Espresso: Grenade Founder - Surprising Lessons From Richard Branson

0:00To be fair, Richard Bay always says that he's not happy because he's successful, he's successful because he's happy. What underrated lessons you've taken from him that you'd only get from him by being on Necker Island with him? I mean, again, not knowing where there is, is a really powerful one. The power of simplicity. I love how he looks at businesses. And I've been really fortunate to go into the simplicity. Well, for instance, so I was in Africa with Richard a few years ago, and he was sort of sitting in his chair where he looks with his PA. and they were again he's got a fantastic view of the the so they share it overlooks sabi sands incredible view and again you can see wildlife coming past and stuff and as always he's got messages and emails and stuff to do and um and i think he um helen went off to go and do something and um richard was just sort of sat there on his ipad and um i was just sort of walking past and eyes caught and he said oh do you want to kind of have a sit down he was looking at buying grenade at the time so this was 2017 which didn't happen actually but i'm glad that didn't happen but i'll come into that later um he was looking at grenade we sat and chastened about grenades and i said what are you working on and he was working on virgin galactic and he got it on his ipad and he just he just showed me the 20 questions that he was asking his team about space travel what were some of those questions oh just how long does it how long you know what does it cost to build a spaceship basically uh how long would the you know how many um trips could you do in a day or in a week you know how many crew there'd be the staff that were involved where it would go from where it would go to um the oh just just the most simple questions you could think you know what each trip would cost them in terms of their hard costs what do they think they could charge a consumer i mean just the most basic question you could think of any business and it was space travel and i just thought god he simplified that i mean there'll be a load of stuff beyond that obviously but he just likes simplicity and the answers to those questions would tell him whether or not that was worth pursuing or not it's mad mate because the power of simplicity should never be underestimated to be fair so out of everything on your journey mate what are like some one two three questions that you sort of like to ask yourself not necessarily to the team but like it's like just to get a steer on how things are going or like if you've got a problem you're like i don't know it could be i still think it probably it comes back down to my five or six rules of investing as in the sense looking at looking at grenade and again going back 10 years and looking at the the growth of the protein bars first thing going would i eat this because if i wouldn't what's why would anyone else secondly would i pay that where would i buy it from um what are my alternatives you know what else is on the market and i think just being really honest with yourself um it is pretty important because i think people aren't honest with themselves and they they convince themselves that they've got different answers maybe to those questions than they really have.

3:14So I think, you know, for me, is there a better one? You know, why can I make a best version of this that's not just slightly better than the next brand? Because why bother? Can I make something that's just miles ahead of the competition? And actually, to be fair, when Mondelez invested us in 2021, they had some very interesting thoughts about India, China and America in terms of launching there. And actually, we were in America at the time and we're going back to America um with with Oreo and they said you know with America for instance can you be the number one selling protein bar and hold it for the next 25 years and that was one of their questions and I said no why and they said because at the time we'd got our you see I think again going back to 2021 our protein bars we'd made with you know Belgian sugar-free chocolate were better than american chocolate bars which are made with compound chocolate but that's what i think what's compound chocolate is that so compound chocolate is a is a specific chocolate which has got a different melting point and is better sold in countries where they've got hotter temperatures the uk is not a hot place so english chocolate that's why that's one of the reasons it tastes different because having a chocolate bar in texas fucking rank i think it's Yeah, this is a really, so this actually answers the question.

4:38So I think our chocolate's better. As in the UK or Grenade. Yeah, as in UK versus America, let's say. But there's a reason for that because I grew up with it and you grew up with it because we grew up with Cadbury. Therefore, we like Cadbury. Now, the American consumer can like ours. They can think, actually, yeah, that Grenade bar's nice, but they still like theirs because they grew up with Hershey. Yeah. Chocolate their moms gave them when they were five or six. They call it candies, don't they? Yeah, that fucking thing you see. So they really like her. Yeah, yeah. Which, again, probably we don't.

5:12I've never thought of that. Well, because you like what you grew up with. Yeah. And how is that different to India and China? Do they have a different palate? So China sounds bizarre. Snacking's not really a thing in the same way. They'll snack on different foods than we would snack on. What such as? Well, they like, again, they like stuff that we wouldn't eat, don't they? So again, you get things like insects as snacks. There's just, you know, they've just got a lot strange to us. Yeah, so yeah. Put it this way. Chocolate's not really a thing. You know, they don't snack on chocolate when they're kids.

5:52India, again, hot country, you know, an enormous amount of poverty. So you've got, you know, there's not really that middle class potentially in you. It's getting there, but you've just got really rich people and really poor people. And I think, so again, chocolate wasn't so much of a thing. And again, you've got huge import taxes of like 70 % of the time, which actually now as of this week are probably going to change. And you've got a hot country and the demographics not really there the same. So some of these markets, I think even, you know, Cadbury's there. And I think for the size of the country, you know, Cadbury would do better probably in smaller Scandinavian countries than it does in the likes of India.

6:27So all of these countries have their own anomalies, let's say. and so i thought the question for monderley's can you be number one and hold it and me saying no and as such we pulled out the u.s so but now we've got oreo and americans like oreo and if they want oreo and a protein bar would you change the chocolate's compound or no i wouldn't i'd still keep it the same chocolate so i would still keep it the same uh i mean i'm a big consumer right so like but i i would say the one that's still got the issue with melting point so our chocolate will melt at a lower temperature than compound chocolate does but that's where then we either compromise which you don't want to do or we have an incredible delivery option where it's kind of refrigerated to someone's front door we've done that in the past we were shipping protein bars in 2021 we were shipping protein bars to um to texas in a heat wave and we were getting them all the way from europe to someone's front door in texas and they were perfect the problem being then if that person wasn't in oh yeah they melt on the doorstep and then it's our fault yeah and then you've got a shitty message of a consumer probably to me yeah saying yeah you know your product's rubbish yeah so we can only control the parts of the delivery that we can control i think again you know to probably say then what are the things that you've learned just anything you can control you should try and control it but there's a lot of things beyond our control and sometimes that's the thing like the chocolate bar on the doorstep in in texas i can't do anything about that i can't if someone's not in they're not in but the thing is there and that's interesting that product was ruined and then it's my fault somehow i can't do anything about that so sometimes you have to be careful the battles that you fight because you're not going to win that one two months free yeah that's what espresso sponsors unleashed are offering they are supply chain gurus and offer inventory management that talks to your e-com and accounting software.

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