DASH Water Founder: From Kitchen Table to Selling 45 Million Cans a Year in Starbucks, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose

0:00Hello there and welcome to Hungry. Hungry is the podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands looking to pull gasoline all over their growth. Each week we'll interview successful founders, thought leaders, unpack their lessons and provide you with a toolkit to scale super fast. I am Dan Pope, I am your host and without further ado, let's get started. Hello there people and listeners of The Hungry Podcast. Today I am super excited to welcome Jack Scott onto the podcast. Jack is the co-founder of Dash Water, who have won a whole heap of listings. Sainsbury's, Selfridges, Whole Foods Market, Planet Organic.

0:42I think pretty much loads of listings in the UK and are now flying the flag in Australia, which I'm super excited to explore. And yeah, thanks for having us at Wonky HG Maze. Nice being in the peach room. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Dan. big fan of the hungry podcast so appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today no all good all good so um i think i told you this before but the podcast you did with holly tucker yes was amazing and she i think i'll put a link in the show notes for listeners but the way she the question she asked at the end is a note right please write a letter to your younger self anyway so i was walking around bushy park i said mom needs to go on these walks to just keep my my head's sane and um honestly i was listening to it and like the sun was coming down it was that sort of autumnal kind of breeze going through i was like oh my god some of the things you said it's not even it is blowing smoke up the ass but it's not meant to be blowing smoke up the ass but you said some things that really spoke to me and i'd love to kind of pull and tease out some of them to begin with so um i probably should play this but um anyway but you say dear younger me first of all, it's important to say, don't worry if you find life complicated or hard.

1:5620 years on, it's very much a work in progress. It's one thing you said, which spoke to me deeply. And then you said, never forget what your beautiful mum says. Don't worry, it'll be all right after a good night's sleep. Do business through the way you think is right. Dreaming, planning, creating are the most joyous of all confidence is your secret weapon and have faith in creativity and your vision and your unique value um you bring to the world wow for me and i'll put a link for this so i think it's beautiful i think the first thing i'm a mummy's boy right through and through i mean she even dropped me to the station today which is embarrassing i'm 30 years old so good How do you think your relationship with your mum has made you a stronger leader at Dash?

2:46Yeah, it's very funny writing those letters. It's not something that you do, but it's great to reflect a little bit. We're a very close family. I've got two brothers, so my poor mum has got three boys to deal with. she's one of those people who's just like completely devoted to us um and would do anything for us and um that is that compassion and the values that she has i think definitely is something hopefully that you know you bring to you know the family here at dash you know you really do care about the people that are part of your team um and I think those those core values really are important for for leadership and creating something special the I think when things are going pete on in my life my mum's the first one I'll call what's been the darkest moment where you've called your mum what advice did she give you yeah so I said in the letter that mum's always very good at which is definitely a thing that I think about when I'm having a tough day um say say a dash um she's it's very simple but she'll just say look Jack let's just think about it in in the morning once you've had a good night's sleep and that just works so well for me and I almost think that as a bit of a challenge when something is bad is going on that it's all part of of the journey and that's my sort of hack and it's like it's meant to be it's not meant to be easy um and you know having a a good night's sleep and that when you wake up in the morning you you must get this as well the the clarity of thought is back whereas you know the evening before you know when it's dark outside and you've had a long day at work is is not the time to be worrying about things so i think a good night's sleep is as simple um and as obvious as it sounds as is advice that that i take on board from from mom and that's been from a very you know early early age yeah yeah it's interesting because it's like the the founders can be quite trigger happy uh i'm quite trigger happy i was like i need to sort something out it's creating this this space what's what's there's a quote by victor frankel who did the um in between stimulus and response is space and in that in that space is your freedom something like that yeah i think when there's so much going on it sounds kind of kind of trite that the best advice to have good night's sleep but it's so yeah yeah um and i think what you said there is like it's part of the journey and you know wonky the journey is not linear it's it's hopefully linear but it is wonky and i think these little these little moments backwards push you forwards what so what has been the moment on the journey where you've thought like you've needed to have a really good night's sleep with lots of uh i think i think that um we we've definitely i think earlier on it was it was more difficult because when it was just alex and i you know in my kitchen um you don't have anything to to celebrate you you understand that what you're trying to do is really ambitious and that it might not work.

6:14So those are like really difficult times. There's nothing to celebrate. There's nothing to really get behind. So those I see as the sort of the most difficult days. I mean, an example is when we were manufacturing, we wanted to create three or 400 cans as like prototypes. And we were obsessed by getting spring water. the spring we had to have spring water in our cans so we rented a large van from from london and we drove all the way over to a place called radna which is in powys and in wales and we filled up this ibc tank of you know it had a thousand liters in it and drove it all the way back to to london um to this small bottling site in tottenham and overnight um they put something in it which was to meant to have cooled the water down but actually had this flavoring in so that the whole um the whole thing got contaminated and we couldn't use it on the surface that doesn't sound like oh that's classic you know that's you know those things how far in just to give a time how far into the journey is this point is this is very early on so this is us like you've got a vat of water you want to put some fruit in it so like okay yeah yeah yeah yeah super early days yeah yeah and it was like we knew it was spring water wonky fruit and bubbles um so those sorts of things and then the guy was really difficult and he was a bit of a cowboy the guy in tottenham who was doing the bottling and we spent quite a lot of money with him and we were doing it off we didn't have very much money for this sort of pre um stage so i remember we went and had a drink afterwards um this is probably after four or five times of it failing of trying to get our sparkling product in a in a can and i remember we were in in north london somewhere and we went and had a drink and we were like yeah this is this is pretty shit but that for me was like i love looking back at that because those like that's proper sort of dna stuff and like going through those types of things has definitely made us as a you know leaders and you know as a brand stronger too what do you mean by proper dna stuff i like that a lot so it's just you know the roots of of of the the business are where they're like the richness of the brand comes from and those like off the back of that we were like okay well we've got to find someone more professional who actually knows how to make soft drinks so we went and then met this guy called philip bashhurst who had written three books on making soft drinks we went to mess on the side of motorway in anglesey he was because he'd retired why the side of motorway well he was over he was over in anglesey he's retired right he was about 86 or something um so he went had to go quite close to where he was right um but then he He unlocks these sort of things that allowed us to then upscale and manufacture properly.

