GAIL’s Founder: The 17 HARDEST Business Lessons No One EVER Tells You, How We Solve The Future of Food

34:33So it's become, you know, a lot of the fish farming, you know, the worst of the fish farming becomes really detrimental to the environment, right? rather than just a small part of it. Yes. And then you said with the complex systems, ecologically, I'm very bad at pronouncing, sorry. Is this interacting of things and it never stops. There's no end point. Nope. And I love, that's what a business is ultimately. It's like an organism and it's lots of different things colliding. What have you learned about trying to get those things into some sort of flow movement? Because it's been 40 years since you've been doing this.

35:12Yeah, yeah, I think it's, you know. As you're getting bigger, I think, is the main, I think it's easy when you're small. But when you're bigger, it's. Yeah, I think every stage has its challenges. So, you know, it doesn't, you know, some things get harder as you get bigger, some things get easier. And when you're small, you have their own challenges. But I don't know, what's, so what do I think is like, you know, you need to,

35:38you need to create some structure and process when you're a little bit bigger, right? And as you do that, you don't want to kill the risk-taking, you know, the fun. You don't want it to become a checkbook or, you know, turn off the brain because, oh, I've got to do 10 things today, da-da-da-da, I got them done, rather than, why am I doing this? How could I be doing it better? You know, you just, you know, you need to have structure and process, but you need to make sure that it's, you know, There's still enough curiosity in the business and risk-taking to make it fun and forward-facing. Otherwise, you're just replicating some of the same stuff, right?

36:22And so I guess my job, and I always like to keep a really strong creative team. And I also, but I don't believe they are the ones that deliver the creativity. The creativity has to be across all the business, just like I think sustainability has to be across all the business. I don't have like a sustainability team. you know it has to be living in every single person here yes you know we have a creative studio but i don't expect all the creativity to come from that that's a certain kind of creativity or we're trying to connect to things describe because i i love what you said i believe curiosity is the birthplace of creative creativity yeah so if you get really you actually people think oh we'll do a bloody brainstorming session it's like if you haven't got curious people in the room then it's just like it's pointless it's pointless so i'm gonna do a brainstorming session mate and it's like no what you need is go upstream yeah i have very curious people yeah very curious people when they collide back to this yeah yeah ideas just bounce around yeah but i love what you said there's different types of creativity yeah so it's almost like you know you may have the creative unit downstairs which is probably people like roy right describe how that that sort of goes into a flow yeah and how you sort of uh stoke that yeah but then what i'm also interested in seeing sort of the juxtaposition of this is creativity and sustainability from other areas.

37:38Yeah. So the creative studio does a great, so I think you start with really good creative people to start with. Like you need to make sure you've got some of the best. They're already really interesting. And I think there's two reasons why is one, they usually have a network of people that are also creative, right? So we do a lot of bringing people in and saying, Hey, you know, what are you doing? What's going on? We're trying to get this done. What do you think? You know, sometimes we'll make a bunch of salads together or we'll do something like this. So it's using outside people. And I think, you know, and then you need to kind of go through all those ideas.

38:10You know, that's why you need really smart guys inside, you know, or at least understand what you're trying to do because there's probably 20 great ideas. It says you have 20 ideas, you know, let's say 10 are great and then five are appropriate for us, right? And I need a team that can kind of sort through all that. And that, but that's thinking about our food and some of the ways we deliver it and these kind of things. So they really focus on that part of the business. The creativity that has to sit in the rest of the business and embed it everywhere. It's like, you know, as people waking up, like if you're, you know, building a site, you know, a new Gales, you say, you know, how could I be doing it differently today?

38:46Or, you know, you can look at the scale of, you know, I did this, I built this one Gales and I know why I did it and I made this mistake and I'm going to change what I'm going to do for the next one to make it better. Or every, and even every week in the building of that first one, you're going, what could I tweak? you know what you know what did they miss that i can add right that's there's a guy do you know hyatt denim the uh the uh i'll send you a link to it okay uh basically a guy who's um built howie's skate i think how is a skate brand okay yeah sold it to timberland long made a load of money and was i want to start this new thing which is which is um which is jeans and he's like he's going to grow slowly it's about sort of slowing down super sustainable based in wales david hyatt been on the podcast absolute sort of brand building legend and um he said he's got a wonderful quote which is scaled kills magic and one of the things i think you guys have done incredibly well i'd love to get into the weeds about of this yeah is you've managed to keep um so for example and it's not me sort of lambasting five guys but five guys are just like you rinse and repeat you know what you're getting yeah and they're amazing burgers yeah yeah but then what i think with you guys is i go to the isha store or the cobden store which is my local one and they're totally different stores the one in camden downstairs completely different right what is first part of the question what's the blueprint so you go in you know this is going to work and then what is the i think i love what you said earlier like we need to get the bakers right but then we'll let them play jazz and what's the nuance between different areas is the jazz is the playing the jazz like talk me through that i think that's interesting well i always thought that like um you know architecture and property i drove a lot of my decisions early on is like if I loved this the site I'd say it doesn't matter about the neighborhood really you know is there an example of that well like Hempstead I was just like you know I don't know why you go to Hempstead it's like there was nothing there there were already it's like a few bakeries or like two bakeries there but I loved the corner site right so I did that then at Notting Hill we're only going to do one but I fell in love with this the Notting Hill Portobello one you know I knew the guy it was an art it was something before and then it was and art thing, but he was failing.

