This Brand Is Changing How People Drink | Wednesday’s Domaine | GTG S07 E06

17:06Zoe Fox:hard now yeah it's it's it's unbelievably hard and I think the the answer the simple answer is there's no one thing that you do you have to have a kind of composite or or a toolbox of of kind of you know options or channels that you're using to contact and reach that customer and it's interesting because we're a business that's been built direct consumer and in the independent on and off trade and we're now moving towards more mainstream retail and grocery and actually so much of what we've done to date has been about the battle of getting on the shelf but actually it's won and lost in getting the products off the shelf and so that's where we need to move you know from doing something which could be considered quite niche and quite quirky through to kind of mainstream brand awareness and that's a completely different set of challenges but the way I would answer the question in terms of what we do at Wednesday's Domain is there's a huge amount of storytelling and narrative and long-form creative you know we have two newsletters that we've written from day one one's called Table Talk one's called Picky Bits and Table Talk celebrates all of the basically bollocks that you talk about around the table with your family and friends it celebrates meandering conversations that don't really have a beginning or an end and picky bits as little snippets you know did you see this have you seen that and hopefully you know there's over 20 000 people each week that receive those emails now and the open rates are crazy and that's because we're not selling people products we're and we're not even selling them the brand of Wednesday's Domain we're just trying to insert ourselves into their lives in in a small but meaningful and joyous way.

18:46Luke Hemsley:I think the big word there is community.

18:48Zoe Fox:Yeah, it is. And, you know, if Wednesday's Domain were to go to pot tomorrow, something I would be proud of is the way in which we've embraced that and really stuck with it. And the number of emails that I get back from people saying, you know, this is utterly bizarre and comedy, but in a very loving and kind of positive way, really, that's the kind of thing that I'm very proud of, I'd say.

19:13Luke Hemsley:Definitely. and I think you've made a connection with someone else through your brand and I think that's also a big thing for a founder is that they've built that community and hopefully you'd like to think that person may have bought products down the line but if they haven't, you've caught their attention and you've managed to explain something that's important to you and I think that's also a really big part of what you said as well. And as I mentioned earlier, alcohol-free drinks do have a bit of a rep of tasting a bit crap and I remember one experience that I had that was in a pub and I don't know why I wasn't drinking it.

19:51Luke Hemsley:I can't actually remember the reason, but I just didn't fancy a glass of wine. I didn't want any alcohol. But you're right, I definitely didn't want a J2O because of how much sugar is in it. And don't get me wrong, I don't mind a Diet Coke, but I maybe had one earlier in the day, so I didn't want another one or whatever. And it's not a very fun drink to have with a group of mates. It's just a DC and an ugly glass, isn't it, with some huge lemon wedges or whatever. It's not very nice.

20:14Zoe Fox:It's been kicking around for a few days.

20:15Luke Hemsley:Yeah, I'm a bit over it. And they had an alcohol-free wine, and I was like, oh, do you know what? I'll grab a glass of that. Oh, my gosh.

20:22Zoe Fox:Firstly, the smell was so foul,

20:24Luke Hemsley:like fish-skinny smell, like so grim. And then I had a taste, and my boyfriend kindly bought me the glass of wine, and I just thought, I can't drink that. And he was like, well, you know, that's six quid or whatever. And I said, you try that. It was so bad. I thought people can't be ordering this. So how do you overcome that barrier? Why do alcohol-free not taste as good? I mean, that's probably a stupid question because actually, duh. But why is there that taste issue?

20:50Zoe Fox:Yeah, it's not a stupid question at all. And a big part of what we do is around education. And it's really interesting hearing you tell that story, Zoe, because when we are pitching and we are introducing ourselves to people, we always acknowledge that point first. We always say alcohol-free wine has historically been terrible in the same way that alcohol-free beer was once terrible and people of a certain age will remember a product called Calibre and they all have a kind of rye smile and a chuckle and they're like oh god that was terrible but now I love Lucky Saint or Days or Big Drop or Guinness 00.

21:23Zoe Fox:You know that's changed completely to the extent where people have almost forgotten that Calibre used to be a thing. so to answer your question why does alcohol free taste so bad i think again if you use beer as a reference point in beer the abv is typically four to five percent so when you're going down to point five or zero there's less change going on and you also have the carbonation within beer which helps lift the kind of experience in your mouth essentially so with wine when you're talking 13 to 15 abv the alcohol is effectively the backbone of the product so when you remove the alcohol it almost like crumples in on itself like a lot of the flavors don't really work together anymore um so there's different ways you can approach this you can either take wine and remove the alcohol from it and you put people often put a load of sugar in it to give it body but then it's really calorific and sweet and it's overly cloying and not very nice or you can combine juices ferments teas spices um i think the way that well not i think i know the way that we do it sit somewhere in between.