9:28And he introduced us to the people that make our wonky fruit extracts still to this day. And so it was off the back of those experiences in Tottenham of dealing with those people that meant that we had to take a step back to then realize, you know, we've got to speak to, you know, the right people who know their stuff. so for me that's you know and i think we put out an instagram then and we documented it's like us with our like that with the manufacturing site and people really love that and it was a big you know binging bringing people along the journey before before we've launched was a big thing for us for our marketing as well hi there guys super super quick one um i write a weekly newsletter called hungry friday feast it goes live at 8am every friday i'm pouring my soul into this bad boy it's probably my favorite creative ender I've ever done I basically pick apart all the biggest lessons all the biggest learnings from all the wonderful guests and throw it into a feast or a newsletter we've got over a thousand two hundred subscribers come and join the party I'm going to put a link in the show notes it's right at the top and subscribe and if you are already a subscriber please just forward it on to a friend do the amount of favor it would mean the world to me anyway back to the old episode boys and girls and i love that these moments and these pictures you almost wish you could i mean you did take pictures yeah that have this delicious dna and richness in them that you could you kind of want them on the wall yeah do you know i mean to bring that kind of that hustle culture alive what i what i've always wanted to try and understand is there was a very obviously last week i interviewed william kendall yeah which was a big great yeah He's a big fan of you.

11:13He was saying that. And we were talking about how at Corson there was this kind of very entrepreneurial buzz there. There was you and Jack, Harry, Turpin from Savoris, Dan, who went on to do numerous things. Corson have obviously got a kind of powerhouse food entrepreneurs in that. It feels like there was this bubbling thing in there. What's the moment you and Alex say to each other, right, we are going to go and get out. I always call it the slipstream get out of the slipstream and push ourselves like talk to me about this sort of gestation period of the brand yeah no definitely I'm you know big big fan of of Causton and William Kendall and Mark Palmer they're very inspiring entrepreneurs um being involved in Column Gardens who green and blacks and now Causton Press and there's no doubt that we got inspiration from from those individuals it's a very well run business and it's a very well-loved brand and really enjoyed our time there I think for me that was a stepping stone I always wanted to start my own thing after university I come from a farming background and I've always wanted to be involved in food and drink I think it's probably been close to their crops at home but didn't want to go down that traditional farming route so after university i wanted to get some experience in sales and marketing and i went and spoke to william and that's when he had just got involved with causton press and dan broughton was working upstairs by himself um and join dan uh the sales team there so we had a great time and that's when i met alex um also right and it was we we were both obsessed with different trends that were going on especially in in the drinks space so i remember we used to bring in like bottles of water with our infusions from the night before and we would like be like i've got cucumber and mint you know in like one of those bottles yeah bottles and it's like well can you imagine like you know getting some of the goodness from from the fruit or the vegetables but none of the sugar and that's not what dash is now there's no nutritional benefit in in dash except for hydration but that's where the the idea sort of came from um and we both were from farming background so i'm from an arable farm in shropshire alex from west sussex and so we knew that there was an issue with food waste and so that's also when we started thinking about if we could use fruit that others have said no to to infuse our water with so there was a period of time um where we were scheming um in the weekends and the in the evenings um and then we had um about 18 months after we left Causton Press we launched into Selfridges I want to talk about the as I said this gestation or as you said this scheming period because i think a lot of people listening to this they don't realize well they don't see that the the actual idea that gets moving isn't the idea it started as or there's a little there's tweet it's wonky till you get to that kind of you know very american way of saying it's like product market fit man but i think so the game plan was healthy getting the nutritional value from the fruit into the can yeah how did it go kind of skew with what were those kind of not stumbling points but those moments of again right back to the drawing board change back to the normal change yeah i mean it it's very it is quite simple really and that's you know the the beauty of of dash um but yeah so it started off like that and then we quickly realized it was a simple product so you'd often see cucumber spirals in a large vat of water in hotels or restaurants or pubs and we were like right well if you can cool that down and carbonate it you've got a pretty banging tasting yeah yeah drink there so we would have our large vats of water do our infusions and then test out in parks in london um and we did that over several different different weekends and that's when we had another moment where people were like this is really refreshing this um is healthy it doesn't have any sugar or sweetener and it was resoundingly positive like would you have this as a soft drink would you is this something that you would buy like what are you drinking at the moment what are the issues with that we'd been in the soft drinks industry we'd seen that it's just full of sugar and artificial sweeteners and at that point we then looked over to the US we're quite proud actually we didn't actually know what was going on over there people may believe us might not believe yeah yeah yeah but we then looked over the US and saw that there was this incredible seltzer category which is flavored sparkling water with no sugar or sweetener and people like the LaCroix brand which was created in in California really took off in sort of 2006 2007 um so that gave us again like another confidence booster um that this sort of category and products you know might have a chance of get going in the uk and no one else was was doing it in the uk i think ugly water was doing something in a pt bottle which was flat um so that that was another moment where we were like okay if it's working in the us and those trends tend to to start in the us especially around healthy food then it's got a chance of coming over to to the uk so it was great it was great timing um and the product didn't change too much we decided pretty quickly that we weren't going to be able to draw the nutritional benefit um out of a um fruit or veg without it costing less than 12 quid of a can and we were we were up for creating a large you know soft drinks business and then you go go because i think it's super what i love about this is even the the brands that we're going to get onto today now you know 2023 like you're in australia but just knowing that you were hustling going around parks in the summertime with vats it's just super reassuring did you um was it called dash when you're going to the parks because i read listen to a podcast i think alex said like you've written down a load of names what were some of the other names if it wasn't dash for you to remember yeah i love that naming process um like we we just had three columns i think one was like this descriptive one was to do like with provenance and one was like to do with us as individuals so we would just list the different names and dash came under the descriptive column so i was looking at it the other day um about the sheet yeah oh amazing yeah yeah we had some awful awful names gone um we were on we were on splendid water for a while which sort of tastes sort of i sort of think of those sort of sweetener sachets that you get that you put in your coffee or you know um so i'm glad that we didn't i think i think that i think we've again we got lucky with dash it's descriptive it's short it's memorable um and i think that has been you know played a big part um with with our brand which has you know been fantastic so we were splendid water for a bit and then we showed it to a few other people and dash was sort of highlighted i mean then getting it trademarked was we over invested in time and money into getting that trademark in the right category.