40:53But it was such a cool building on the corner. I was like, oh, shit, you know, something needs to happen in this space. And so I fell in love with the property and said, okay, well, we'll make something fun out of this beautiful property. So I love, I do love, you know, buildings. And I think, gosh, in London, there's just so many full character buildings, right? So I think that's one thing is like, sometimes we just start with the building, not the neighborhood. As we get bigger, we kind of think, okay, you know, it's a neighborhood. Can we find a nice building in there? and we always like the challenge.

41:23So do you look at the neighborhood? Because you're opening, I think, I read somewhere three to four. I don't know how many. There's a lot more sites, basically. Yeah, we did like over 30 last year. What's the process to say, we think this is going to work? Yeah, it's a good. Look, it's kind of half math and half art. Because, I mean, you can do some. We've got some algorithms that I've built with some guys, which is a creative process. It's kind of saying. That's what we said at the beginning. Science and art are the same thing. Same thing, right. So, I mean, I want to put science into it, right?

41:53Because I want to free my mind in the space to really think about the place. All those algorithms. So those algorithms, we built it, I mean, it's probably eight years we've been building it. It's like, why would somebody want a bakery in every neighborhood? And basically, we ended up with an algorithm that can tell you kind of every postcode in the country what we might be able to do there based on what we've done. Now, it's just math, right? So you still have to get your head into that neighborhood, ask some questions, feel it, get, you know, what side of the street? What, you know, is it a building you love?

42:20is this kind of thing. But, you know, yeah, I get half of it to be science. And that was a creative process. It's like, why would somebody be there? Well, you know, maybe it's a little bit about schools, right? And it's a little bit about, you know. Schools as in like actual schools. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, how many schools are around there? You know, how many churches are around there? Like, you know, how far are you from the tube? You know, but what I find is that our sites, you know, Gales can exist. One can exist because there's lots of people around, near a tube, you know, and wealthy. Right.

42:51And then one can one can do really well because it's, you know, it's basically in a in a in a community that's that that they don't have much. And, you know, they have to drive somewhere else. There's not much football. And, you know, I don't know. It could be one school or something. And when you say the maths of the algorithm, like just swim into those lanes a bit more. Well, it's a yeah, it's been developed over a couple of years. I did it with a friend of mine, my son's. He was a data scientist. Now he's our chief technology officer. And we started working on this thing, trying to answer the question like, what does make a good place?

43:29And we realized that it's just not like if it's wealthy, it works. Or if it's high football, it works. Or it's near a tube, it works. It's not a correlation, right? It's a complex, you know, set of inputs. And one input could be at 100 and one could be at 20. but then for the and then another one could be at 30 and then the other another site those three inputs could be different measurements what's some of the inputs yeah well we would have like uh we have this thing called like retail well retail density i look at like you know how many sites are there and how many it would be associated which i would call kind of nice brands and so how many disassociated right so disassociated would be like cafes there is what i'm saying yeah we do the thing on on comp uh on competition the competitive land so So competitive landscape, but actually the impact of competitive landscape is actually pretty small.

44:16But you kind of want to know that there is something there. There is competition, right? That's kind of what we found is that we want to go to a place that is competitive. So you look at competitive landscape. You look at the footfall. You look at the access to transport. you know you look at uh the spend that these people that people have available to the demographics and we've put them into a model that kind of learns on its own about like okay so every new site i have i put in there and we say okay how how do you what is what did we what did we do and it feeds the model right so we can it's all ai as well yeah no no it's becoming i mean ai is basically you know now it's more advanced but it's the same kind of thinking where you just keep on feeding a model and the model can tell you hey i think you should be you might look at this area i think that that uh this might work and then that at least gets us that that beginning and we can say hey okay let's use the science now we need to use our brain that's 50 percent of the answer now let's go to that neighborhood if we don't know it let's say yeah and you and you start and you start asking questions um that's the art about what and that's the art yes yeah and one without the other is like Like, you know, making art without any science in this case is really time consuming.

45:36It doesn't let you refine stuff. It makes you're doing a lot of brute force work. Whereas what the math does is it says, like, I can go through tons of data and, you know, you tell me what you think is important and I'll tell you what kind of matches that. And then we say, OK, good. Send, you know, identify places that we might work. And then we go out and ask ourselves, will it? what we said at the beginning about art and science being two sides of the same coin and what you're saying with you know this algorithm is is a is a piece of art really and i think if you actually look at it step take a step back coding and i write writing i write every day writing and coding is basically the same thing you're like you're you're whether someone's you know taking a word out and then re-putting a word in and then you create this thing you know whether that's a book or an art piece of art coding you're taking bits out taking bits in and then it creates some sort of app or whatever.

46:31But it is the same thing. And I love what you've created this algorithm. Then as we swim from coding here to the art stuff, how are you making people fall in love with the brand and making it feel kind of unique to that place? What was the place you went to? I think you just spelt the name wrong when you gave out free tea or something like that. well I remember Neil Bankside we gave out free bread for like four days because I just wanted everybody to try it yes you know what I found is that you know people would you know go in line we were spending more time serving people on bread than we did anything else but we still do that we still basically go into a community and say hey look we're here and you know and we'd say you know have a loaf of bread because that's what we do you know and just enjoy it on us it's a gift it's a gift And then what about the actual physical stores?

