the milk like um you know you're not a cardo yeah absolutely not yeah so it's like how actually do you stay being the modern milkman and not becoming an online retailer as well like that also is going to be i guess as you guys grow a hard thing to because lots of people are going to want to stock with you yeah absolutely but i think the other thing we started to think about is you know the milk round really is just somebody that visits your house on a frequent basis so what they do for you at that point is pretty broad and pretty opportunistic and actually what the milk round stands for is a way to be more sustainable a way to live conveniently but also fix a lot of problems in the house and that got us thinking a lot more about what else can we do on the doorstep so you know we've recently launched like collections bags where we can collect hard to recycle items you know that sits really well in the ethos of the milk round and allows you to recycle things like textiles you know kids toys waste electrical goods through our network um and then from there we're looking at what else can we do on the doorstep so what else can we collect what other problems are there in the house that we can solve uh so for us it's not just about grocery now it really is about like helping the consumer to live more sustainably yeah gosh yeah it's so much more than the milk round it's like you are solving like a huge problem for people yeah and also i think we're forgetting like as like we're young right like we're we're forgetting about the old generation that like don't know how to maybe even like log on to a laptop and do this stuff and i think there's a massive market there the grey pound absolutely where like people aren't tapping into it or like thinking about it and not from a finance yes of course financials are so important comes into it but also from a real like do good for the community like there's no way my grandma would be able to like have a thing oh where should i go do my back and also she probably doesn't want to go and recycle a battery or whatever you know if you come to her house oh my gosh you've literally saved her such a big task like it's thinking like that and then word of mouth in that world as well is huge like they'll go tell all their mates about it um were speaking of like the issues early on like in terms of the hardship what were were there like some real big failures and were there some moments where you thought this this isn't going to work i mean yeah there's been a ton of i think every day is a bit of a roller coaster right so you're always you're always battling with problems and i think you feel in the early days as it gets bigger you know it'll get easier that that's definitely not the case you know i think if anything it gets harder as you get bigger um in the early days yeah we had like through covid we're really unsure what was going to happen right we we'd won all this business we'd got all these customers to come on board but we didn't know if it was just fickle we didn't know if it was just going to die away at the end of it so we were investing heavily in like enabling the growth with that real insecurity behind you of is this going to last uh and also like what's going to come from it so i think that was a big moment of like a leap of faith as such for us where we backed it and it did work out for us well i think a massive area for us where we we messed up was we once tried to produce sour on oat milk um and it was like a terrible outcome you know we i remember a customer writing into us saying it tastes like piss soaked cardboard oh no that was a bit of a moment in time we were like you know stick to you stick to what you know and uh and carry on so yeah so yeah but it continues to be a roller coaster and uh there's definitely ups and downs in it all yeah and in terms of just from my own interest here in terms of your milk versus plant-based milk split is it still heavily dairy or is it like a really big area of like dairy free yeah no it's still heavily dairy i think like for every for every pint of non-dairy we probably sell nine pints of dairy spread across different types so yeah i think it's difficult isn't it you know if if uh if you like milk in your coffee many people just like that way and are stuck to that way i suppose yeah is i think it's you know breakfast is the most habitual purchase really is like that anyone ever makes like working in the yoga industry i know that very well and once you are hooked on a product or it's what you know it's so hard to change people's habits like it's it's almost like impossible unless like you genuinely sit down with the customer and you get them to taste it and you you know you do the whole like sensory thing with the you know this is how you can enjoy our product then they're like oh okay i'll buy you next time if you don't get that it's really difficult um also like breakfast has been one of those you know categories that for years just hasn't been shaken up like it has just been the cereal conglomerates have just owned it and i'm thinking in the old like if i look at like the old adverts for like the kelloggs and stuff it is very much like they're all sat around the table having cereal like and that's just what people knew and people know so to try and like shake that up is like it's hard it's really difficult yeah i think it's also the one meal that most people miss right so you know if there's one you're going to skip in the day it normally is breakfast those people are weirdos i honestly i some people in the office skip breakfast and i'm like i don't function without food in my stomach like i can't work at all yeah um and in terms of funding so how have you funded it to date have you had kind of external investment or has it all been self-funded?

21:35Yeah, we've had a ton. So started the business with our own money, you know, got proof of concept, got it to a point where we believed in it and thought this is time to start raising money. And then through that process, you know, went through the traditional sort of VC route. So raised, you know, a ton of VC capital and then as the business now we're sharing, moved to more like a debt as a tool to keep it growing. Okay. And how much money have you raised to date for the business? We just have a 60 million. Wow. Yeah. Whoa, that's so, That's an amazing, like, that's an insane amount of money. And how have you found that whole process?