19:45And we spent quite a lot of money on that, which I'm really glad that we did. But I remember the Kardashians in America and we had all sorts of different issues. But I think it's important to have that equity locked down. So any advice to new starters, once you're happy with their name, go straight to a trademark lawyer and make sure that that's available and it's affordable to lock that off within your sort of class. I think Softdrinks, our class is 32 and within that Dash was available or we had to speak to one other brand who'd done something in it before. But yeah, we were told early on, lock that down.

20:35And you then say kind of the next step on that journey is winning Selfridges. hmm i remember the buzz i got i remember manny life i went into the into the self-reaches for food all those little mini pots of peanut butter like waiting for the buyer to pop down yeah at the time i was like oh my god i'm absolutely buzzing like this is amazing what's what's the feeling in you in here as you get that listing and well from there how did you build the go from base camp to stage two that makes sense you know i mean yeah well with our experience at caustin so we we know yeah because we you know there's no see like the cans caustin business we were involved you know from from the start so we had an understanding of how wholesale works and how the route to market so we were quite lucky in that and we had our beacon accounts and selfridges was one of them.

21:31Alex had like done an incredible job of bringing her along the journey to make sure that when we were ready to launch, they were going to take it. I mean, Selfridges are always looking for new things, but it's hard to get in their ear and make sure that you're able to present your amazing product to them. How did you get in their ear? Or how did Alex get in it? Well, it's all of those things that you'll know. it's about doing what's needed to tenacity but getting the right balance between persistence and charm um and communicating in a way that isn't annoying but also you're giving you know the facts that they need to have confidence in in your brand um i mean there's a great story with alex in whole foods i mean we could we didn't get whole foods for a quite a long time and obviously that's you know one of the places that you'd want to get yeah and they're a great customer of ours um today and we sell lots of dash in there um but in the alex um i think three days consistently had put himself outside the door of self-fuggest um whole foods high street kensington at sort of a.m.

22:49And then on the third day, the last two days being told to go away by the receptionist, he managed to have a word with the buyer and they were just doing a Valentine's activation. And we were at that moment, we're launching our raspberry flavor and she gave us a shot through Alex's persistence of being there at six o 'clock every morning for three days in a row. And those are the sorts of things that you do need to do to get into these accounts. That might not be the right way today, but there will be ways in which you can get creative to get in front of them. What is there any other creative things you've done to get listings or investors?

23:41I think it's all a bit of an art, isn't it? I think what I'd say with investors, because we've got some amazing investors and we've always wanted to bring on investors who are going to add value. So the Sittsmith guys, Beaver Town, Logan, James Watt from BrewDog. so we wanted to aim high and get the best possible people so I didn't know that's mad I don't even know I don't know I've done a thought I don't know research I didn't fucking know that yeah that's amazing yeah and fair you know fairfax um yeah so we the how we did that is I think like all things it's getting an introduction from the right person yep so it's just trying to sort of take a sort of step back and like just being a bit more strategic in the way so if i wanted to get through to you and you're super busy then i would try and influence someone who you know and respect so and then get an introduction through them like just little things like that and then i i mean on a much smaller scale but if someone's what i reply to is when someone does consistently email me so all of those things and they're saying that the right things that are interesting to me because you get a lot of emails but if someone says something interesting about dash that i find interesting from say if they're looking for like a marketing opportunity, whether it's an agency who's trying to get in touch.

25:28But if they do, you know, get under the skin of the brand a little bit and look at it in a slightly different guise, which I find interesting, then I'm going to respond. So it's the same, you know, with investors. I've loved what you've done with your previous investment at X. I really like how that brand's a grow and we'd like to, you know, do something similar um i was put in touch with you by yada yada yada and then you you can get a coffee you should be able to get it's um like one of the questions i get asked all the time is how do you get guests on the podcast yeah because you know i've got like 970 instagram followers but the get the guests to actual follower ratios and it's basically that it's i know if someone if someone knows so for example william that came through doing a talk at course and through mark yes there's always the warm introductions always works but then the second thing i've genuinely there's 20 minutes of prep increases your chance of a meeting by 200 200 200 because the amount of people who will just send a blanket cold email if you just do 20 20 minutes it's not even a lunch break yeah the chance of conversion mad yeah i think when i yeah it's reassuring that you kind have to do some other thing delighted to announce the extension of our partnership with the wonderful billion pool from mckenzie jones but even more exciting they have just launched a brand new brand as part of mckenzie jones called mkj ignite mkj ignite is a recruitment firm which specializes full shebang focus entirely on challenge brand space they work some incredible brands lucky saint good race purdy and fig hunt and gather and real superfoods they can support with your hiring needs across all levels top to bottom junior entry-level jobs all the way through and up to md and co level so if you're looking for a field sales stomper a sales wizard an ops guru a supply chain sensei uh you name it mkj ignite can help you out and look if you're looking to wet your whistle ignite your curiosity then check out the poddy we recorded with them back in july laden with wisdom all about like do's and don'ts of hiring and like how to create the perfect job description you will love it guys are you ready there is gonna be some absolutely totally brilliantly bonkers next level madness coming your way today are you ready to take your brand to a whole new stratosphere for free imagine connecting your product to a digital world through a simple smartphone scan You know the drill, scan it, bish bash bosh, you're away.