47:29Well, everyone is, you know, is designed by, you know, by us. And, you know, me and Roy are still, you know, we go through the process. We bespoke each one about what's the design, what's the look. We start out with our processes basically first, now we're in a little bit. Then we go looking around and we see one. And then we go design the sites. It's always the first starting point is what is this neighborhood about? and the architects all know that we said this is like old georgian neighborhood it basically got built back in you know time um you know well over the time this has kind of happened to it okay how can so now we know what's what this community has gone through when it was built what it's gone through what's the major stuff and some of the stuff is that locals wouldn't even know like a cinema is there an example of yeah like in bristol we're doing one and it's got a um one of the first cinema houses on one end and and like you know some other beautiful building like roman building that has got an interesting history and we try to combine both of those into the design of that and then we talk about it so you can almost like so you've got cinema cinema and roman building yeah yeah yeah we just said okay how do we use those two things that are in its in its past you know to create something today you know and we always start with that i don't know if like i'm sure 90 of our 95 maybe of uh people that are going to go to the scales won't get that but but it give it gives us a centering and also a center of humility like we basically just agree that um so when we first look at a site and decide like what what is that place going to look like inside because we've decided now outside like that's a cool neighborhood that's a great location or building in that neighborhood so we're kind of all set so the first thing that we do is we go, you know, you know, what, what is, you know, this community, you know, what, what's gone on here in the past and what's going on today, you know, and we talk about that, right.

49:27And we say, okay, you know, actually this, this, they always have amazing stories, you know, whether it's, you know, you know, some famous person that lived there or like Epping Forest, we try to bring a little bit of the forest in, so, you know, but we try to like think about, you know, what went on here in nature and people. And then we try to reflect that, And I think whether everybody gets that or not, I think it's a great place to start because you basically start in a place of humility. Like I'm here. I'm going to do something in this building. And it needs to reflect the history and the past of this area.

50:03And I think it centers you. And you talk about how do you slow down. That's one of my humps that I say. I'm not going to design a site until you tell me what went in this neighborhood and how are we going to reflect that in our new site? If you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in D2C, but you're struggling to crack retail, then you've got to listen to this. Maybe you've got an Ocado listing, maybe you've got a Whole Foods listing, maybe you're absolutely killing it in Selfridges, maybe you're absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your Indies. But my friends, making the leap, crossing El Chasum, crossing El Rubicon to grocery retail is not easy.

50:41It's the Champions League of FMCG. It's super hard. It means playing at a higher level. And that's where some of your amazing brands sadly stumble. Look, retailers want stories backed by data, not dreams and a pretty pitch deck. And let's be real, supermarkets are not just going to magically make a space for you and your little brand. They need data. Something's got to go for you to get in, for you to get on shelf. and that is why I've got to tell you about Northstar. They are the team that's helping purpose-led FMCG brands go from gut instinct dreams to unstoppable pitch decks that actually unlock retailers.

51:18Northstar are not like another data company that force Fiji data like Fuagua that act like a NASA space mission. It's super, super simple to use. Their team are amazing and they actually get the challenger mindset. Northstar are your shortcut to smarter decisions, stronger pitches and investor confidence all built specifically for challenger brands like yours you don't need a massive sales team you need north star link in the show notes click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with north star highly highly recommend that and thank me later goes back to the whole lesson you said right at the beginning when you first met gail which is um shut up and listen yeah what are other humps and i love the quotes which i mean i'm like you know you can often give advice but i'm not very good at taking my advice but a quote i love is slow is smooth smooth is fast um again i don't get into it but yeah it's a good saying yeah lots of easy things to say it's all hard to do yeah yeah yeah i know but but what you said are the speed bumps to slow you down like what are other ones you have in place um you know definitely on food we try you know we're not trying to to be you have to see what's going on and then copying it we're never you know what we i remember the cronuts thing happened right yes of course there's a bunch of people you know yeah even in our business but peripheral type is like do cronuts man it's so hot people are waiting in lines in new york they're paying 10 pounds you know 10 each for them there's a secondary market how cool it's like hey guys that's not that's great that's great for them It's great for New York.

52:58It's super fun. It's excellent. And I saw a bunch of people then copy it in London. But that's just not us. It's like, you know, so that's a break. It's just like, you know, enjoy other people's success. Like, you know, you can be inspired by it. Where does it take you? But, you know, copying or, you know, I'm really close to copying it. It's just, you need to be there. So that's a break. It's like, don't copy, invent. Yeah. Don't copy, invent.

53:27gosh you got me on i mean just i've tons but i'm trying to think of them offhand i've got i know when we um uh yeah okay uh you know one is when we um when we think about like where we're going to take the business like every year in our planning right we you know we you know make sure that we're doing it not just kind of what are we going to do next year but like what is this thing going to look like in five or ten years right because that gives you a whole different perspective you know the next year can get wrapped up in like how many how many sites you're going to build what's the sales how many new products you're going to do that kind of thing okay but who do we want to be in 10 years circle of now circle of us i guess bigger wow and what are some of the learnings when you have that bigger expansive uh view like how does that change what you think about now yeah well i think it you know okay so the biggest one of the you know one of the issues i said about being fast and slow and stuff but it's it's also you know you know quality is is difficult to measure it's difficult to discuss you know except amongst people who really know their stuff but everybody will you know so you you you you um you talk about things that are harder to measure right so short term you can say like you know i got to i got to be work at nine o 'clock but where am i going to be in 10 years on Tuesday, you know, in 10 years when I'm, I'll be working, but what time will I show up to work?