22:07An absolute rollercoaster, right? So the world's changed a lot over the last five years. You know, we went through the hype of, like, grocery delivery being this really powerful thing and everyone wanting to back it. And then now it's not seen the same way at all. You know, times have moved on. AI is now the big thing. That massively changes your ability to do things. You know, you learn a lot through these processes and, like, you know, whether this is a good or a bad thing and whether you should or should not do it. So, yeah, it's been a roller coaster with all that stuff. I can imagine because it's a lot of money to have of someone else's.

22:42Yeah, it's a lot of pressure, right? It's a lot of pressure. You want to deliver and do good things for people that have backed you and believed in you. So you've conquered the UK, right? Sort of. Sort of. You know, 130 ,000 is obviously like a drop in the ocean to the 60 ,000 ,000 people who live in England. But there's a long way to go, but we're getting there. you're chipping away but you mentioned you now live in boston i do yeah not the link no the one in america so what took you to america so crazy story but we actually found a business in america with the same name so we said how like so you're in england just googling well so we started modern milkman like around october 2018 uh we we bought the domain name when we set off you know modern milkman.co.uk um we couldn't buy.com and we're like hang on someone had already bought modern milkman.com then we went on twitter to get the handle we got that we went on facebook trying to get the handle we didn't get that we got you know then instagram tiktok and all of a sudden like what's going on here who is this other modern milkman um so and that led us to a fifth generation dairy farmer in Ellington Connecticut who'd also started a business called modern milkman so for the first two years we were sort of really focused on the UK we thought you know let's just you know keep delivering doesn't really matter through covid got chatting to to Seth so the founder's called Seth um and you know shared war stories supported each other through these crazy growth times they'd had the same experience as we had in the UK and then in uh I think it was around August 23 I sort of reached out to him and said you know can I come and see you like we might as well meet up met up I realized that he had a huge dairy farm he was looking to they were getting crushed in America by commodity pricing on milk he was looking for direct route to market for his products we'd built like a you know a technology business where we could really help him scale this and he had like a core nucleus of customers in like the northern Connecticut region.

24:33So we said, look, if we can make our wares work in America, are you interested in merging with us? And he said, yes. So we did. It worked. And in Jan 24, we merged the businesses and August 24, I moved there to start scaling it. And it's been super successful over there and we've found loads of momentum. We're now in five states in America. You know, it's growing really well for us and very different business to the UK. You know, the same proposition, but just done in a very different way. And what's the turnover of the American business? It's growing, but that's about 25 now. Wow. So doing well.

25:07Gosh, America is a beast, right? An absolute beast. How do you tackle? I mean, it's not like you landed there with no one. I think actually, thank God you did buy a business that knew or had a customer base because actually, flipping hell, it's so hard to crack the stakes. It's so hard, yeah. also like the consumers different like they buy in bulk they have chest freezers they don't have tesco expresses they're like what's an express shop they literally don't get it they go to costco and they buy like their months worth of food yeah so you know the way we shop in london is so polar to them like i don't think i've done a bulk shop for two years yeah that's it i mean the starting point is we deliver to every customer in the uk three times a week for exactly as you say like people are more used to this regular habit yeah and there's much higher population density so it makes it easier to do that in america we deliver once a week but we deliver much larger orders that that once per week yeah and it's broken down here but to them to americans that's still like a pretty regular service so yeah but that helps us offset the lack of population density so it's much lower there and i think some these are some of the nuances that allow us to offer the same service but done in a different way to suit the market.