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28:45Yes, you can Comply with regulations Look, you want to be building your brand You don't want to be knee-deep Wading through a deep river of legislation aggrovation these barcodes allow you to stay ahead of the curve look don't allow this beautiful boat of boundless opportunity to sail away into the malting sunset be on that boat join GS1 UK's free pilot program today yes it's completely free there will be a link in the show notes thank you so much talk about um how you got hold of Logan then and what so what did you say to him because that's just I mean BeaverTown are one of my favorite brands um I was actually gonna wear one of that t-shirts today but yeah how did you get hold of him what did you say to him yeah I think it was it was another introduction I think that Logan was sort of uh you know had it was at a point where he was looking at opportunities um so again it's around another thing important thing is timing and doing your research around that because say you know logan might have had a moment where he's spending a little less time running beaver town and is looking for businesses and brands that he can see that he's created a whole load of value through his brand and he's looking for other brands that are going to do the same so he's always on you know looking for for brands that might be in different categories but have got the similar sort of um set up to to what where he can sort of add value but i can't i can't remember the particular detail on on the approach i mean it was probably four or five years ago now the you talked about when we were very cognizant about bringing people in who were kind of um add to the business value add to the business yes one of the questions like things i love to explore is i think there's some things you can only understand you can't really get it from a business degree you can't really get it from a business but you can only get it through osmosis by being around someone yeah what are some of the principles and we can go through james watt um logan and who was the other one you mentioned smith guys smith fairfax from sips what are they if you could boil it down to one principle from each what do you think that would be that's really kind of had this huge shift in your way of thinking yeah i think i think james watts incredibly and like what an what an entrepreneur i think he's like a marketing genius in terms of pr and he's got a an amazing sort of problem solving brain and will look at things very differently to most people you know you'll go in and he'll have his large piece of paper and be like what are the three things that are keeping you up at night and you'll work through those things with him um and like without sort of going into i don't want too much detail but he's been hugely um beneficial for us because the the introductions that he's able to do um are fantastic for us as a drinks company um he's in the good books of lots of different people whether that's distributors retailers Brewdog's been a hugely successful brand so if he's able to give you an introduction to someone high up at a retailer that's going to have weight but as you know that's just the start yeah it's never why do you think he uses big white sheets of paper?

32:28He's just a very creative guy so he likes to sort of draw and write things down very large but yeah I've never really met someone as creative um as as as him um and like a huge passion for entrepreneurship um and business and then logan logan's been less um less involved we did a really fun collaboration a hard seltzer with beef tam which was just so cool twice all that yeah yeah so we did uh we were able to go and make that with their incredible team at their brewery um i think like you know you only have to look at their brand world to realize like where there's the strength of the that that world is just so recognizable isn't it the the the what they've created there And then in terms of quality and taste, it's just all, it's just such an amazing brand.

33:39Brand world's something I haven't thought about, but it's so, one of the questions I ask a lot is like, what is a brand? But it's like, what is, what's a brand world? And I think you're so right is it's so much more than packaging and great tasting products that you can get on these outlayers, which is like culture. I think that's what good brands are. if you go to the grape brands it's actually a world it's a bigger thing it's something you can't really put your hands on there's like for example I'm a Tottenham fan, my dad's got season ticket Spurs they've got their brewery in the thing in the stadium and there's just a palpable energy and vibrancy where it's on the mats what would you say is your definition of a brand, first question and then we'll get on to the brand world because i think that's that pushes at the periphery of of this yeah so in terms of brand i think for me it's like a feeling what what you feel when when you um see that that that brand and ultimately a brand is is something to to attach to a product for people to purchase or whatever it might be.

34:57But I like to see brands as like almost people. That's Williams. Really? Yeah. And you're always like growing. You're always maturing. You have to feed it. You have to do everything to keep it going. but when I see my you know some favourite brands that they sort of speak to me What are your favourite brands?

35:29I'm quite into my like fashion there's a brand which is in Marlebone called Margaret Howe she's an incredible designer that does menswear and females and it's just like this amazing sort of balance between um like clothes that i love and just everything about it so that's brands i've been thinking about quite a lot um not that there's too much i can sort of tell you about it but just like incredible attention to detail um and then in terms of save food and drink i mean for us i mean i love like these classic like you know the innocence the fever trees the brew dogs um you know these top top tier food and drinks companies that are made here in the uk that have gone on to be global brands so when we were when we were creating dash um when we were speaking with our designers i think that was such an important exercise and like you could put sip smith alongside that so you try and take qualities from each of them so fever tree it might be around the quality of the liquid and how much they care about quality and this beautiful like premium brand that's very simple with some clever marketing innocence like for me innocent and people must say this the whole is like the the the og i think how they do and what we try and aspire at dash is like do things well like all the way around so a bit of an all-rounder and innocent managed to do that but at a level when you say all the way around well it might be to like culture or marketing or sales or how you treat people or the environment that you know you're not your pr you're not just known for like one thing i'd like dash to be known as like a business that does good in all areas rather than just one area and i think innocent have done that like so well yeah like the culture that they've created how they really care about the environment the quality of products the clever marketing the tone of voice i mean it just goes on and on and on so when we you know we're creating dash you know the story of sip smith i mean how incredible is that how they've started the the gin renaissance in in in london again and changed the law for you know gin distilleries to happen and then that beautiful brand and making it all in in in west london and that whole brand world i think really speaks to me so the romantic story with sip smith the quality of fever tree the PR and marketing of Brewdog, the design of the bottle of Fiji water that makes you feel particularly special.

38:36So all of those sort of things we would work with our designers about and talk about when creating Dash, which is a really important exercise. Yeah. And what I love is that another theme for this podcast is creativity is you pull up this what tom fred was saying i'm saying with his dishes is you pull up all these different um all these different restaurants and experiences you've been at you pull them all together and then you you mission match them into your own thing yes i genuinely feel the sort of definition of creativity i'm going to explore like how to have faith in creativity because it was delicious was coming up with something completely from scratch yeah and pull it out the ether is actually it's always an amalgamation of different things and it's how you interpret those as things yes and kind of spin it out on the onto the world um one thing when i wrote a piece about this is you haven't rebranded which is mad because i think everyone has that gestation period was like right we'll take it to market yeah so what were you saying to the designer to as we kind of talked about almost the bigger world piece of these inspirations these stories what did you say to the designer to come up with that because the branding is so eye-gorgially gorgeous and catching do i mean yeah thanks it's we're really proud of our packaging i think it's uh you know the we had the name and the can which we took to the designers i think what they've done with the brush stroke the dash marks again really adds to our brand world and makes them look like beautiful on shelf and really attractive to our target audience who would want them in their fridge.