22:27Zoe Fox:So we realized basically there are three things that are key to making a good alcohol-free wine. The sourcing of the base wines has to be really, really good. So you have to have delicious alcoholic wines you'd be chuffed to drink anyway. Then you need the latest de-alkalization technology. So we use a product that's incredibly gentle on the wine because historically, again, wines have been effectively boiled to get the alcohol out of them. So you get this overly cooked note which gives the smell that you're talking about and then we have the additions afterwards so we put in you know a tiny amount of juice afterwards which helps to round out the profile of that de-alkalized wine and give it body length flavor all the stuff that you associate

23:09Luke Hemsley:with the wine basically okay interesting so it's not so it's actually like the de-alkalization of the wine that makes it give it that smell and that kind of tasting because it's being boiled

23:20Zoe Fox:essentially exactly so it's the treatment of the alcohol removal yeah and and there there are various different ways that you can approach it there are kind of three methods that people tend to use but all of them we believe currently don't result in a product that you would be happy to take to market we still think that you need um some kind of alterations afterwards and there are people in the market who would say well you're approaching all wrong you've got to go down the juices ferments teas spices route and those products are really interesting but I don't think they meet the needs of wine drinkers at scale I think if you're used to going to fancy restaurants and having all sorts of concoctions and whatever they're great but I think they're

24:05Luke Hemsley:quite different to the experience of drinking a wine yeah and in terms of the category do you think that we're still scratching the surface when it comes to alcohol free and what do you think we're going to see in the next like five to kind of maybe 10 years?

24:19Zoe Fox:Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think there's a risk that we'll go through the next 10, 15, 20 years saying we're just scratching the surface of alcohol free. Because, you know, when I started reading around the space five years ago, people were saying that and they're still saying that. I think it's evolving pretty quickly. And I think as more options come to market, people are becoming ever more curious. I think what's interesting is you're seeing this kind of split in drinking habits which is really based on age so all of the headlines around people drinking less are that gen z don't drink a i don't think i think gen z drink more than people claim that they don't basically but the other thing is our customer is not a gen z customer because if you've not grown up drinking beer wine spirits you're pretty unlikely or you're as likely to have a functional soda as you are a non-alcoholic wine because you haven't developed that taste or that preference for something like a wine.

25:18Zoe Fox:So our customer is slightly older and they want something more wine-like. So in terms of what that looks like over the next five, 10 years, I think you'll continue to see this blurring of category lines where people are taking from lots of different categories. But I think you'll also continue to see improvements in what I think sometimes uncharitably are called mimic products like beers wine spirits where actually the technology and the understanding allows you to create products which are truer to uh their original alcoholic counterpart basically and i think what you'll see is that you'll have no low full strength and people will just move quite

25:58Luke Hemsley:fluidly between them i think it will be like the way veganism happened in the sense of like at first it was all cold turkey everybody went like literally overnight right meat dairy went out the window and everyone made really cold turkey and you know burger king brought out the plant-based whopper mcdonald's had the vegan meal sorry that's all gone very quiet hasn't it plant-based meat's gone like we don't know where it's gone basically it's gone and now it's like you know what let's go back to whole foods let's just eat our sweet potato and our chickpeas for dinner we don't need that plant-based bit of meat yeah but then when i do fancy a bit of meat i might you know have it twice a week versus the seven days or whatever i was having it before and i think there's been a whole you know movement within that category i think it's the same with alcohol free wine is that people would go to hold turkey like dry jan it was a whole month off yeah and of course people still do that it's quite maybe you don't want to do that maybe you just want to drink less or you and this is where these products are really helpful yeah and it's it's i mean this

26:53Zoe Fox:is a controversial opinion for an alcohol free wine founder to hold but i actually hate dry january because I think it's very all or nothing. And that is not what we espouse as a brand at all. And that's not how most consumers or individuals behave. You want to be able to dip in and dip out. And I have one very specific friend that I think of whenever I think of Dry January, which is quite a lot being in the space that I'm in. And he would turn up to staff when we were in our 20s and he was always so grumpy because he was like, I cannot wait for the first affair because I can have a drink. and you're just looking at him and I would have a conversation with him like why are you doing this to yourself?

27:31Zoe Fox:And he would say well it's really good to reset and all that sort of stuff but that's not how, you know, life's too short to live in that way so I think it's really interesting to see that kind of, that understanding around balance and moderation and again moderation is a very unsexy word but that is ultimately what a lot of people are tending towards.