54:59It's much fuzzier, right? And I need fuzziness because basically the world's full of kind of, well, okay, science and art. So, you know, facts and creative innovation. And, you know, those facts, you know, you just have to fight this tide or, you know, this, you know, of it just being about facts and not about things that are harder to measure. And when you say fuzzy is good, how? Well, because I think that it's harder to judge, right? And, you know, ultimately we need a report card. I need to know how much money is in the bank so I can figure out how much money I spend, right? But I don't get there by counting it all.

55:42You know, I need to have it counted. But we get there by doing something creative that's not fully measurable. It's a risk. It's an innovation, right? It's our efforts. And if we, you know, there's, I could never tell you, you know, exactly what's going to happen. I give you a bandwidth. You know, I can say, hey, we're shooting for, you know, X amount of sites to build tomorrow. Or like, you know, we want to change our, we want to get our sausage rolls, you know, let's make it 10, 20%. improvement off of where it is you know okay what is 10 to 20 percent improvement you know you know and you know it's easy this is where the food industry gets caught because it's easy to say i'm going to make it 10 10 15 cheaper you know or i'm going to sell 10 or 15 more but i'm not saying that i'm saying how do we make a sausage you're all better right wow and then of course people are going to go well how many more do you think we'll sell and all that stuff you know and Like, I don't know, how good is it now?

56:43How much could we do now from where it is? You know, like we use free-range pork. There's only 1 % of the pork in this country that's free-range at the level that we will accept. Right. I mean, Jesus, you know? So part of it, we're like, actually, sometimes you realize, actually, we're doing something. Maybe we need to just talk about it a little bit more. Yes. So, okay, and that's kind of, it just comes with the cost, right? But it's... It goes back to what we were saying earlier about, it's actually um i think a lot of businesses need a better or leaders need a better it's actually the smart answer lies in the dumb question it's actually about asking a better set of questions which is i.e instead of how do we grow it's like how do you make a better sausage roll and then the byproduct of that is growth yes i interviewed the founder of brew dog james watt and he says he always writes down i think some of his questions he almost has this again linking the art and the science big white sheet of paper and he'll write down you will sort of say um you know if i spend this one dollar or if i spend this one pound um you know how how will i 10x my business versus a competitor for example that links back to just doing you know you know competitive advantage is an inside job i think yeah another thing he does is he says what are my five biggest problems in the business right now and how do i run hard of them yeah what would you say are some of your biggest challenges right right now yeah and how are you going to sort of what's your approach to do you run at them hard do you sort of go into um the creative flow like what's yeah yeah so um What are the challenges now?

58:16I mean, it's no longer kind of real estate, which was a problem before. One persistent problem is just continuing to attract the talent that you want to grow the business at the speed that you want. And that talent isn't just like expertise, but it's, you know, they need to embrace the culture and be happy to be kind of at service to baking. cost is a big issue right now because we're kind of at 20 25 year highs on lots of ingredients and how much can that be passed along that's that's big so there's that you know there is a big cost element you know every time i watch tv and i see these these people like pushing like i can sell a tomato for 10p you know come to buy a 10p or 40p loaf of bread or something i'm just like you know can we stop talking about food like that you know um so i think that leads me to challenge the communication i think the food system does have to change i think we're well positioned to to to you know to help that to happen and and to thrive in that environment but we need to get the whole supply chains rethought a little bit but that's going to be tough because you know the major supermarkets have most of the supply chains but it doesn't mean you can't have another one coffee has got an amazing supply chain um that that's been built over the last couple decades and grain needs to do the same at the same level um yeah i think that that's that's what hits me hits me you know yeah the most the the cost is is interesting and how you navigate that yeah as you say about passing it on um have you been to barafina restaurant yeah yeah amazing so i interviewed sam who's the only of that and yeah artists absolutely yeah yeah um and he kind of it was because he's sort of more the there's their brothers and he's more the sort of the finance guy um and uh eddie's the sort of the creative genius um again art science art and he was basically saying you know we and he He sort of talked me through the economics of a restaurant with saying imagine something is£1.20 and he basically went through.

1:00:32That's when you pay your rent. And he goes, what most people do is what we do is we actually keep the ingredients, say it's 20p. We will actually increase that when most people are cutting it back. And then we'll try and find other ways to reduce it down. Say like you've got a pound and your business is a pound. As in the value you're trying to create. Like how do you navigate keeping quality versus making it so like not prohibitively expensive? Does that make sense? Yeah, this is the cool thing because there's a lot of the good food world, right, is not at scale, right? So what's interesting is if you can get that.

1:01:14When you say not the good food. The good food. So it's a general term. But let's say people that are doing really good stuff, it's usually done at fairly small scale, right? If you can start to think that more people want that, and it's all driven by the customer, just like coffee. We could be living in a world where we're just drinking Styrofoam coffee. That's what I always tell everybody. But instead, we'll work, and that'd be 50p. Instead, we're living in a world of four-pound coffee. Now, which world do you want to live in? Which world do you think? Well, I like good coffee. I know, and I think the world has voted that they like the coffee.