40:20So the design process, I mean, again, this sort of, it comes back to like, perhaps, I think maybe Alex's character of his attention to detail, but we spoke to about 12 to 14 different agencies and ranging from you know bottom to the very top and it was a very thorough process and the agency who we were working who ended up going with were too busy we had to get i think they're called horse studio they're quite sort of under the radar but yeah they were both creative directors at pearl fisher and we were one of their first how fish is that a big one yes yeah yeah so i started yeah yeah um and we actually had to get three reference letters to people who were writing to them to say these guys um uh you know might have a chance um you should work with them and they don't advertise they don't have a website they they're just incredible designers and a lot more than that and we work with them very closely to this day they do all sorts of they do our atl campaigns they do a lot a lot so and they were just people that we connected with most who understood our story most it was like three simple ingredients water bubbles wonky fruit like the provenance of where the fruit was coming the story of the wonky fruit the farming background the freshness the cleanness of the the product and then they went away and came up with four different ideas and one of them was like what you'll see today and i remember i just kicked alex or he kicked me and we were like fuck this is it like this is exactly what we needed because before that you're like so many things have got to go right for us to have a chance because we knew it was going to be hard we knew it was going to be hard but when you have that like design that is in your mind which was you know amalgamation of all these different things and it lands and you're like yeah right we might have a chance yeah what an amazing what does that feel like here yeah it was it was it was i remember it so well and i remember like they gave these cardboard like cutouts which i've still got still got somewhere um and i was just like elated because that that was like a big stepping stone um in in the journey and we'll be forever grateful to horse studio who we came up with i think they literally to create the dash marks they get their they get their paint brushes out and they'll make all of the different dash marks by hand um which is just you know beautifully curated i want to talk about sacrifice and to get your brand going yeah i think what are some of the hard sacrifices you've had to make to get here today we're in this gorgeous office in central London yeah look I think firstly we've been incredibly fortunate on on the journey um I've loved loved it and I feel very very lucky to be in this position to have now you know 25 amazing people all pulling in in the same direction um and sometimes walk in now and can't really believe it and have those moments where everyone's really behind it and the brand sort of going places but as i said there are sacrifices that need to be made i think when people say it's hard in food and drink to break through.

44:17I think drinks is hard. I think it really is one of the hardest categories to break through. Because? Because the end goal is potentially the most lucrative in drinks because basically you can go really big with drinks, which is not the case in some categories. Say, what's a good example? um but if you do you know what i mean if you break through then the opportunity well you can have a drink literally every day you can have a drink i mean you can have this of you know six different times of the day if you wanted um and that's you know quite a lot of people do um so it's about the size of the business that you can create create um so that's what's really exciting about drinks like it's unlimited of the possibility you can go and do it in australia you could go and um you could move it pretty easily but it's so competitive you have the multinationals um who um dominate so whether that's coca-cola peptico um denon nestle with all these like incredible legacy brands that um own the supermarket shelf so finding your way through that it's really hard and that's what that's what we're still doing now boimi our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenger food and drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist your first hundred stockist to wholesale boimi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger bohemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollie's ollie's been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 uplift in sales when using bohemi to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff is coming on this podcast in a couple of weeks weeks he uses it to manage the team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using bowie me look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time at ireland hi guys super super quick one so so excited look the years i've been badgering on about hungary the podcast you're probably bored to death thanks for putting up with me but hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called ireland's chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at a load of wholesalers we've won milk and more we've got our first grocery listing coming very soon which is very very sick but what i'm thrilled to announce is hungary's merging with hc consulting um my boy harry clark and his wonderful team he's an absolute g they do brand strategy new business business and account management but why i really love working with harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is harry was actually the founder of the boozy isolate brand pops he's been in the trenches he's grafted his face off he's had the sleepless nights he's had the turmoil he's had the triumph he knows what it is to be a founder he is a founder and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips the gut stuff savile drinks remio gelato so if you're a brand and you're you're stuck you're looking for like new business help you're looking to scale drop us a message we'd love to chat thank you so much back to the old episode what what were the moments i know you're we're also looking in or into any of you haven't broken through but a lot of people listening to this wasn't that you have broken through i think you've broken through you know in australia smashing it in the uk what were those moments where you sort of thought right this is beginning to be something yeah i think it is it's to do with like how many drinks you're selling in the supermarket per store per week like that's that was your first retail listing um in grocery it It was Sainsbury's.

48:23But yeah, we're now with Tesco's, Mercado, Waitrose, Asda. So if we've got co-op, we've got a pretty good distribution. But the hurdle rates in drinks, for instance, so you're always concerned about rate of sale. So when you're given more distribution within a supermarket, for me, that's pretty special because they're like, you're working. Right. I remember you guys being in the meal deal and saying, yes, um, what, what's so hard about getting into it? Like, how do you get back in? Why did you get kicked out of it? How did you get back into it? Like, yeah, what happened with that? Cause I think it's interesting.

49:05Yeah. Well, it's quite relevant actually, because, um, we're doing lots of good things at dash. Um, but perhaps nailing the meal deal isn't something that we have managed to completely do. And, and becoming a really big soft drinks business in the UK, hey, I think a meal deal is obviously a big part of that. And you could go, like, we've just done a big project, and there's lots of things driving the meal deal. But say if you were to take a step back, so we talked about drinks being competitive, but those chillers at front of the store are, like, new level. Front of real estate, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

49:40And it's 95 % controlled by, you know, multinationals. You know, 40 % might be Coca-Cola, know 30 might be the idea of brick brick whatever um so dash is consumed we're an amazing take-home product people like to buy us in bulk and have at home but also we're obviously a drink that's perfect at lunchtime yeah so it should it should work because people are looking for something healthy they're looking for something refreshing to have you know with their drinks but say one example why perhaps we're struggling is if you look at and the meal deal what an amazing thing it's like unique to the uk it's incredible value three four quid is it not i didn't realize unique to the uk yeah yeah i just assumed it would be yeah yeah yeah because it's so popular um and so what people try to do when they're shopping the meal deal is try to get the most value for their money right so you'll often find that people might have a smoothie which is 270 or they might have a large just like this is prove this is proven this is so interesting yeah it's proven yeah yeah sweet yeah so people yeah okay so so or they might have an energy drink that costs you know or these large bottles of plastic that 500 ml of coca-cola um um and that we're not gonna so so okay so dash would be at the bottom end of the price point so say if dash is like one pound 10 or one point 20 we're in the bottom 10 percent of the products so people won't jump to us because they want to get the most value um we i think i heard from someone that the the smartest like commercial decision that coca-cola had made in the last 10 years was creating that 500 mil pt plastic bottle yeah when i walked in the enemy yeah so if you take that the absolute devil yeah yeah we're going to talk about me talk why this is the devil shortly but yeah um it's fine so this this is um i'll probably get a call from coca-cola But say that you get charged for 170, you've got a can that might be...

