Espresso - Embrace paranoia - COOK

0:00Morning, morning, or welcome. Yes, I have grown a tash, I have got a nose ring and I am covered in tattoos. I am your barista for the day. Welcome to Espresso short, snappy Espresso short podcast episodes. I've literally downloaded all the wisdom from all the founders and all the brands like Gurd, Tills, Coconut Collaborative, Candy Kittens, Little Moons, Planet Organic and I've distilled it into this micro, short, snappy wisdom to give you a mahoosive edge on the day to kickstart your day so look, without further ado, let's get cracking and enjoy this espresso shot lots of our listeners want to put a brand or a product in sexy packaging looks great on shelf, but if you go home and taste it you're not going to go back and buy it again right so it's all that repeat so i'd love to know how you navigated those waters yeah i mean look that as i said this was the big challenge from the beginning still the big challenge now um and there's various there's various ways you can sort of look at it one i personally i i'm a bigger believer in there's about four of us five of us in the business whose opinions I really, really trust as to whether a product's okay or it's not okay.

1:15And those are the people who make the decisions. And we favor doing that internally rather than doing lots of market research. That's not to say it's the right way. That's just the way we've chosen to do it. I know Pret, for example, who we have a pretty close relationship with, have taken took that approach over many years as well um in developing products just get the people whose judgment and whose taste buds you really trust um to make sure that you know the product's right um and as far as testing is concerned i think the one of the most important things that we brought in right in the early days, right at the very beginning was we would have a taste panel where we would freeze down a single portion of every single batch we made and then reheat it and just to make sure it tasted okay.

2:13And we still do that now. We now make something like each batch of food we make is something like 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 portions, but we will still freeze down a single portion of every single product we make, and then a panel will taste it just to make sure it's okay and nothing is going to the customer that isn't okay. And I think that whilst a lot of food companies put in place technical processes to monitor quality, et cetera, et cetera, there's nothing like tasting every batch, every time. And I think you can, you simply, when you're working with food, you cannot take quality for granted. And it amazes me how many companies do.

2:54And I think it's particularly dangerous when you outsource your production, of which, of course, many brands do, and just assume that everything is always going to be okay. Things go wrong all the time. And I think there has to be a really healthy paranoia when it comes to your product about just because you've made something you know for two years five years or however long it doesn't mean to say it's still going to be okay stuff goes wrong because you're dealing with fresh ingredients and fresh human beings who make the stuff things things go wrong so i think just constant paranoia about that product about how it's going to go out quick one guys espresso's got a brand new sponsor unleashed unleashes inventory management software that talks directly to your finance and econ software we use unleashed daily islands i bloody love it we've got our admin time in half saving approximately 30k a year why use it save money save headaches save stress get granular clarity on your margins no way your stock is don't miss availability look your favorite brands literally use unleashed as their backbone candy kittens tiny rebel trip always religiously look there's a link in the show notes please feel free to book a call with josh and his wonderful sales team at unleashed they're amazing even nothing comes of it and even better news you'll get your first month free if you reference hungry thank you i'll be very honest like when i came in to start doing this podcast is i always just thought it's all about the brand and the packaging that looks needs to look really really strong and you'll and you'll get the the pull through and people are buying brands i think there's actually a massive difference between people who want to set up a brand and people who want to set up a great food product that has a great brand as well um and you know i've interviewed mark from mark palmer from who was the pramandre marketing director he said we used to see ingredients as part of the marketing budget like that's how important was the quality of the product um same with charlie biggum like he's been on here they've got an obsession with the product and i think it's really reassuring for our listeners it's like the brands and the bells and whistles can come but the foundations of the product need to be there first thank you so so much for listening it honestly means the world to me i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day let's be having ya if you want the fun episode it will be in the show notes a link will be in the show notes the full episode thank you so much please say friends as well it means the world to me