1:01:45You can't find Styrofoam 50p coffee anymore, right? And I think the same thing should be thought of as food, but there's, you know, there's a whole ecosystem that has to grow up. And part of that is that when I look around and I look at this really, you know, the really great small producers or innovative producers that are medium size, you know, I think, wow, if we, if there's some scale there, it ought to, you know, you automatically go down on the price. Yeah. Okay. Because you just, you know, instead of one truck with one box, you've got, you know, a whole truck filled with, you know, it's that kind of, that kind of concept.

1:02:19You also bring more talent into it so people can think a little bit harder. So like for some of our guys, it's like, actually, I could put robotics here. That would save me, you know, 10 % on my cost because really I just have one guy, you know, spinning it, taking a cheese, you know, two times a week and flipping it over. Yeah. You know, we just had the same thing in baking. You know, there's a bit of like when you cut something, the initial cut, if you can find something that you can cut and you're doing enough of them and they can cut it without hurting it, then it's great. have it cut right and put all that manpower and brain power that you know even my bakers would say some of that stuff that we were doing you know 15 years ago is is is dumb work you know and we don't want to be doing dumb work we want to be doing smart work yeah yeah you know and and this is really quite important so i think you know if you take those small guys and we can put some scale it gets some scale economics, then, you know, you, it'll become more readily available.

1:03:17And I think I see that in what we've done, right. You know, um, you know, we, you know, you, you, you know, you, you basically can get better and better ingredients. You know, you have to jump ahead of it a little bit. You have to trust. When you say jump ahead of it. Well, sometimes you just like, you know, our flour, we're spending more on, on, on flour, not just because flour is higher overall globally, but because we're upgrading our flour wherever we can, wherever there's a, you know, we're buying a bunch of heritage grains, doing a bunch, as this stuff becomes available, and we're starting to talk to farmers about, hey, can you grow this, you know?

1:03:54Do you want to grow this? And we know it's better for the soil. So we're starting to kind of work together and say, let's, we would like to change the thing from just saying, look, I need great flour, Mr. Miller, go find great flour, mill great flour for me, to saying, let's get the miller, the farmer, and the baker together. What does the farmer need to make sure that his land is healthy? And he says, well, I need to do these kind of things. And these are the kind of products I need to grow. And they were like, okay, awesome. Now, the miller, you know, how do we want it milled? And then the baker says, okay, fine, I'm going to ask what the world, the earth can give us, and then we make the best bread from that rather than we just say we want to make the best bread.

1:04:35And that's partly because we as a society are redefining what bread is and what food is. It's basically, it's nutrient rich, not just calories. Tastes good, and it's good for you, basically. That's what we're willing to pay for. And we should, because it's great for our bodies. No chemicals, nothing like that. So you go back and you say, I want that whole system to be healthy, so I'll be healthy. Like nobody will buy a football, soccer ball from, you know, or judge it to be a good football, even if it's good physically, if it's made by, you know, child labor in, you know, Pakistan or somewhere.

1:05:14Yes. You know, that's not a quality football. And it's not a quality loaf unless you, you know, there's some thoughtfulness there. So this whole system has to be created. Okay. It doesn't exist. There's not a whole bunch of farmers that are sitting there doing amazing stuff and just looking for a market. Unfortunately, it's not. But we can change that whole thing. It might take a decade or two. But you just start valuing the things that matter, which is nutrients, good farming, sourcing. And you have bakers and not machines to start out with. Then you start to say, they can connect the whole thing.

1:05:53And you got it. yes now we need to convince people about things you know and also i think i think what you said the beautiful way of putting it tom is like do you want do you actually want because people can kick off about the price going up it's like go on mate i've i don't think the styrofoam coffee yeah that's repugnant like in the night i mean it's sort of a yeah sort of you know throw that under a bus but it is yeah i want a coffee that has multiple layers and sort of it's a fireworks of flavors you sort of slurp it you know yeah um i'd love to know what's one truth you believe that most people disagree with you on?

1:06:24Oh,

1:06:28gosh, that's a good question. Yeah, I think, you know, one thing that, like, I guess most people wouldn't believe, you know, but enough of us do believe that we, like, the best days of humanity could be in front of us and not behind us, that we possess kind of the skill and the will to, like in 100 years, to have, of course, not a perfect society, but a better, more thoughtful society than we have today. So you think most people think the bad stuff's coming ahead and you think the good stuff's coming ahead? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that business and business principles and people who are running, the entrepreneurs and the people that are, I mean, regular people that are working every day in companies, right, will be a big catalyst to that.

1:07:35Of course, you need scientists, you need politicians for policy, and you need some other things. But, you know, the big driver will be that people will invest their time, their life, their talent in things of purpose that are good for the world and good for society and good for nature, and not bad for it. there's the the whole thing matt ridley's got the thing he wrote the rational optimist which is good news travels slow bad news travels yeah and it's like we're so obsessed right now like i love that yeah and it's just like if you actually look at today yeah and there's another thing a guy talking on the podcast called declinism which is basically where we think exactly what you're saying tom the good old days yes they say oh we're all fucked now like everything's going Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:08:20If you actually zoom out, like, mate, like, you know, 80 years ago, less than 80 years ago, well, I'm reading one of Churchill's books, which is less than 100 years ago. And it's like, mate, we're at fucking war. Do you know what I mean? Right, right, right. It's like people were getting sent to war. Yes. And now we're kicking off because we haven't got 100 likes on Instagram. Yes. It's like, do you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, and it's like, and declinism, I think you're so right. It's like within this sort of sea of fast negativity, if you take a step back and slow down, as we were saying, you can see there's positive things ahead.