26:22And what do you notice about American consumers that's very different to a UK customer other than the shopping habits? I think the reason they buy for is very different. So the food system is very different over there. They very much use us for, you know, provenance of the product, belief and security of the product and what's in it. And much less of sustainability. Whereas I think, you know, the UK has got a pretty well-controlled food system, what people trust. So, and it's much more about sustainability and, you know, living and using that in a more convenient way for us here in the uk yeah there is something scary about the us food system like you go into supermarkets over there and you are a bit like you see just the awful i don't know you hear a lot i know you hear a lot in the uk but it seems it does seem to be dominated in the states yeah and you're like do i want to eat that meat i don't know if i do i think it's really hard to understand what good and bad is in america you know when i yeah as a consumer myself moving there it's uh it's just a different experience to shop to shop through so you're based over there um obviously all your family's back here do you have obviously your wife's over there you moved family out there yeah um what does your what's your wife's thoughts on you buying an american business and going over there so luckily she was really supportive so when i first went to and said look i've got you know we're gonna go to america how do you feel about that um kids as well you know everyone's everyone's obviously a bit worried uh first 12 18 months pretty difficult you know a lot of ups and downs a lot of upset a lot of a lot of homesickness missing family missing friends but I think we've really settled in Boston now you know we've we've made some really good friends out there we're enjoying it uh it's you know it's a journey it's uh you know feel quite uh blessed I suppose for the opportunity to do it so yeah it's fun now it wasn't fun at the start but it's it's fun now yeah it's tough at the start isn't it especially if you've got kids um you know you're upheaving their life as well and they they're starting to make their friend how old are your kids uh three daughters so 18 15 and 8 oh my god that's so far i'm so jealous yeah and the 18 year old moved back after a year she hated it because okay she can't drink in america school system's different she'd gone backwards in like school terms so that was a big upset for her yeah so she's she lives here she lives back here now yeah she's at uni i'm assuming she's at college college yeah yeah okay and then uh but we got back into england last week the first thing we did we went to greg's so yeah it's funny how there's those little cultural things that you miss you know i saw i was reading the ft the other day and it's like um everyone's been like bashing um you know gregs for like its ingredients and stuff and actually it's had its like biggest year yet like it's a staple of the uk it's just never slowed down no not great and also you can be anywhere in the whole of the uk and there's a gregs probably within like a couple of miles like it's very everyone loves a gregs everyone loves a steak bake they do um so a lot of your a lot of businesses are built through marketing and you know making sure that the product's being seen and heard you've obviously done that but I think actually a lot of your business probably has been built through predominantly operations yeah versus the marketing side of it how has that how has that helped you create what the modern milkman is today I think that's the biggest complex of what our business is so you've got like this consumer a platform sat on top of a logistics network and so you're sort of trying to pull together like acquiring customers in the right places to enable the logistics network to operate efficiently so you so you're sort of doing both at the same time and i think that's driven us to using certain marketing channels to allow us to build the density we need to make the the network efficient and i suppose you know we've a lot of nostalgia in the middle round so we've leveraged that and tried to use that in a lot of our in a lot of our marketing and then we've used a lot of old-fashioned skills so like you know knocking doors and literally canvassing areas to help build the network up whilst that sometimes feels a bit of a dirty old-fashioned thing it's actually really important for us because it allows us to to create to create the network in the way we need it yeah definitely and also just like you then had time with your customer face to face like it's quite a different experience to scrolling on instagram seeing an ads yeah it's funny you know i've done a lot of this myself and when you um you work with people and a lot of our guys have sold things like you know energy double glazing some of the things you don't want someone knocking on your door for but when you knock on the door and say i'm just here to help the milkman build his roundup there's quite a warm response to that because everyone loves the milk round yeah and let's talk about staff and growing that side of the business how how have you found like scaling when it comes to employment extremely difficult you know i think that's probably the hardest part of growing a business is you go through ups and downs you know we scaled up significantly in after covid in terms of like team headcount there was then a huge pivot in terms of like macroeconomics when you know the ukraine war started and financial markets changed and therefore there was less funding to allow us to grow we had to shrink the team significantly probably half the team after that really hard thing to do you know you've you've employed all these great people and you're having to let them go through no fault of their own other than just the market change so that continues to be a thing for us where you just you know you're you're at the the helm of of volatility coming through i mean even up to most recently right we've had uh the iran war which has had a huge impact on fuel fuel and oil flowing to most things in our business.

31:42So you're just dealing with these constant macro shocks, which, you know, weighs on the team. And throughout the business, what's been your most important hire? Have you, like, experienced over the, you know, X amount of years that you guys have been going? What's been the biggest and most important hire you've made? Yeah, I think there's been multiple through the journey. But for me, I'm quite a, some people say a bit crazy, right? So you get an idea in your head, you become a blinker, you're like a racehorse with blinkers on, you're running at it. and I think wrapping people around you that are willing to challenge you and say no or challenge your thinking is really important.