52:08This is£110. No,£1.10. No, but in terms of the size... 330 mil, that's£500. So if you think about that, so the Coca-Cola can will be 90p and that'll be 170. But that plastic bottle will be a lot cheaper to make than a can. It just is, than aluminium. So what Coca-Cola are doing there is they're charging£1.70 for a product that's actually cheaper to make than their can. So that's where the margin is. We would never go into plastic, ever. I think most of the team would walk out, completely disagree with it. and you can't recycle it properly after three or four times. And we think aluminium is the best format to be in.

53:05So it gives us lots of dilemmas. And I hope I'd be looking forward to sharing with you our thing that we're launching in a few weeks' time to make the meal deal work in the UK. So when's your thing launching? It launched in January. in january this will probably go out after that okay cool if we can talk about it then yeah yeah um so what we're just because yeah yes but if that's i've got about 14 episodes and okay this will go live so we actually get this to launch yeah around january time yeah so then hopefully some other retailers get a deal no exactly and what we're doing and i'm happy um if this is going to be released after january but yeah we'll get this to go live once yeah so So we're creating a big dash.

53:55So what we're doing is we're creating a 500 mil can of dash, which will increase the value of the product and hopefully be a better proposition for people. But it's super cool, like big chunky cans, because people, you know, dash people just nail it. So interesting how you... That cost you a lot of money to make, though? No, no, no. It's obviously a bit more. but the value you charge charge more and then the shop then the shopper okay so so everyone going into the mail deal uh is looking for the the best way to work i think at four quid now mail does but like to get to maximize that four quid yeah they like gamify it gamify it that's bad and then in terms of the hurdle rates are they higher in the mail deal or what i mean i'm not that close to the i've been involved in the sort of the npd and the strategy behind the project but i haven't been involved in sales for a while so i wouldn't know the hurdle rates but what we're trying to do is increase that significantly and we'll be launching with large retailers but we'll have we will have launched we have launched them in retailers as we speak yeah we'll make sure this goes i mean that's amazing we're getting back to the have faith in creativity yeah it's just it just as i as i was saying is i think people think creativity is this sales and marketing thing but it's not it's like okay let's look at this problem yeah really pull at it tweet okay why is that 500 mil metallic coke bottle in my hand like how do we solve this delicious oh my god i am so so so excited it feels like hungary is finally swimming in the big leagues i can't believe this it's absolutely mental but delighted to announce that big fish yes big fish are part of the podcast Perry's been on the podcast three times listeners absolutely love it some of my most downloaded and cherished episodes of all time but Big Fish are behind literally so many brands in your cupboard, in your weekly shop Charlie Bigham, Year Valley, Tyrells Clipper T, Goo, Rana I mean make the list longer than the River Nile but they also share risk and invest in brands that they really believe are a force for good that are brands that they believe are going to be the next big thing, like Howda, the snack that gives back.

56:18But even more exciting news, Big Fish want to speak to the next wave of small challenger food and drink badgers that are destined for big things, the raconteurs, the movers, shakers, buccaneering visionaries. So look, if you want to speak to Big Fish and just have a chat, get your brand in front of them, then drop me a message. My mate Louie from Local Beer, amazing beer was in their office aka La Fishbowl uh last week chatting to Perry Freddie and the Big Fish crew so drop me a message if you would like to speak to them I want to talk about um Australia yeah how did that come about it's quite a vague question yeah But it's just...

57:05No, it's quite an unusual... And quite an early move, if I'm not saying. Talk to me about that. Yeah, there's lots of different reasons why we launched in Australia. The category was at a similar position, so there's opportunity to sort of grab it. So say in the US, this is a really established, mature market where there are maybe 100 different brands that are doing something similar to Dash. So you've got, there is similar sort of journey. There's opportunity to get distribution. The weather, so it's warmer on the whole over there, which lends well to our drinks, which tend to sell a lot more when it's warmer outside for that refreshing sort of cold drink moment.

57:56They're big into like sustainability. um so the wonky fruit think is really striking the chord over there so we get all of our wonky fruit from australia from all of the five different flavors they will come from australia um there was an opportunity as well um an investor um has a very large soft drinks company over there so we were able to um speak with the right people um he really believed that there was this big opportunity over there and they're also very health conscious the Aussies um these sort of trends that they love like health and well-being um and looking you know looking after themselves it was amazing being in in Sydney and how everyone's up at 5 30 in the morning and going to sleep you know you have your dinner at 6 and you you know people really um take that sort of help to to a new level over that and really yeah is it so so what year did you go into Oz and like what's the thoughts when you're getting on the plane over there like well it was all during COVID actually so um Alex and Alex and the international team we've been sort of dipping our toe in the water in the wholesale market over there so we were shipping from here right originally to sort of test the water and we were getting some good sort of traction within the wholesale channel and then we had this opportunity to launch with walworth i think it was and for us to make it work we had to make it locally so we said it was so expensive to get it over there yeah and then it's just sort of the whole sustainability thing we weren't it's not sustainable if you find thousands of miles yeah so we took the plunge and this was all during covid so everything was over zoom it was pretty crazy i remember having to get up at 3 30 in the morning to like see the color of the cans through zoom for like three nights in a row to make sure that they were the right colors and there's just so many of these like crazy moments um of like setting up a business over there which um we were all as well we were mental yeah yeah we were all involved in sourcing the wonky fruit, speaking to all of the different suppliers.