27:50Luke Hemsley:Also it does breed a bit of then a binge I think, like if you restrain from something so whether it's food, whether it is alcohol if you say I'm not having it and then the first of Jan comes around what do you do you're going to want to drink a lot sorry the first of Feb and that's also a really bad way to look at something like we should just enjoy it and then when we don't fancy a drink don't but obviously moderation is really difficult and hence why companies exist like Simflast right if we all just did that it's with the conglomerates but yeah like having that an all or nothing approach I think it's kind

28:21Zoe Fox:of gone and it's it's interesting because we are actively exploring the low alcohol space yeah and low alcohol particularly in wine is unbelievably ill-defined so you know if you go into a supermarket a low alcohol wine could be anywhere between three and eleven percent and um a few years ago i would have said low alcohol wine don't really get it don't see the point it's kind of a bit you're either drinking or you're not and actually what we're seeing now is people want to have that they experience but they do also want a bit of alcohol because ultimately that does have an effect on your body and it does you know in moderation allow for a bit of relaxation that has a you know physiological effect and all that sort of stuff and so I think that will be a really interesting space as well and that comes back to the point I made earlier about no low full strength I think that's what you're beginning to see and there are some great businesses in that space particularly in spirits and beer you know you've got Quarterproof and Spirits yeah um and you've got small beer and beer they're doing some great things and those businesses particularly small beer have actually been around for a little while now but they're like the curve the growth curve they're on is accelerating because all of a sudden people are beginning to question these things

29:32Luke Hemsley:and i know we've spoken about taste um is that the biggest barrier here but what would you say is one other big misconception about alcohol free

29:42Zoe Fox:um i think the big the biggest one is that it's all it's for people need a reason a very explicit reason to consume it so people will often say like isn't that just for pregnant women or religious people or uh someone on medication you're like those may be reasons for that that person to consume a non-alcoholic product but actually if you look at the vast majority of consumers they're just looking for a different option a better option at a certain moment and you know if I take the example of my own life got a young daughter at home running my own business there are moments where I really fancy a drink but I just can't afford the the impact or the consequence of that or not that I can't afford it it's that I'm not willing to compromise that so I'm like actually I want that experience of a glass of wine or a beer and you know have done that multiple times this week already um but but i i don't i don't want the alcohol basically so i think that's

30:41Luke Hemsley:a massive misconception um i totally agree i think the the miss when you said that i was like yeah when i think about alcohol freedom it's more like well what's my reason but actually there shouldn't necessarily be a reason it's just like i don't want to drink and to something you mentioned earlier

30:56Zoe Fox:you shouldn't have to explain it either it should just within a wrap someone's getting a round in or you're buying around it's like can you get xyz it shouldn't even be a question and i think that's a future that we're moving towards relatively quickly yeah definitely yeah i mean

31:14Luke Hemsley:i really hope so right because it is frustrating when you just don't want to drink because someone keeps asking you're like kind of said no i'm just done now um in terms of the early stages so you you've kind of got the the concept and the idea how did you go through the process to get it from initial idea to in someone's hand? Where did you go about sourcing? Because if you didn't come from that background, it must have been quite confusing in the beginning and understanding it all.

31:38Zoe Fox:Yeah. I mean, it's massively, massively confusing to start with. And the way that I started was I mentioned right at the start that I helped run a community of entrepreneurs, helping them through the highs and lows of building a business. I knew a few people in that who were in food and drink. And so I gave them a ring and basically just said, like, how does this work? And one friend in particular who ran a pork scratching business I was like what how you know how do you make this happen and he kind of put me on to food and drink and recipe developers had conversations with a number of those types of people ended up working with an agency based here in London and they helped kind of conceptualize the product and bring that product to market and there was a lot of testing a lot of iterations we then did a trial run with a third party bottler or manufacturer so for those that aren't familiar with that that's as in we don't own those assets we don't we didn't suddenly buy a winery or buy a production facility we we kind of rented that that capacity of someone else um and and we did a trial run and then we began to scale that up and those were the first iterations of the wines that we had for about 12 months 12 to 18 months um those products were good but they weren't great for the time that you know they were good for where the market was at the time but they were never going to take us to the heights that we kind of want to scale they're also incredibly difficult to make and they were pretty costly and so through that process i realized that we needed to change the way that we did things so quite quickly we brought um a a winemaker consultant, winemaker on board.