32:16I think it's easy to get surrounded by people that just say yes to your ideas because you're the founder and that is the worst place to be. So, you know, there's definitely been people that have come in and done that but we've got some great people now that definitely are able and willing to tell me I'm being crazy and calm down a little bit. Yeah. What would happen if all your systems went down? it'd be an absolute nightmare has that ever happened it's not so we do have backup systems where we revert to paper let's say and we've got pdfs of routes and deliveries and all the rest of it but i mean we do hundreds of thousands of deliveries a week so you can imagine and all these deliveries are you know three four products and every delivery is different so yeah let's hope that doesn't happen yeah i'm just thinking in the world of like hacking and all that now that is yeah you know like you've had co-op been hit by huge hacks and their stores were empty you know M &S had the same it's quite scary and with you guys being so operationally based it's like god what happens if that does happen like yeah I mean we think about this a lot so we've got systems and protection yeah exactly and we do a lot to protect ourselves uh but yeah scary scary definitely scary very scary um how do you balance the relationship with like farmers producers and then customers because obviously um you know demand's going to keep going up and with the farmers and the producers that you're finding how do you let them how do you kind of control that that supply chain yes i think it works differently for different products but for us it's really about trying to balance um you know the customer needs and wants in terms of the range that you surface them with with the types of supplies you can find in each area so we built our system to work regionally so not to just have a whitewash range across the mark across the uk but look at like is there certain suppliers or products in certain regions that would work really well there so um and that brings its own challenges right because you're managing regional ranges across across the market but yeah it really is like some some of its customers putting ideas forward of what what they want to see some of its sourcing it some of its people approaching us so there's a broad mix really of how we do that and we spoke we touched on earlier like you know you must get loads of people wanting to like list with you because obviously yeah you are have access to so many customers and people's homes right how do you decide what products you want to list within your business uh part of it's customer demand so like and then the other side of it is we're not trying to be a supermarket so for us it's not about we don't want thousands of skews that's difficult for us to arrange that um so it's just about the core grocery shop and ensuring that the products that we're looking at the products that we're going to list do fit within that section are things that you regularly use in the household on a repeat basis so that drives a lot of the thinking there's definitely like nuances that sit around that and we are we are exploring now the idea of working with partner brands and can we pull you know rather than just pulling an individual product in can we pull a range of another consumer brand into the platform and deliver those products through our network okay interesting yeah that's like i get a different avenue of your business and what has been one of your like favorite parts of building modern milkman today i think one of the great things is uh farmers are very proud of seeing their let's talk about milk right they're very proud of seeing their milk go back into an old-fashioned glass bottle and go in and go step in a traditional way and you know even though um you know they could probably put volume into Tesco or supermarkets or however that might look you can just see a glint in their eye when they see it going that way and I think that for me and being able to bring it back in this way has been a pretty proud moment and what's been your lowest moment oh man I think probably coming out of of Covid and then going into the whole Ukraine war and the big flip in financial markets and changes there and I was having to pivot the business pretty hard you know reduce headcount and just like hunker down and and push profitability rather than growth I think that was a very a very tough six to our months yeah that it has and these are things that you never can control like everything's out of your control and that's life right like most most things in life are out of your control but it's how you manage it and how you then you know go forward from it because lots of people that are working for you they have kids they have mortgages like it's tough to have those conversations until you're in that position you never understand it yeah um i do think though they're the times when you learn the most so they're horrible right nobody wants to be doing them but you don't learn in the good times i think you learn all your best lessons in the bad times so yeah and how has your role changed from like if you go back for buying that van for two grand and looking at business now yeah how what is your day-to-day within the business so i think that's been the hardest thing for me personally that evolution you know i'm a definitely a doer yeah we mentioned at the start i learned through doing things so and now i don't do anywhere near as much as i'd like to do um so i think the evolution is moving away from doing things yourself to enabling others to do them and you know sharing the vision ensuring that they understand how they can support that and helping them on that way so most of my day now is really about supporting the team to be able to do their jobs rather than me me doing my job and sometimes that can feel like you're not delivering value and i think that's hard but you've got to remind yourself that actually you're delivering even more value because you're enabling others to do that yeah how are you at delegating terrible yeah really yeah yeah definitely i mean hopefully getting better at it but um yeah it's not an easy back to the point right if i see something i want to fix it i want to get involved and change it and i think sometimes that can be quite frustrating to the team because you know you're sort of trying to do their job for them and that's not through me wanting to do that it's just a passion of wanting to fix it yeah for sure it is hard like delegating is tough because you're just oh i can do it in two minutes versus me explaining it to you and then you doing it but you have to enable them of course you do yeah and then also like they get better at it and then they can progress but you actually actually are disabling them if you're never allowing them to do it yeah and a lot of people in our team now are better at these things than i am yeah so really i'm just going to do a worse job of it by sticking my nose in yeah and culture is a really big one within the business like you know i hear a lot on the podcast how culture can like really make or break a business and like it can rot if you get the wrong person in and it can like really ruin a business and then when you have an amazing culture people are like you know they're motivated to work for you they're excited to go into the office how what's your culture like at the modern moment so we're trying i mean we've got a strong set of values so you know we have four values the two that sit at the top for me are curiosity and bravery so i think those two things work really well together uh in a business like ours you need to constantly be curious you know looking for ways to solve problems and you know enable things to happen but i think you can't be curious without bravery because if you're not brave enough to like back your ideas they never happen uh and then the two values that sit beneath that are you know together and real so i think it's we try and be very honest with each other whether it's good or bad and then together is all about supporting each other and working together in a kind way and what's end goal for you?