1:08:54Yeah, if we can start thinking, like I told my son, you know, he's like, you know, what should I do? And I said, I don't know. I don't know what to do. Who knows? But, you know, basically, you know, solve a problem that the world needs to be solved that will leave it better. And I tell you, you will get something, you know. You know, somebody is going to buy you a beer somewhere along the way if you do that. Yes. And you might even have a bit of money. You might even be famous, whatever. But that's what – don't worry about the job. Just think about what problem do you want to solve. And the world is full of challenges.

1:09:27And we've created those challenges. Should we be able to undo them? And that's why I think – we know how we have to work and be on holiday. I just believe in this changing gears. When we stay in first gear or fifth gear, whatever gear it is, you know or if we stay like i'm just about like making sure nature's are is is healthy like if we when we get too monoculture-ish okay so monoculture is the death of you know of agriculture you know when we you know when we get too monoculture-ish we can just start thinking just in one way we don't change gears and we don't turn our heads and look then we're in danger you know um and that's what we have to keep on practicing it's back to your curiosity thing you know it's back to being you know i don't think everybody needs to contemplate be contemplative all the time sometimes i just want to laugh and have fun and you know you know you want to just be silly what do you do to be silly and have fun yeah you know uh look i love to be in the water and i love to be with my kids in the water whereabouts do you do that in london hamster my wife's italian so we we uh we often go down to italy in sardinia uh in the summertime to do that and i make sure i always have a few toys you know like paddle boards you know my son and i did 100 toys like a little toddler yeah yeah yeah like older than we used to be used to be little little things yeah it's doing weird things like my son and i did 100 kilometer paddle board like it's a two-day one overnight paddle board you know in in the u.s just like put a backpack on yeah get on a paddle board and see if we can do 100 kilometers in two days it was cool yeah i mean Isn't that silly?

1:11:04Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we didn't know what to eat. You know, we had to stop along the way. So was this all around Italy? We did it in Florida. But we do, we took regular trips, just kind of like, just see the world from a different perspective. Even if it was perspective of being hungry and thirsty and tired. Still. You know, it still, it revives you. So, you know, yeah, so that's why I just think that we just get stuck sometimes. What does the water do for you? Oh, I mean, it's, you know. You grew up in the marshes. yeah i grew up in the water and i i just think you know it's a 3d world um by that you mean you know you can swim you can be upside down sideways you can float you can swim you can be active it's just you know um and it's you know it's world i'm not you know i can i can enter and be a guest but never a permanent resident oh yes yes that's so good yeah and also i think it's just it's kind of one of those things it gives you makes you very present to realize how small like how that's been there and i think you know we're literally sort of fraction our life is a little glimmering spark yeah and then either side of it is just blackness yes that water and that ocean is still going to be there yeah you know think less things really go fucked up yeah that's if a comet comes soaring into us right now yeah there's a great book called ocean machine the blue machine which has just came out that i read over uh holidays my my son got it for me what's So Blue Machine.

1:12:28Blue Machine. It's amazing. It just talks about the water dynamics. I mean, it's everything, the physics to the biology of the ocean. Right. Really amazing. You know, like it's just another example of like how fascinating all this is and how, you know, how beautiful and how it's just becoming increasingly well-known, like how things work, why they work, what's the impact. And then, you know, that's all stuff that I think humans kind of, we can absorb and we can go yes okay it's intricate and it's complex okay we need to be careful about some of the decisions but we can but we can we can play in this world and have fun you know how important is that for longevity i think it's super important because i mean you know being like you know you know having some level of calmness you know uh you know you know to laugh and to cry in your life and to have all the breadth of emotions i just can't i have to believe that enjoying all that or being being witness to that and having that in your in your life is is it's got it is a natural thing you know last time you cried oh just oh i cried like mad on a friday night this amazing movie about uh the first army um regiment of all african-american women in world war ii yes just the fight that you know they had to be so good and then they were just yeah just their resilience was was was amazing so i i was sitting in front of the tv it was our friday night movie with my my kids saturday night was the soil and yeah a lot of tears yeah but just because of like you know gosh what was it about it that It stirred your soul.

1:14:15It's not that they got, you know, it just, it was, you know, kind of not tears of pain, but tears of like, I'm so glad you were resilient and you did that because it's based on a true story. And like these people exist and you just, you know, I don't know, why do you cry when that happens? I don't know. That's really funny because I was so kind of like with them and I could feel their pain, but I also knew their pain was more joy. They were just like, I'm here. what's been like i think the deeper the wounds the deeper the the wisdom i really believe like the hard biggest mistakes you've made provide the biggest wisdom yeah along this sort of 40 yeah you've been doing this for a long time what are some of the mistakes you've made that cause real deep sort of wounds lacerations scars that provided real wisdom that you could basically impart to people who are setting up a business or a brand i think some of the hardest times i've had is having to tell people that it wasn't working and they knew that and uh and i think you know setting people free sometimes i mean talented people but they just you know it wasn't the right time for them to exhibit their skills i found that i've found that really hard because i you know i have so much hope some of them i have so much hope for you know say you will do great things but just not here now how do you navigate that conversation oh terribly yeah just like what you do with truth i mean with truth yeah but then you know it's it's it's it's it's not easy to do and and you do worry about the person where they're gonna you know where what's between the time that i tell them that it's not going to work here but you know you know and then they find the thing how much pain is there so i could say i would tell you when i say it's not going to work here yeah right and them finding the next thing how much pain do they have to endure and i'm you know uh i think i have a hard time living with that so that's given me a lot of humility around people but also i don't know it's a weird thing like one hand like just a lot of a lot more sympathy than i probably ever would would have uh having to do that and look in somebody's eyes and say hey this is not it or being the decision maker it says that hey this this is not going to work out um you know you you you you know you you do you feel the pain what other wounds are there