1:00:18And we did it. There were definitely some barriers to entry, but we managed to get over it. What were some of those barriers? I think we couldn't get the right size can. The pricing wasn't as sharp as we wanted or we got let down by a manufacturer. All of those sorts of things that we didn't expect. it's always a bit more expensive to do manufacturing over there the labor costs are a lot higher than they are in in europe um it's obviously an island so like getting things to the island whether it's raw materials is always a bit more expensive so that's something but no we've got we've got a really exciting australian uh business now um we've had two people live who've yeah yeah so yeah she's amazing yeah she's been she must be in for six yeah five six she's our second um and then we um another cool girl called katie we told like i was taking up a job in australia as well um and building a really strong team over there so it's exciting you know opportunity um but it it has definitely has you know it's not plain sailing that's for sure yeah what are the what have been the um sort of unforeseen challenges building or keeping that culture when you're so far away like do you fly guys fly over there like what well alex is actually there at the moment um and we have a head of sales called renato who's um so alex is over there um el who's one of our brand's managers is going to spend a couple of weeks there in in a few days so there's a lot of work that gets done here in the uk for the australian business yeah um and it's difficult like the people the people over there have to be more entrepreneurial they have to get involved they have to go some you know they have to go sampling you know they have to um you know order tote bags and go and get cardboard boxes and do deliveries themselves yeah yeah so it's just taking it back and how do you because as we were talking about is you did it more the traditional way here yeah with kind of yourself you're kind of your brand builder accounts wholesale then to sayingsbury's blah blah blah there you've gone straight international distribution of online saying yeah into large into large retailers grocery yeah how's that been different like what have been the challenges within that because it's almost like you've almost the other way around in australia which is kind of mad yeah it really is and the way that we we built the business here was very like traditional we concentrated on coffee shops farm shop and delis speciality stores um and built up the brand's equity that way like we'd much prefer someone to first try a dash in a in a trendy coffee shop in shoreditch rather than a meal deal in a you know tesco yeah so the equity of the brand is is there we got the right people talking about it online so instagram was huge for us gifting so alongside getting it into the right distributors and into the right shops which was creating like our perfect dash moment we also getting these like very like cool people to talk about dash and like because dash is lots of people like it looks good in their fridge are happy to take samples and put it up on their stories so we build the brand very organically so when we did get into the larger distribution some people you know knew about the brand and were buying it whereas in australia there's no brand awareness and you'll put into 2 000 stores um obviously the packaging and promotions and all of the on trademarking um you can help with that to bring people to bring but it's just it's it's harder and perhaps a bit more expensive to build the brand awareness you'd have we we've had to do marketing activity that you know we're only just doing now in the uk but we're doing in australia straight away then you do melbourne fashion week we did we sponsored the melbourne fashion show show sorry yeah so because i read someone on linkedin i think you said like you were kind of anti these big shows i think one of the posts post you wrote but you said you said your perspective has changed on that yeah i think like sponsorships so what how did your opinion change on sponsorship from i think i just sort of have been opened up to like these larger sort of marketing activities and what they can actually do.

1:05:21I think we've always been quite frugal here in the UK and we've always said, there's no point doing lots of big marketing until we've got the product there on shelf for people to buy, which is sort of 101. Well, that's what Giles was saying yesterday. It's like, don't do an ATL campaign if there's no... Then you can't go and buy. It's a very risky game if you're going the other way around, if you're looking for attention for then the distribution to come.

1:05:55So with that distribution, we're in most supermarkets in Australia. So if people are interested in the brand, they can go and get us pretty readily. So doing larger ATL campaigns in Melbourne and Sydney means that that's got, you know, people then might go and bump into it in Woolworths. And, you know, it's more, I think I always got told when it was a lady called Zoe Zambikas, I don't know if you've ever met, you should speak to her, she's insane. she was introduced to us by the Sipsmith guys. She's a brand strategist. What was her background? She was at Eat Big Fish, the branding consultancy.

1:06:46But she was marketing director of Sipsmith for a while. And she actually helped us with all of our values and brand strategy. But I couldn't talk more highly about Zoe. and I think it was you know when you're like above like an open oven like one of those old school ovens and you've got water and you like flick it on and it goes like that that's what's happening when you like spend your money on an ATL campaign like if you don't have any thing to capture it so it's just like dispersing and your money's just like gone straight away like can be quicker way to spend your money so we wouldn't do that we've only just started doing above the line seriously here in in london and we're six you know six years in whereas in australia we're doing activity like that and we're sponsoring big uh you know big events um being this the soft drinks um sponsor which is quite ridiculous really but these sort of fashion shows and it's quite it's such a great way to entertain people like buyers or um you know influencers you know get them to come along it's just sort of building out your brand goes back to what you're saying you want to be good in all aspects yeah and it's like doing one thing how does that that one thing could have a snowball effect to a thousand other things yes i remember someone always well my my mentor was just to say the value of whole foods getting whole foods this thing isn't just the whole foods it's the marketing you'll get off the back of it because every anyone who's coming to coming to lunch trade show will pop into whole foods and self-redubate is their shop window hi there guys thank you so much for listening as always means the absolute world to me before we jump into this episode i need a really big big big big favor i have pitched us massive guests humongous guests and unfortunately they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough please please please just hit the subscribe button on apple or spotify or follow ultimately it helps all of us bigger guests equals better conversations equals hopefully better insights for you which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well so please hit that subscribe button and yeah enjoy this episode so we were talking about australia and atl campaigns your atl campaign again that's the creativity and getting lots of people the wonky fruit thing because it got to cancel out of TFL yeah genius yeah absolute genius how do you measure it I know nothing about ATL how do you measure it and how do you actually do it to drive shoppers to store because I think I think a lot of brands can do it too early without the distribution there Yeah, because it's quite cool, isn't it?

1:09:48It's a cool thing to do. As a founder, you're like, but yeah, just waiting, I would say, is probably the key to that because it's going back to that oven thing, all that money just fizzling away. But I think it's a good example, actually, of Gio, who's head of brand here. When we did our first ATL campaign, which was the previous summer to this, we took over one of the two, you know, when you go down, there's like those smaller posters. Yeah. You go down the escalator and we had just our beautiful wonky fruit taking over the whole escalator. I think it was like Wandsworth Common or something like that.