33:15Zoe Fox:And through that individual, we then ended up building relationships with wineries out in Spain that we now work with. So I'm sharing that story because where we began is very different to where we are now. And these things really do evolve. And also there were elements within that process that I got wrong. So in the very early days, I was very anti-working with winemakers because my belief was that they would be too fixed in their mindset of, how you should create a non-alcoholic wine or does not want to create one full stop and actually that was a mistake and I was wrong we did need a winemaker because we needed someone who really understood the kind of organoleptics around how you make a wine but that person had also made beers spirits ciders and so wasn't necessarily constrained by practices from winemaking

34:06Luke Hemsley:interesting yeah how your perception has changed because initially I see what you mean you'd feel like there'd be a barrier yeah um but actually they are the people that know exactly really know

34:17Zoe Fox:their stuff yeah definitely stuff and have very very specific knowledge and actually that's one of the most satisfying things about running a business i in my experience which is you know when you have quite a strong view on something and then you realize you're completely wrong or you know you're happy to change tact and you're like actually that's cool like that was in the

34:39Luke Hemsley:past and now we're going this way definitely um really interesting point actually i think and you know as a as an entrepreneur and founder you're by default a risk taker right like you have to be you've you know quit a full-time job you've left like a secure salary and you've gone and taken the risk of starting your business what would you say to date has been the biggest risk you've taken within within starting the business yeah obviously the starting the business was the biggest phrase yeah yeah you know with once you once you have begun it I think um I think that

35:12Zoe Fox:that there are a few um and they're all very scary at the time and what's interesting is in hindsight none of these things are that scary but and so in what I'm about to say the way that I try and look at things now is like in three months in six months in a year will I be stressed by this and if the answer is no try not to be stressed by it now so good example of that is um you know we i hired someone on a contract basis very early on on a massive day rate to help me set up work out how to you know construct our margin tree and our value chain and set up a third party fulfillment center and our website and all that sort of stuff and i wasn't paying myself at the time i was kind kind of looking at a dwindling savings balance and they were, you know, getting paid quite a lot of money.

36:00Zoe Fox:But the business wouldn't have launched in the way that it did without that individual. So committing to someone who really knew their staff and dedicating quite a lot of the very little money we had to that was a big risk at the time, but makes complete sense once you do it. Very, very similar story with our branding. Over half of the money that we raised to launch the business went on our brand went on the visual identity and in some respects that's slightly mad but actually that is the one thing that almost unanimously people love yeah and I think it has a very distinct brand identity and so I don't regret spending that money at all so so those are kind of two risks quite early on a third risk which I know you asked for the biggest but I'll give you the top three basically the third risk is probably again how you finance the business and um early on I was lucky to have a good network within startups but I raised money from people that I knew and had good and in some cases friendly relationships with and that that can really risk shifting a friendship and a relationship so putting at risk those personal relationships through raising you know someone taking someone's hard-earned money and admittedly giving them a slice of your business that is quite scary at the time but the way that I kind of sought to mitigate that risk was everyone who I knew in a personal capacity who put money in I said to them this is separate to our friendship if ever you want to have a conversation about the business we can you can always I'll always always make time to have that conversation but please don't bring it up at a barbecue at a dinner when we've had six pints like I don't want to talk about it there and then and I think in putting those guardrails around those investment decisions it's actually

37:51Luke Hemsley:worked really well yeah that yeah because starting a business with a friend or them giving you money can be quite tricky territory because it can really I mean it can make or break a friendship for sure so I think that's a really really good one to say to have the boundaries in place um and success I think is measured in so many different ways by so many different people it might be you know winning that listing that you wanted forever that's your success that's your north star it might be getting the business off the ground just like oh my god I made it through today how what's been your biggest success to date and how would you say you would measure success in terms of bigger goals and then maybe short-term goals?

38:32Zoe Fox:I think our biggest success is still being here three years later. And if someone asks me, you know, what's the strategy for the business? I'm just like, don't die. Like that is the number one strategy for the business.

38:47Luke Hemsley:Physically don't die.

38:49Zoe Fox:Exactly, exactly. So all of those things. And, you know, obviously that's a kind of pithy answer and I'm slightly taking the piss but that is absolutely the biggest success because setting up a business is brutal setting up business in food and drink is doubly brutal because it's so so competitive so being here three and a bit years after launch is absolutely our biggest success to answer a question about long-term success short-term success it's you know we could dive into kind of metrics and goals and all those sorts of things But I think actually it's about constantly realigning what your measure of success is.

39:29Zoe Fox:And actually, I was speaking with the founder of another FMCG business the other day. And she said to me, you know, back in the day, I said, if we get into Waitrose and then the business blows up, I will die happy. And she was like, the moment we got into Waitrose, I wanted to get into Sainsbury's. Yeah, that's classic life, isn't it? And this is someone who is raising money, you know, about to raise quite a lot of money from a private equity firm. So to even be in that league, she's already built a big business. And that just kind of encapsulated this whole notion of we always, always want more.

