Espresso: How POPHAM'S Scale and Keep The Magic Alive - Ollie Gold

0:07with what we're talking about when we were outside there is how scale can come can kill magic so So there's a restaurant which we were talking about, which was unreal, sick. One site, there was so much magic. You're walking there, I was like, this is unreal. They opened another site, still good. Opened another site, still good. Opened another site, which is Mahusiv. Went in there the other week, and I was like, this is just not the same thing. So at some point, you have to go through the paradox of growing versus keeping the magic. so you're at three sites now what are your thoughts on that first question second question is is how are you going to keep the magic because you've got like as you go into this homeware and lifestyle brand so three so yeah we got three bakeries one operates as a bakery and restaurant and then we have two homeware shop as well on top of that we have one in hackney and one in islington right um the in terms of how do we keep the magic it's not i think it's we can answer that as simply as it's not to grow to five seven ten fifteen sites you with the way that we make pastry um and the the time the labor the love that goes into every croissant we understand that there's a there's a tipping edge there's a tipping point where you lose quality quickly um you know we've obviously got space to grow in terms of yes we can produce more but we can't produce more for another three sites we can't produce more you know to go massive because we will the product will not be as good as as um as good anymore and i think that's that's something that you've got to realize that you want to do so are you know we've always wanted to strive to be the best not the biggest you know i'd love people to one day talk about poppins being the best bakery in london whether that's you know around the world and that's what we want people to talk about and it's not poppins are the biggest or or you know we can i'm sure have 10 10 sites by now if we were to take investment and you know the whole of poppums then becomes diluted in something that we don't know about and the love gets lost in that um and so it's uh yeah that that tipping point is definitely something that we're aware of and in terms of the growth into the homewares brand uh poppums home which um was launched in august 2020 um so so lucy my business partner she she pretty much single-handedly launched that a few months after covid hit and something that we'd always discussed and talked about together that we wanted to do it was you know really based on the premise of people used to come into our sites and say where do you get that glass where'd you get that cup from where'd you get those that linen from and it was really nice sending them to the local producers and people were buying them and that was great and then it got to a stage that was like maybe we should try selling this ourself and covid you know if we were to look back at covid i think one of the positives of of that was there was a time where you suddenly weren't operational 23 hours a day for seven days a week and we stopped and we breathed and we took a step back and we're like okay maybe we can actually strategize this for the first time in our in our three years and maybe we can talk about what we are good at but more importantly what we're bad at strip that back let's focus on what we really want to do here poppin's home yeah and derived from from really wanting to feed the community on something else but pastry and coffee and it was building up that reputation we'd done that and there's like look now please trust us we can we can build you a retail space that has lovely cups glasses napkins etc now there's a range of 200 different types of products and so that sort of that's a growth that we can handle that's a growth that we can we can deal with it doesn't take 10 more bakers to open a couple more sites you know it takes two and really specialist and great buyers to buy the products um but thankfully um there's touch wood they're you know they're easier to find than skilled bakers that are really tough to find at the moment and so it's just growing it's growing in a different way and and it's not something that i would recommend anyone you know you don't open a bakery and then six months later open a homewares brand you know this took years of us building a reputation and building i think trust is the is is a word in there that customers really feel like they can back you for creating something that they will enjoy and it's one of the reasons why islington popham's home also has a deli in there it has food items in there and that is feeding a community that have been so so supportive to us over the years and have given us everything by constantly coming through you know rain or shine but through covid through queuing up for hours because in covid that was the only thing people could do and you know we then through an amazing group of people who are interested in small producer food we wanted to open a deli to give them you know back their sort of local amenities of what they can get on their daily shop rather than having to go somewhere else quick one guys espressos have 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 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6:09Look, there's a link in the show notes. Please feel free to book a call with Josh. He's a 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. This is what I love in these conversations, right? Yeah. You just see everything you think you know can be just pulled underneath you. You just look at things from a different angle. I think so many people think of how do we grow a business upwards? how do we get more sites? How do we get more products in those sites? Whereas what you've done, and it's what we're talking about at the beginning, is a bounce.

6:43So you don't have to grow loads of bakeries, which is so hard. I don't know, like, especially with apparently the weight, I'm not as privy to the industry as you. I just like keep stuffing my face with quattles. But, but the, you know, the shortage of staff now post COVID is mental. So you're not going to find those good bakers. But, so you can't, you're, you're keeping the magic of Popham's, by not going too vertical. But you've then got the width in homeware, which is super scalable and can build that brand. So that's how you're keeping the magic and growing. That's mad. Yeah, I think the horizontal and vertical is a good description of how you said it there.

7:25And we're soon launching a pantry range. So we have jams, chutneys, cordials that you know come under the popham's brand again another thing that yes you need people to make it but it doesn't take as many people to make it and it's you know if you think about our product our main products are pasta and pastry they're one day shelf life you know we want someone in newcastle don't know why i've picked newcastle in anywhere outside anywhere outside london to enjoy popham's products and so you know we're gonna have this these range of jams and chutneys that we can send them you know across the country we would also have them in different delis as well around london and people can enjoy popums and that brand um without having to have that one day nature of it and that's something again that's scalable and that we can grow without diluting all of our resource that we have um but again that's not something you just do on the off year this has been two years in the making it's been two years of recipe development it's something that we know that we need to focus that the the quality of product needs to be so spot on before we release it and before we launch but yeah it's just it's an exciting addition that fits in that in that deli mold but allows us to to to scale in different ways and just for that coming back we want as many people to enjoy popums as possible and some people don't love coming to northeast london but why while still keeping the magic because to be honest me i've asked this question to a lot of people and most don't have the the only answer i've really found of how to do this how this is the scale magic paradox is you can you can constrain by geography which doesn't really work in the uk it works in the us like in and out burger the reason in out burger is banging is because you can only really get it in those states so it makes it still super exclusive you can't go you can only get it in um california and maybe one other state so you can't get it in new york so it's like it's hard to get scarcity whereas like i think they opened a shake now shake remember when shake chat came to london everyone was like i mean i was like running now it's like oh my god there's a shake chat here now there's loads of them same with five guys it's like yeah yeah i remember that with five guys actually yeah when they first came i was buzzed for it and i don't think i've had one since i've really made it to be fair made their milkshakes are like so good it's probably blasphemous saying that's you with all your fine art but if you ever want a good world of shade they're really good noted and in terms of what we were talking about at the beginning is in terms of unleashing we talked about you being the link and we talked about how you unleash these people that are more creative and better than you but still give them tramlines you said when you were in the F1 it was two rigid tramlines so people couldn't be creative 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 leave friends as well it means the world to me