39:41what are you trying to achieve? when you're 70 what do you want to sit on that sofa and go I did this? so the mission for me is to really own the doorstep of the household and then integrate more products and services into the household we mentioned before around the milk round really just stands for this service that touches your house frequently and helps you live more sustainably but in a convenient way. And so, like, you know, milk we see as the entry point to that house and to build the relationship with the customer, but it's absolutely just the starting point and not the end point. We're really focused now on what are the other products and services that we can give to the consumer to just, like, enable them to live in a better way, remove hassle from problems in the house.

40:23And just something that people are proud of. You know, we want a modern milkman box at every doorstep that you're really proud to have there, and it's like a beacon. of you know i live in a more sustainable way and if there was a sentence that like you live by like what's a motto that you like you know if you're having a really low day or having a bad day what is it that like gets you out of bed and keeps you going yeah i think for me it's just like being that one percent better every day you know little changes compound to big impact yeah and yeah that's the one for me 100 i think i'm quite impatient me too and i'm like well i don't want to be one percent better i want to be 100 because i'm like well what's this how long is this one percent how long is it going to take me like i can't stand all that yeah i mean i know how important it is but i just struggle with it in my head so that yeah it kills me when i'm not at end goal absolutely like straight away i'm like sober in a china shop i'm like no but i see the end goal now i wanted this second what do you mean i have to wait yeah which is only becoming a more and more issue you know with the younger generation and like instant gratification they can all stop on amazon it's there tomorrow yeah it's a problem isn't it yeah because if you if it's like a personal thing there's not a button you can press yeah yeah absolutely yeah but nobody's perfect right so i've got to keep reminding ourselves that and nobody ever will be no absolutely not um if are you going for world domination here like you're in the uk you're in america well some like states of america are you is is the next goal to kind of go right let's take over america and then let's do europe or is it like no no we're just going here germany did it go go go yeah i mean america is a very big place so i think and you you realize that even more moving there you know it's it's actually quite scary just how big it is and just the opportunity there so for us just very focused on like uh on america at the minute and even just the northeast america and just nailing that and then scaling out from there.

42:18So, yeah, not in a rush to world-dominate, just really keen to, I suppose, improve the service we've got, add more value to the service we've got, do more things for the consumers we've got, and grow in that way. Yeah. I think the idea of America is a very sexy one. It's like, oh, I want to crack America. You see it with actors, they all go to Hollywood, and it's the same thing, but so many failed actors in Hollywood, et cetera, et cetera. It's the same with food and F &B and stuff. And I don't think people realize how complicated it is. And I think we are so spoiled in England. Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Morrison's, Asda, what own potentially 100 % of household penetration.

42:56You get those four retailers, that's it. You've kind of got the UK. What the hell? That's not saying America. No idea. Where do you even begin? Like even one grocer, you know, we're near it. Like they don't have that like capture of the state. Agreed, yeah. there's like regional people isn't there the big players and then but it's just so big right i mean you've just got like i mean what 380 million people in america spread across like you know how big is it i mean some states are bigger than the uk in their own right so you have to localize as well because like looking at the you know state of new york to texas they don't want the same product totally different whereas generally in the uk it's pretty similar isn't it yeah very generalizing here because obviously every like london is very different to say i don't know Liverpool but whatever you can get in Liverpool waitrose you can probably get I don't know if there is Liverpool and waitrose in Liverpool but same to be whatever it's similar nowhere near is that going to be the same in Texas to Minneapolis you know it's like all very very different if I gave you 250 grand right now what's the first thing you would do with the money in the business I'd go on holiday would you no I would have been silly yeah I'm not sure I think we'd just continue to where would you put it where would I put it that's a good question I'd probably take it to America and try and open another state with it but surely 10 euro grand is not going to no it wouldn't even scratch it it would probably do that one doorstep yeah one doorstep yeah but you put it into America growing it yeah I can probably answer that a bit better for you go on