40:01Zoe Fox:We always want more. So I think success is a movable feast. And the way that I would define it comes back to something I said earlier around having made a large number of people feel something, whether that's being part of a moment or it's picking up a bottle and thinking it's beautiful. Creating those customer experiences at scale, that for me is success, I would say.

40:24Luke Hemsley:Definitely. And it goes back to that community. I think that will be like the new wave of marketing. It won't be like traditional marketing. It will be like, have you got a community? Have you got buy-in to your brand?

40:33Zoe Fox:Yeah.

40:36Luke Hemsley:And if there was something that was to keep you up at night about your business, what would it be?

40:41Zoe Fox:um it is funny i think about this a lot actually not late at night because i'm asleep i sleep pretty well i'm very lucky in that respect i've recently started using magnesium butter on my feet which sound makes me sound like a lunatic but it helps it's unbelievable as in i've had to stop using it because i sleep too much too well um but if i if there's one thing it's it's cash like everyone every founder every business owner any uh one you speak to who is in a senior position in a business will say the two things that always keep them awake are cash and people and we have a relatively small team so for me the answer is cash and it's all about uh and running an fmcg business or food and drink business is hard because in what we do you can have a decent amount of money in your bank account in your business bank account and then you put a load of it in stock and you're waiting to sell it so that interim period can be pretty terrifying and so that's the biggest thing absolutely definitely cash is king right like your cash flow is how what keeps you alive exactly and you touched upon

41:45Luke Hemsley:then about your team and we were speaking earlier before we started on the podcast about team and how important the team is is you know who you bring in early stages basically defines culture and how your business kind of turns out yeah in day to day so how do you go about the hiring process and what would you say in marketing is something you look for and then what would you say in sales is something you look for?

42:07Zoe Fox:Yeah I think the biggest thing of anyone joining a startup is comfort and uncertainty and the fact that the plan is going to change all the time and that doesn't mean the strategy is going to change but it means the tactics that you use and the plan that plays out to get there will change and will evolve a lot so comfort and uncertainty is a big one. The other thing which we touched on previously is the ability to see around corners and the ability to think two, three steps ahead. And that's not me sitting here claiming I'm some kind of savant that can see around corners and all that sort of stuff.

42:45Zoe Fox:But it's just thinking through decisions and the impact, the second and third order consequences is absolutely massive. When it comes to marketing, we don't actually have anyone in-house who does marketing. We have a marketing agency that we work with called Brand Hackers. And what I realized quite early on is that marketing is incredibly multidisciplinary, if that's a word, I think it is. And so it's incredibly hard to find someone who can do all of that. So we have someone who's brilliant at organic social, but that skill set is very different to paid social, which is very different to email marketing, which is very different to kind of community and affiliates.

43:22Zoe Fox:So actually in having a marketing

43:25Luke Hemsley:person you know we don't have a marketing person basically when it comes to sales I think it is

43:32Zoe Fox:ability to put the work in you know sales is brutal as you as you know you have to be willing to pick up the phone you and also you have to be able to connect with different people in different ways so what someone might you know someone might be a million million miles an hour and equally someone may be more considered and you have to find ways to connect with both of those and someone might buy based on vibes and someone might buy based on data and you have to be able to move between those two arguments and I think the best sales people can combine those together but that's that's incredibly rare I would say and the difficulty in hiring sales people is they're often quite good at selling so they're very good at selling themselves and so they'll promise you the world and then the reality can be quite different interesting okay yeah that's

44:26Luke Hemsley:interesting point I think I think yeah people that are good at all what you've just said in terms of sales or terms of marketing they also there's not you're right they are rare right so then once you do a really good job somewhere you might get noticed and then people come and

44:44Zoe Fox:head so it's also maybe hard to keep them in the business yeah yeah and and it's interesting because I was at an event for Ricardo recently and a number of founders there but then also team members and actually what you were finding was that the best people in those teams were kind of two three years in and they had a tiny bit of experience so that they kind of knew what they were doing but equally they were just super hungry very adaptable very resourceful and that was fascinating and I think you know for me in an ideal world the way you would structure a business is you'd have a couple of relatively experienced operators and then you'd have a bigger group of junior very hungry very resourceful very energetic people who you can shape and mold and and kind of ultimately you want to see them push on to bigger and better things definitely and I think the biggest thing

45:37Luke Hemsley:is energy yeah and I don't think that's how you can teach yeah I think you come into business with the load of it or you don't ultimately and if you don't you're probably best based in a corporate yeah if you have loads of energy and you've got loads to give and you're hungry for it then you you're definitely in the right place for a startup um not to say that corporate people shouldn't come into small businesses because i think when the business gets to that size they do need that strategy long-term thinking but i think for day-to-day you need doers yeah and that is what