1:10:34And one of the fruits on the poster was this aubergine. Yeah. which TFL banned because it was they thought it was too obscene uh for for quite like a fallacy yeah yeah and um like this is this is not like we didn't know that this was going to happen and we were like this is interesting and actually our PR agency I won't say who it was we're like uh wow that could be quite interesting but let's not really worry about that we were like no this is interesting and i remember geo was like we need to we need to jump on this and we did and that went viral for us um and the the coverage that we got off the back of that was definitely way more than the media that we spent on the the atl campaign so a great way of you know being creative and getting more value when you should jump it and pour gasoline yes to make the thing go up like what were you actually doing so you get you see it in the tfl cancel it what what how do you pull gasoline on it yeah well we created a press release which was like too wonky for tfl yeah so we got the pr agency to get their arse and gear and get behind this yeah yeah yeah and did a big media push and then it got picked up by like the sun the daily mail um and you and then off the back of that we like had the big poster and went down like too wonky for tfl like into the underground and like just kept on creating these pieces of content which were like funny like aftermaths um like very reactive marketing um and it just summed up the brands like this sort of quite cheeky obviously draw attention people to the wonky fruits it was just like one of these amazing moments um like in our journey that really helped you know propel us in a way that brought out a lot of character in the brand um so i love i love that and those golden moments don't necessarily come from you've got to be in it to win it and it's like having your pr agency set up it's having the intuition to jump on it it's then creating the the assets and the content off the back of that to then like all hands on deck basically sat in the room being like how do we push this harder because there's a central theme with um creativity in this and um i love rick rubin or if you know rick rubin the music producer so he's got he's written a book called the creative act right like a gorgeous book.

1:13:24He's literally done everyone from like the Beastie Boys, Adele, huge guy with huge beard, American guy. Yeah. And he talks about creativity as this muse, right? Yeah. And it's about being open to it. You can either be close to it or open to it. Yeah. And these things will pop up when you don't expect them to. Yeah. And it's, if you can jump on it, bang. Because a lot of, I reckon you were to line up, you know, a hundred brand, not, you know, a hundred brands, maybe only five would pick up on that. A lot of the may, some may have been like, oh God, why do we choose that fruit or why do we choose that fucking aubergine whereas you know it's really interesting that news is just like being open to it and when it happens be ready to just pounce i think there's there's a lot yeah yeah um i want to talk you you i know you use data of the seltzer category yes in to actually help you kind of yeah um paint the picture to sayings which i think it was if i listened to a podcast correctly why do you one of my fascinations is why some ideas work in the states but just do not work here why do you what do you think's happened with hard seltzer like do you what what's your take on that category because this is working yeah hard seltzer i think that you know we've i mean we've looked at it for sure um so did you what did you try and do anything with it no no it was it's just sort of part of a long lists of you know potential yeah yeah and mpd so why do i not think so i think for what do i i think of it so firstly i think seltzer wasn't a thing when it came here as in this big yeah yeah sorry so no one knows what seltzer is so in the u.s you've got seltzer which is the la croix and the brands like dash and then a hard seltzer is a development of that which is adding alcohol so no one knows what a seltzer is in the uk so they don't know what a hard seltzer is so there's like a double thing for people to understand whereas in the us it's like a hard seltzer and we know what a seltzer is because we drink it every day yeah i mean i never had an idea what a seltzer was yeah so that for me is a big thing um they're big into like light beer over there so um the less calorific alcohol was already a thing so light beer is huge in the us whereas it's not here um no taste is disgusting but a lot of people drink light bud light or whatever it might be so there was this already this thing like whirring of like lower calorie alcohol so i think that's why a reason for it to sort of take off over there i think the environment so a lot of outdoor activities hard seltzer is set up for like chuck in a cool box let's go down to the beach sort of thing again california it's it's an outside sort of drink it works well in australia actually hard seltzer oh does it yeah so it's this sort of like in a park um outside which it does work in the uk you go to a festival it's full of old seltzer still but not this sort of mass it's not become like a wine or a beer like as in the states it's like a thing um but i think it's pretty i'm not a big fan of it really i just it's pretty it's just for people like wanting to sort of get drunk and it's like low calorie so it sort of works it's not like there's no you know real sort of it's really sort of slammed back isn't it it's a festival drink is what I think yeah I mean they're great great fun yeah yeah yeah but they haven't worked here and there's been so many brands so many brands what's the I think it's Ellie Goulding had a brand that was pivoted served to cocktails in a can which is obviously moth have done a sterling job of that the um in terms of kind of your mindset i think i'd love to tap into this if that's okay because i think it's just interesting about what drives people um what would you say kind of like i think some founders not all but some founders have like a friction that drives them um what would you say your internal friction is that just that gets you up to that just drives you um what drives me it's a good question i do sort of think about like what you know what what what what i want to sort of achieve for me like i'm brand person like i want to create something that will last like the test of time and so when i hope that we've created something with dash which is super simple that's healthy that's sustainable those sort of like macro trends aren't going anyway anywhere we all want to live longer we all want to look after the planet um and the the brands is really simple so for me i'm not sure if it's answering your question but for me it's about creating something that will be around for a long time so that's what i'm thinking about that's what sort of gets me out bed in the morning um and then there are other things like which are so rewarding is you know working with really talented people um strategy like strategy becomes way more important the little things that you do that can make such a big difference such as oh it's just i think we we've got a new chairman called david milner he's no he's not new he's been with us for nearly two years because so um big fish now one of my sponsors yeah awesome yeah perry yeah huge fan oh he's absolutely well he did sit smith perry did yeah yeah yeah um so there you go I mean, that kicked off on Monday, actually.

1:19:41But Tim told me to interview David. Yeah. So he's amazing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we can get him. We can also introduce you if you'd like. Oh, that would be brilliant, yeah. So David's a super successful food and drink. So he did 20 years for P &G. So he did sort of his time for a large multinational. and then his first role was CEO of Tyrell's Grisps when they had just been bought by private equity off the family and then he built that to a£300 million business. So was William Chase involved in that? I think he was, I really don't know but I think he was sort of involved as not, David was CEO and then he did it with Lily's Kitchen, the same story and most recently with St.

1:20:33Pierre which is the brioche business that was it yeah yeah because perry didn't tell me yeah yeah they've did yeah yeah because they work together because they're david and perry tend to work on projects yeah um so david's david is trying david it's about for him it's like doing sorting out like the big problems like concentrate on the one thing that so there might be just like two things that will concentrate on it dash every year and we'll work together with him on on those things which will allow us to keep pushing forward and becoming bigger for like this long-term sort of growth strategy so one of them might be getting a front of store grocery working that's mad so picking two so doing doing more with less or doing less better yeah yeah what are the two or how what have been some of the two i know you may not say say now yeah but since you've worked with david like i don't know maybe last year what were the two that you really fucking went for um like international is obviously really interesting for us um because you've got to try and get the balance of like focusing on your key market but you also want to be able to grow into new markets So I think having experience on that has been really helpful.