Espresso: How DASH Hustled and Won a Whole Foods Market Listing

0:06I 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 do you get back into it like yeah what happened with that i think it's interesting yeah 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 i think a meal deal is obviously a big part of that um and there's 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 just take a step back so we talked about drinks being competitive but those chillers at front of store are like new level for real estate yeah it is and it's 95 percent controlled by you know multinationals you know 40 might be coca-cola 30 might be the idea of britwick whatever 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 it's 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 this 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 mil of coca-cola um and that we're not gonna so so okay so dash Dash would be at the bottom end of the price point.

2:34So say if Dash is like£1.10 or£1.20, we're in the bottom 10 % of the products. So people won't jump to us because they want to get the most value. I think I heard from someone that the smartest commercial decision that Coca-Cola had made in the last 10 years was creating that 500ml PET plastic bottle. i had 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 This is£1.10.

3:25No,£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£1.70. 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 they 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.

4:18so it gives us lots of dilemmas and hope um be looking forward to um sharing with you our thing that we're launching in a few weeks time um to make the meal deal work in the uk 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 Hungary thank you so this this probably when's this 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 so what we're just because yeah but that's I've got about 14 episodes and all this will go live so we actually get this to launch yeah around January time yeah so then hopefully some other retailers get your deal no exactly and what we're doing and i'm happy um if this is going to be released after january but we'll get this to go live once yeah so we're creating a big dash so 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 um but super cool like big chunky cans because people you know dash people just nail it so interesting how you're so it's no yeah it's just that cost you a lot of money to make though no no no it's it's obviously a bit more but yeah 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 worth i think at four quid now mail does aren't they but to get to maximize that four quid.

6:35Yeah, they like gamify it. Gamify it, that's bad. And then in terms of the hurdle rates, are they higher than our deal? 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 have we will have launched we have launched them in retailers as we speak 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 it it tweet okay why is that 500 mil to die coke bottle in my hand like how do we solve this delicious um and i want to talk about um australia yeah how did

7:42that come about it's quite a vague question yeah but it's but it's just no it's quite an unusual um and quite an early move 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 a similar sort of journey. there's opportunity um to get distribution um the weather so it's warmer on the whole over there which is 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 um they'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 that all come from Australia.

8:53There was an opportunity as well. An investor has a very large soft drinks company over there. So we were able to speak with the right people. He really believed that there was this big opportunity over there. And they're also very health conscious, the Aussies. these sort of trends that they love like health and well-being 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 six and you you know people really um take that sort of help to to a new level over there 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 full episode it will be in the show notes a link will be in the show notes the full episode thank you so much please leave friends as well it means the world to me