46:05Zoe Fox:moves the dial when it comes to small biz yeah and it's also interesting because i think within In startups, a lot of people can be quite disparaging of corporates. But certainly what I've seen, I remember being an event years ago when I first moved into startups. And one of the founders of HelloFresh was there. And he had been a corporate lawyer. And someone said in quite a tongue-in-cheek way, you know, what did a corporate ever teach you? And he was like, to turn up on time, to present myself, to write an email. You know, those three things are really, really important. And I think sometimes in startups, particularly in food and drink, which is rooted in hospitality and good times, and all that sort of stuff we all risk being a bit casual and actually there's a lot to be said for though being a bit more structured in in your approach how you present yourself how you articulate certain things going back to that point around knowing who you're speaking to and who you're selling to there are absolutely things that corporates do teach people very well i think that's exactly it it's being moldable yeah it's being able to mold yourself into the situation

47:04Luke Hemsley:that you're in that you maybe do need corporate backing to help you with that but you also need that right these guys are not going to buy data they're buying people here and that's where you

47:13Zoe Fox:can turn that on and to give to give you very practical examples there you know there'll be people that that we sell to that like put that in an email to me and can you summarize that in a table with some bullet points and someone else you'll be like right what's your phone number and i'm going to whatsapp that to you and then you're on whatsapp comms with them and you can get to the same outcome but they're actually yeah they they want to work in in different ways which personally is a nightmare because now I never actually respond to anyone in my personal life because my phone is full of whatsapps for work but that is the industry that we're in definitely I

47:47Luke Hemsley:could not survive without whatsapp for business I don't think um yeah I agree with that yeah I'm very online a lot of the time um and you know times generally do times always get hard you're going to have your highs you're going to have your lows and like you know we all have really manic weeks and we will have really good weeks and we're quiet etc how do you keep your team motivated in times that are really hard because as a founder you've got to always show maybe that

48:13Zoe Fox:things are okay and not like let that trickle in yeah it's it's interesting the first thing i'd say which probably disqualifies me from answering this properly is that we have a relatively small team yeah and there are lots of agencies and freelancers around that and i think one of the hardest things if you're building in that way is keeping everyone informed and on the same page and people not feeling like there's this asymmetry of information where you know she knows more than I know and or they know more than I know and all that sort of stuff so I think I think that's really really hard I think the way that I approach things and it's very specific to the individual is I err on the side of transparency and and just saying you know this is really hard and and this is really difficult or admitting that you don't know but equally showing that you're committed to working it out and then that comes back to resourcefulness and like right who can I ring to help me work this out so I think in hard times it comes down to transparency and commitment to working through it because there are very very few things that in a business that you can't work through or that actually don't resolve themselves in in time and it's and you get we touched upon this when we're chatting beforehand there's something to be said for just like letting things sit sometimes and there's a lot of stuff that lands in my inbox that my initial reaction is oh my god like wow and then actually I just sit with it for a bit and it just goes away or it resolves itself or it's not as big a problem as you thought it would be but I think the you know there are various iterations of this statement but it's like I think the founder of Gosney Tom Gosney said that once you realize that business is a series of inbound missiles aiming for your head you begin to relax and that is it every day something changes or goes wrong or you wake up and like today's going to be a good day first thing that lands in your inbox or your whatsapps as we're saying is something that's gone wrong and you just have to recognize that that's that's the default

50:11Luke Hemsley:yeah for sure but i think also as a like leader and a founder you've got to thrive in those environments as well because if you're not a thriver in in stress not it's quite a minute why I'm trying I guess it's not really what I mean and says you didn't shouldn't thrive in a stressful environment but like you need to be able to adapt and go right I'm going to take a step back and work through this versus going ah oh my gosh this is too much and and and that is absolutely

50:32Zoe Fox:spot on doing and I'll give you so when I left I mentioned at the start very briefly that I was a commodities trader for three years worked for a big American company and we were shipping stuff all around the world and when I left I was like I do not want to do anything in physical product ever again because it always breaks or goes missing or goes off or whatever so moved across into tech and when I was working at one of the tech startups I was cycling in one day I was thinking nothing's gone wrong in in ages and it actually is a bit boring yeah and I got in and I got a phone call from a customer and they were like xyz is a big problem and I remember feeling so alive in that moment and and being like so energized by and it was almost like that as you've kind of just don't like right come over here we're going to sort this out you what's going on there and you kind of get everyone around you and you work through it it's problem solving and and you're right you do have to thrive in that yeah albeit it would be nice every so often to have a day or a