44:35yeah I'm not sure on that you know I'm not sure where I'd go with it yeah Is there like a patch in the business at the moment that you're like, I could really do with it actually casual? Would you put it into like meta ads or? Yeah, you could definitely put it into that. I was just trying to think of a better answer for you, but that probably is where we go with it in the simplest way. You just get some more customers with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Customatic condition. I mean, it helps grow the business. And what's one thing founders spend way too much time worrying about? I think there's a lot of things, right?

45:04But I think you just go through this yo-yo of like existence. So like one day everything feels amazing, and the next day you feel like your world's going to end. And I think learning to live in the middle bit and not get too high, not get too low, for me has been pretty important. Yeah. And what thing do founders not worry enough about? I think the people side of it sometimes. I think you get, again, this is a personal experience, but you get focused on a problem and then not really understanding how you bring people on that journey with you for that problem. So the communication of how you're thinking and what you're doing.

45:37and what's a piece of advice you completely disagree with that's a good one

45:48I think sometimes like people talk a lot about you need to know what you're doing to to attack a problem but I think for me coming at a problem with first principles approach and not knowing anything about it is really powerful so I think that can be I think not knowing anything about the problem you're trying to solve can sometimes be an amazing like superpower naivety also that's just not real life like you can't know everything about everything and go into it knowing everything like what like that's just impossible yeah so yeah it just doesn't work like that like you can't i don't think anyone's ever gonna ever know anything there's probably even jeff bezos is probably like i don't know the answer to some of this stuff like it's how yeah but like think about it from a high perspective you know you'll go and hire someone for someone that's got like a seasoned experience in that problem but then there's also a world where you just bring a really smart person in that's really curious yeah and throw them at the same problem yeah who gets the best outcome yeah and it's not always the person that's got the core experience in that problem yeah yeah yeah for sure sometimes it's just attitude absolutely like i'm such a believer in you can teach everything other than energy and like those Those two things, you can't teach it.

46:59You have it or you don't. You either got it or you haven't. Yeah, 100%. I can teach you everything else, but I need you to have a go-getter attitude and a hungry attitude to wanting to learn. Because everything else you will. But if you don't have energy... Yeah, you need a willingness, don't you? Yeah, you need a willingness, yeah. Right, quick fire round to close the interview. Best business decision? Starting. Worst business decision? oat milk biggest operational lesson uh america just how big it is one company you really admire at monzo i just love how they uh involve the customer in developing the product one founder everyone should learn from

47:47um i'm loving jeremy clarkson i know i know he's not a founder but i just what he's done for for the British food industry. Yeah. And also, like, you know, highlighting the farmer and the challenge the farmer has, I think, really, yeah, hats off to him. Yeah, you're right, actually. He's done such an amazing job and he's done it in, like, a fun, educating way. I love a bit of Clarkson's farm. And he's burning his own money to, like, educate us all just how bad it is. Yeah, we've made, like, one P or something. Yeah. Yeah, nothing, yeah. Nothing. Obviously, caveated by the fact he probably got paid 150 million for the answer.

48:19Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's ignore that bit. Let's ignore that bit. um one belief you've really changed your mind on um yeah that's another good one um i've always i mean for me i've always been really like i'm up for trying anything so uh i've never really like had a belief that i've not you know i've just been open to it all yeah and what does success look like for you i think that changes all the time so I think you start off with success of growth and I think then you just start off with you know success of stability and happiness that comes from it yeah and for somebody listening to the podcast now thinking I'd love to start a business but I'm a bit nervous about it or like the financials and how I risk it all what would you say to them you've just got to get going I think you learn so much through doing and you know you don't actually start understanding the problems you're going to face until you start doing it so just crack on and have a go and actually last I just thought of is there anything about the business that you would change if you could start over again um no no not at all I think because we started with something that already existed it made it a lot easier for us to sort of develop into into what it is today well Simon And thank you so much for coming on Getting to Grow.

49:43I've learned so much about it. And I'm so excited to get my hand on this milk and have a delicious coffee. So, yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for having me. Brilliant.

50:11Thank you.