Espresso: How Unrooted beat MOJU to a British Airways Listing

0:06Let's dig deeper into the contract catering specifically because I feel like it's almost like we've dug we dug past the oil and we've entered a fucking brand new world like we've almost got into atlantis like the water world and it's like so perplexing and confusing and the way i've always heard about it or to me it's always perplexing it's like i feel like you can end up being a busy fool in that because the amount of effort to get to get to get a spotify listing and there's bugger all volume there which you could just spend i don't know you could spend that energy building d2c where there is volume or you could spend that energy going into trying to get a co-op listing with this 500 stores um but then at the same time as soon as you get into that that atlantis underworld of out of home is there are these huge opportunities in like uh i don't know for example if you're a functional drinks band and david lloyd that's suddenly 80 sites but where it gets confusing is it it could not saying it would but it could take and maybe david lloyd's bad example because i know they change the menu very infrequently but yeah it could take as much effort to get a single site like a spotify which is great for for shouting about linkedin um as it would a david lloyd as it would uh a school which isn't great for linkedin imagine saying oh i got into those primary schools i mean that's hardly gonna you know hardly bang the bong for that um imagine let's make this really dumb right so you get the contract catering listing like what are the first one or two you go for because i know compass is really hard like again let's just say this is popy's pops who am i going for first question second question i get a listing what are the first three things i do like i'm sat there going fuck and now i've got this listing what do i do so so i think like you know i think it's really easy i think it's easier when i can bring some like relevant sort of brand examples into the picture right because i think that helps it helps everyone so you know one of my first clients which is a great brand um that i worked with for a couple years called unrooted drink so they do they're in the sort of shop space um you know um they are they're they're doing well in that in that space um but they have they have a quite clear difference to Moji, which is Moji, again, they have a 30-day shelf life in terms of their product.

2:35So I think it might be slightly longer, but it's essentially a fresh product, right? So that limits them in terms of some of their distribution, right? Because not all the time, but there are certain retailers and certain outlets that just require a longer shelf life. It's just a fact, right? So Unrooter, which is very much a challenger, it's a smaller brand than Moji, the picked up pace in the supermarkets, but they had a very much a sort of focus, which was, okay, let's try and play in spaces that might be more difficult for another fresher product, perhaps like Moji, to sort of come into. So, you know, they, they, for example, focus massively into the travel space.

3:29So they focus really hard on travel and they've focused on, um, into hotels and mini bars. Um, so, so, so, you know, in terms of that example, it's, you know, that's an example where sort of a brand's looked at, look, they're, they're in a shop space. They're in a functional space. Um, um, they've got a competitor within that space, but you know, where can, where can they not play and where are those little nuances? And again, Shots for Travel, they've done really well. They're on Virgin. They're on British Airways. Shots is actually a real perfect place for, you know, it's a quick boost of goodness.

4:04You know, people have digestion issues sometimes on planes. They have a good gut shot health. You know, there's a story to tell that. Again, same with the minibar scenario. You know, people often in business hotels, for instance, we saw a lot of success focusing on business hotels. We have a good energy shop that sits there. Businessmen is coming over from flying in. They're staying in a hotel for one night. They might have an espresso or coffee, but then they might take an energy shot from the fridge. So, and again, in terms of looking at sort of the rate of sale in a minibar, minibars is a big opportunity.

4:45but in terms of volume, if you can go into hotels with hundreds of rooms in, but the rate of sale is often small in terms of per room, so they're looking for a product like that. So again, I think looking at that example, it's again, that's a little bit of tapping into what are the operational issues, all dynamics within that category, and it's also also looking okay you're sort of also doing a little bit of looking at your competitors and going where can they play and where can they own and where can we own and sort of making sort of sort of a plan around that i think i started one half of your question but we can dive into probably the second half 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 trick 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 reference hungry thank you just to kind of um uh kind of play with that is i think one of the things and i i do this a lot is is you can literally write on a piece of paper it's like what would this look like if it was easy so i and because the world is so complex people are obsessed with complexity we lean on complexity as a crutch for making and we end up just faffing about basically but what would this look like it was easy and i i asked this so getting the podcast going what this looked like it was easy and he just boils away all the all the bollocks yeah and i think when you when you ask that as a brand scale what would this look like it was easy and you literally write this on a piece of paper have your competitors and it's like what is hard for our competitors yeah so when you do these two things suddenly you find the slipstream channel so with with unrooted it's okay what would this look like it was easy but we've got a a much longer shelf life which means we can play in places where there's where they where longer shelf life is actually super advantageous airlines hotels fill in the blank yeah what is hard for moju places where they don't have a short short shelf life airlines uh hotels blah blah blah so that's hard for moju grocery is probably pretty easy for moju because they've been up and running um so again what you've done there super shrewd is is like oh fuck it we're not going to play in the in the grocery space just yet we're gonna we're gonna dial in on these contract caterers yeah i think that's super valuable and super actionable for people listening to this but then let's let's go into the as i said almost like atlantis the underworld of contract catering so you've done that you've done this upstream strategy upstream i can't pronounce my words upstream strategy where you've been like right this is easy for us hard for them this is where we're going to play that that that kind of boils away a lot of the whiff in terms of being being a meandering gallivanting fool yeah um to to focus so you've done that piece of work then what is the next step and maybe we could talk about yeah do you pick off n sites do you look for the big ones with lots of sites how do you do it mate it seems so confusing to me yeah so so i think look like But one of the hardest things like all this is actually understanding who their customers are.

8:29So understand who the customers are. Sorry to interrupt. So when you say customers, are you talking about, say the wholesaler's customer? So would you say the wholesaler is, I don't know, I'm just saying X. Yeah. When you say customer, are you talking about David Lloyd as the customer? Or are you talking about the consumer, which is the person in the gym? Because I always get confused. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry. I should have clarified. So, yeah. In terms of the account, so the David Lloyd, the account that you're going to be selling to, not the consumer who's going to consume the product.

9:08So, often these wholesalers or contract caterers can be quite cagey with their account. So, what that really requires you to do is to try and, this is a relationship building This is a relationship building exercise, which is you have to try and get to know in the contract caterers, your lead contact from Compass. And then underneath your buyer, they will have business development managers that look after different sectors. And there's a game of being able to sort of try and build relationship with them. They will, in their kind, share lists with you. you know this startup industry is i do find is sort of um sort of relatively sort of sharing and caring so you know you might be able to sort of get some contacts from any other sort of people that you might know in the industry and and and i think what you've just got to when you're targeting these and when you're targeting these sort of sales accounts you've you've you've got to be um yeah i think you've got to be very very um very quickly because because because like it keeps keep saying is when you're looking at these out of home categories you know it's addressing the pain point it's addressing the gap so you know immediately you've got to try and find your space within that you've got to you know you can't just be another of another you've really got to give them a reason why your product sort of needs to be in that environment.

10:43So, um, I, I, I think, yeah, there's quite a, you know, then these contract cages are pretty good, you know, um, you know, they often do, do, um, days where they invite lots of their, um, their accounts down, you know, you have larger sampling days, you know, they, they can be sort of collaborative, but, um, I think it goes with, I think this sort of goes back to the point, which is um looking at this different this this difference between this out of home and this sort of grocery there and i think this is where not lots of people you know go think oh we just we emailed one bar it's the bar waitrose we get the listing happy days you know and there's this huge this out of home piece there's a lot of hard graft and there's a lot of um boots on the ground and and there's a lot that goes goes into it 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 means the world to me