51:26Luke Hemsley:week where there were some problems but you're yeah as founders i think especially in small businesses and especially with you know if you're coming from like a massive vc backed as a founder startup you're probably okay because things can survive themselves when you've got lots of cash behind you but when you're like yeah when you're on like those really early days you have to be able to thrive in those environments or your business won't last exactly and you probably might not go through yeah yeah exactly um and looking into the future and like what you want to leave behind um with Wednesday's domain um do you think there is a kind of exit strategy down the line or is this are you in it for the long game and you might not even you're right as you said earlier there might not be an answer for this it might not you don't might not know yet but looking at businesses ultimately obviously one day would you like to leave it to your daughter on your baby that's on the way or would it be more of a I would like to exit at some point

52:15Zoe Fox:um I have gone back and forth on this answer um which is probably not what you want to hear if you're an investor in Wednesday's domain um but ultimately I do think that we are ultimately you're looking to create value in a business you're looking to build something that can stand on its own uh on its own two feet and if you do that someone may well come along and buy it but that is kind of down the line so I think in the short term in the interim we're trying to build something that is self-sustaining is profitable and then you have options I think ultimately I probably would like to see that go on and be part of another business because I think as a startup and as a challenger brand you are limited in what you can achieve by resources and scale and some people would find that view quite depressing and say that's a very British view and British founders are always accused of exiting too early or not thinking big enough.

53:09Zoe Fox:But actually, you know, having begun to build relationships with people in big drinks businesses, the scale that you can achieve with someone like that behind you is unbelievable. And I also think it's an interesting time because the food and drink and the beverage landscape is changing. You know, you're getting these kind of modern drinks brands that have alcohol, non-alcoholic. Look in the US, there's kind of THC and CBD beverages. There's all sorts of routes for a business like Wednesdays to main. I think on a personal level you know there are there are other businesses that I would love to set up in time um not now I'm wholly wholly committed to Wednesday's domain and and that's what gets me through the tough days when I'm really having a brutally bad day I think well what else would I be doing I love what I'm doing this is me for the next five ten however many years um but in time yeah I can see Wednesday's being part of something else

54:02Luke Hemsley:and where do you see the business in 10 years

54:08Zoe Fox:good question I think we will so I said at the start that we are the midweek wine alternative for food and drink lovers I think that will probably evolve into either a very modern wine business or a very modern drinks business and what I mean by that is there's a lot of stuff in the media about how the death of wine and that wine consumers are aging and they're not being replaced by young consumers I think the way in which we drink wine is changing and I think that Wednesday to Main can become a business that can offer that full suite of products whether wine-based or not to a drinker so we can have something for there's moments where you don't want to drink there's moments where you think I'd love a glass or I'd love a little bit and there's moments where you want to get fully stuck in and so I can see us being a business that can cater to all of those things at a you know on a global level I think I think it that's I find that that question so

55:06Luke Hemsley:interesting when I ask founders because it's so varied of what they like come out with some people have a very clear exit strategy some people are you know in it like day-to-day following their nose being like you know it what will happen will happen I know that as you said like you're so invested at the time yeah um and you know others are committed in it for the long haul they're like no this is a family business I want to be like you know the next Marks and Spencer of like

55:30Zoe Fox:tradition and family so and it's interesting because I you know it would be interesting to chart those answers against the outcomes yeah over the years and you should definitely do that because you'll have some amazing amazing answers and that would be fascinating to know it's also interesting if you are a second or third time founders that question I'm sure and how and that will be determined by whether they had a good outcome first time around like I you know I know someone at the minute who's building building a brewery and and they'd made a lot of money in a previous business in a property business and when you talk to them about what's the ambition they're like I want to build something that's here in 100 years and I want to build a business that the area in which I live is proud of and and we've built a community and we've provided jobs and we've you know the same people who brew the beer drink the beer and all that sort of stuff and I think that's an amazing amazing thing but their mindset is very different because they have grown-up children they've got money in their bank account you know they can build in that way yeah yeah and

56:30Luke Hemsley:I think you also have to yeah that is I love to say I'm gonna like think yeah leave a business that'll be in 100 years but I you need something that would almost like change the game when it comes to that because or even like leave a little bit of a mark on the world like have like you know worldwide distribution i'm thinking of like a legacy of like a coca-cola or like a philips

56:51Zoe Fox:where it is like real big business yeah and and i think that's a great motivation to have to leave a mark and that's what i was saying to you earlier about how do i you know you ask how how do you define success about making people feel something and you know we now have distribution in australia um and a mate of mine from london who now lives in melbourne sent me a picture of some Wednesday's Domain in a fridge in Melbourne and then on his kitchen table and that blew my mind the fact that it's as far pretty much as far away as you can get from the UK there's a bottle of Wednesday's Domain and that comes back to your personal motivations and why do you do things for me physical products delightful customer experiences and that was happening in his kitchen the other side of the world and so that is some form of legacy already definitely and and and so yeah it's a fascinating question I could talk to you about it at length yeah and we spoke a little