1:16:48you know um

1:16:56i've been trying to be really careful like to make sure that um you know you know business relationships you know stay healthy and um but you know occasionally you get you know one or two you know um relationships that don't don't go well you know and then and it's um um and i don't know i don't know why sometimes those those things that maybe that involve business or or more money sometimes they they um they take a life of their own they just you know i just the toxicity sometimes i think your business i think can be really effective but sometimes it can be toxic but it's probably like everything every you know yeah but i think it tends to be so you know sometimes that that could happen i i don't know i guess the last big lesson i've learned is that like you know there's a lot to do in this world you know to be honest There's a lot of things to change.

1:17:55And we all need to use our brains and our energy to live great lives. But I think included in that living a great life is like being part of something that you feel proud of. And I think that people are built to do that. That's part of the happiness of a full life is to be actively engaged and to be challenged. and it's not just to it to be all easy it's for it to be hard sometimes it's not hard there's no fulfillment yeah i know but we but you know i think it's tricky isn't it you know i think the more the harder something is and the harder you know you can almost feel like i don't mean this in like a very uh positive way like you can feel not not pain but the labor of love is a better way to frame it when you try on your sourdough lives but when you're in it like you know that's what I'm trying to remind some people.

1:18:47Sometimes people are like, shit, you know, I haven't slept for a couple days. You know, I'm all stressed out because I'm trying to figure this thing out. And, you know, I just haven't gotten it. And I don't think there's an answer. And, you know, we push ourselves to that level here. And I think that I, you know, in the middle of that, trying to remind somebody that is difficult. And, you know, some people see that and they're afraid to get into that. and I'm just like, you know, I'm really trying to encourage people to do it, feel it. When you say, well, as I was running into the hard problems.

1:19:19Yeah, running into hard problems. Because, yeah, so, because this is, again, same thing with Rich and I, right? We're trying to, like, everything else, we've got everything flowing with this podcast. We can't get these clips, like, we're really putting our fucking air out. Yes, right. Like, it's not even a big thing. It's just, I feel like if that, if these, get these clips on YouTube to really, and we're, like, trying everything. We're just going, test, it's right, test, it's right. Like, and I'm going insane about it. I just need to go and like, I'm trying to do dry January and now and it's fucking boring.

1:19:47I actually think I might go for a pint in Calvin after this, right? Because I'm just like, you know. So, and I think, again, another common thing, you know, from all the guests is run at hard. Yeah. What is your sort of approach to run at hard, but in a sort of flowy, be like water way? Because I think there's nuance there. Yeah, we have this concept like joy, you know, which is like and that's different than being happy you know it's like it's like joy is different yeah because joy is like like you know what's going to fulfill you right and i think what you're trying to do is just is you know i think you have to paint it not as like you know which you know again not in a we try to talk about challenges as opportunities but we don't you don't want to get too prescriptive about that because some things are just fucking challenges you know okay yes it can be an opportunity you don't want to get too bookish about that whole crap then that that's you get lost um but i think it's it's you know i would say you know yeah that you know just think of the think of the joy of like of the of of the teamwork and some of the other stuff that comes comes with it i mean you know so your parents will never want you to do this stuff sometimes You know, you know, they want you just to have like this, you know, this calm, this calm life where you get, you know, good sleep and you get that done and you move ahead and all this stuff.

1:21:10But, you know, you know, to do all that, you know, you need to know, you need to push your boundaries and you need to need to care about something so much that you can't sleep at night. you know i do think that's part of it and i just i guess you know my job maybe sometimes is telling people that you know uh you know um give it a shot and and see how you feel afterwards yes don't don't worry we need this problem solved so i'm pushing for the problem to be solved you know don't give up and you know go back to the drawing board a lot of times we design sites even you know we're just like okay guys you know you know we've got to push it further we have to push it further this isn't isn't enough and you know how do you my creative guys do that really well because they they just they're never satisfied oh god yeah but that's like never satisfied in business is great but something when that spills over to personal life it's like yeah you're constantly looking at problems like for example like the clips thing if you were to tell me what i'm doing with the podcast now in terms of like getting amazing guests and the way everything's running the science behind the scenes with the rich if you had told me this is going to be happening in four years time i'd have been like oh my god i'm going to feel amazing and i think giles brooks said to me he's been on the podcast it doesn't get easier it just gets different your heart just gets different now i'm just thinking you're almost just finding the next problem to put in yeah like how's how's your level of hard changed does that make sense yeah a lot i mean that's why we keep on redefining our purpose you know it was just trying to get stuff to scale and i told people you know and then it was trying to make bread accessible and and now it's like trying to change the food system and i told you guys i'm already thinking about like our next challenge is going to be like you know how do we make sure that we're like this incredible example you know to as many societies as we can about how a food system can grow and be successful and and do the right thing uh and be profitable and do all the all the things and how can they do that without spending tons of money on marketing but rather spending it on the ingredients of the people who are making the food yeah you know how do we you know a food-led business in a food industry it makes complete sense to me but that's not the successful models have been marketing-led food businesses yes not product-led food businesses what do you think of the food system in the states um like not even just i'm just from my own experience like i was in miami got stuck in miami airport for a night last year like missed my flight on the way to columbia and um and And obviously I've been to New York.