57:47Luke Hemsley:bit about us earlier but if you can kind of summarize if the company fell tomorrow um like what would you be the most proud of um it's a really hard question to answer because again I think as a founder um particularly as a British founder you see all the things that have gone

58:06Zoe Fox:wrong or the things that haven't quite worked or the things that are really hard what would I be most proud of I would be proud of the fact that we've built brand awareness and a reputation in a category that was otherwise pretty downtrodden pretty staid pretty boring very unloved and we've really made people feel something we've made you know thousands if not tens of thousands of customers now feel something in purchasing our product and whether that's feel part of a moment or you know I speak a lot about we we're not a product we're not a brand that's for people who don't drink but there's a lot of people who are going through things in their lives that have had a glass of Wednesday's domain and they've emailed us and they've said this has been amazing for x y

58:51Luke Hemsley:z reason so I think that's what I'd be most proud of so to wrap up the interview I've got some quick fire around questions um first drink you ever loved yeah i think you can't get away from a

59:03Zoe Fox:show i if it was an alcoholic drink i would say like a persoa something ridiculous like a friend bringing some some of that back from a spanish exchange of being like you gotta get

59:16Luke Hemsley:your chops around this this is unbelievable funny um one founder you'd like to swap places for for

59:21Zoe Fox:a day um i was saying to ellie i always freeze with this sort of question so i was thinking about this on the way here there's a business called gravity industry set up by a guy i think it's called richard browning he's an ex-marine it's a jetpack business and you always see him in the paper like once every year or two kind of flying around canary wharf with a jetpack on i'm like

59:43Luke Hemsley:that just looks unbelievable yeah that does sound i think he's pretty rare and as much as he's you

59:49Zoe Fox:know created these jetpacks but also he's doing all the deals and all that sort of stuff so i I think I'd probably have a day in his shoes. Yeah. Or in his jetpack.

59:56Luke Hemsley:Yeah, in his jetpack. Biggest pet peeve in business?

1:00:01Zoe Fox:Again, potentially controversial opinion, but it kills me when people say, we've got a no dickheads policy, because that's often a massive red flag to me. You know, when people talk about that, I find that quite hard.

1:00:17Luke Hemsley:Is that not just an obvious?

1:00:19Zoe Fox:Yeah, that's exactly, that is a much better way of summarising a much better articulate summary than the one I provided. The other thing is nice to e-meet you We're so over that When you get introduced so many I think that's just a shocker, just say lovely to be introduced or pleasure to be introduced Yeah, please don't use e-meet E-meet, e-anything is a big ick

1:00:40Luke Hemsley:That is a business ick And we've kind of talked about this one, I guess Finish the sentence for me Success for me means

1:00:52Zoe Fox:yeah still being here yeah still being that's that is it and I I really at risk of sounding like a broken record I think unless you've done it or unless you've seen it up close you can't understand or appreciate what it takes of you and what it takes of the people around you and so I think still doing that still being here as a business is is absolutely what success is

1:01:15Luke Hemsley:definitely and actually I've just thought of another one if you could go back um to the early days what would you have changed um kind of to get you maybe a bit further down the line now or

1:01:25Zoe Fox:maybe something that went wrong yeah I mean what what would I change um

1:01:33Zoe Fox:I should I would probably push myself to move quicker and think bigger earlier um and that doesn't necessarily mean you need to go bigger earlier because there's a lot of things that whether that's retail distribution or national distribution or whatever it is, that can come and you might not be ready for them as a business. But I think I would think, I would back myself more and I would, you know, really, yeah, think bigger earlier and move quicker, basically. And that's coming from someone in a business that has moved in the grand scheme of things pretty quickly already.

1:02:07Luke Hemsley:Yeah, exactly. You're very reactive already. Yeah. But yeah, even quicker.

1:02:11Zoe Fox:Yeah.

1:02:12Luke Hemsley:Thank you so much, Luke, for coming on. getting to grow it's been so interesting learning about all the wine that i was actually drinking this week um and as a big thank you we've got the new getting to grow merch um which is definitely

1:02:24Zoe Fox:yours thank you very much i'm delighted as i said to you i'm on the lookout for a hat so this is

1:02:29Luke Hemsley:perfect brilliant repping that all over the world of course yeah on my way home um thank you so much

1:02:34Zoe Fox:thank you

1:02:52Thank you.