1:23:39I mean, the airports are so crazy over there. But like the food, like the drinks are much bigger. How, again, you've been in both countries. Like how is the food system there different and like versus the challenges versus ourselves? Yeah, so I took like a two and a half week tour with my head baker to meet a bunch of bakers and scientists on the West Coast. And we ended up at the Bread Lab in Seattle where they're doing all this. It's like the Harvard University of bread making. Bread lab, yeah. It's called the bread lab. And we've got a version of that down here in our hub here because you need a place to really do the science, right?

1:24:19And so we're at the University of Oregon and then we worked with a bunch of bakers and we saw the tartine guys and met some guys in LA, did some surfing along the way, met some cool people, met some millers. And I think what they're doing there because their system is so big and so focused on efficiency and price that they've decided that, look, we're just going to build an alternative system. And so there's an alternative food system parallel to the big food system. Because changing the big food system is so big, they haven't been able to do it. And the new food or the good, what I would call maybe, it's a shortcut, but I'd say the good food movement is growing and has got some cash, especially in the West Coast.

1:25:01And I see that in pockets in North Carolina. I see it in pockets in Florida. i see the pockets in new york boston chicago but the massive system is still the same but there's a parallel system that's being built it's not that efficient um but it's pretty pure play yeah that you know you've got the regenerative farms or regenerative mills you know the and the bakers that do it the problem is what's the result is a 15 dollar sourdough loaf 12 pounds man yeah and 12 pounds yeah but you know and you know here you know it's you know what you know four to six pounds for a sourdough good sourdough it's easier to do you think we've got better food here than we do on on uh on the whole yes i mean you know i mean you know the u.s is i mean gosh you know like the u.s with lots of things it's kind of examples of some of the best in the world best in class and some of the some of the poorest you know i think the floor here is better like the the baseline here is better than the States.

1:26:01Yeah, I'd say the average maybe is better here, but it's not a whole lot. I think it's, you know, where you see a difference really is in Italy or France or Germany. Yeah, because that's the other thing I think when I first I'm afraid we're too much here in the UK like the US. Really? But better. So yeah, because I know you guys do these tours. What other places have you been to and what other cultures or stuff have you got like you've sort of jumped into and you're like, wow, like this has totally changed the way we want to do things at Gale's or the way you view the world about food? Well, I think it's a lot of things.

1:26:30I think there's a lot of stuff going on in Spain. I think Italy's had the slow food movement for a while. Slow food. Slow food movement. It's called slow food movement. And they've slowed things down. And they have this regional food systems. And there's some national examples. But Germany's got a pretty good baking culture. Scandinavia's got their, they've pushed the foraging. and these are you know but where's the there's a lot of stuff happening from different starting points in but europe's kind of got a lot more a better starting point than the u.s and unfortunately the uk looks more a little more like the u.s but the cool thing about the uk is that it's a small enough market right where you know and the land is close enough to the you know some of the the capital and everything in london and it's quite easy to get around that that i think things can can happen faster here and I think we could provide you know a national example of a really a food system that heals itself faster than you could do in the states what have you thought about going to other locate others other countries uh you know I get asked all the time you know for me that right now the UK is like a super fascinating place I love it and I think there's more to do but you know I don't know it depends on you know who I you know you know you know who shows up on the door and says hey i want to do something cool and and i'd have to find a market where i thought it needed it needed us you know where where we would be of some service or value to the to the society because it's like you know where the food system doesn't work which is probably probably sounds like the u.s but it could be other places a couple more things tom then i'd love to know like why is your best friend your best friend uh hmm because they're uh honest Honest and loyal.

1:28:15Yeah, I won't say who it is. Because you'll piss off the other friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, what's interesting is like in my lifetime, you know, there's like two of my best friends have died, you know, one of cancer and one of heart disease, you know, and I always wonder how much that was, you know, lifestyle. What as in like just? Yeah, I don't know. I've always like hung out with crazy guys. Yeah. And, um, you know, and I, I think neither of them probably took proper care of themselves. How would you say you're crazy? Cause I'm certainly crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, I mean, I, you know, I've never really, you know, settled, you know, I've never, I'm always feeling like there's something, something not, not else to do, but something to do.

1:29:09You know, if you're doing something, you know, that could even be better. You know, I'm just, you know, it's kind of crazy not to just totally relax. But anyway, I have found that I need to find my rest spaces and to do that. But, yeah, I like to get in trouble sometimes. You know, what the hell? Like I tell some guys around here sometimes, you know, like, you know, I mean, you know, you don't want to hurt, you know, no way you want to hurt anybody or leave any pain. What's your favorite bit? You know, look, I want to break some rules. You know,

1:29:45I used to, what I love to do is to go out into water or nature. Mostly it's water for me, like in the middle of the night. And just like, we used to go surfing at night. We used to go out in the mangroves at night when there's gators out there. It was just stupid shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, turn off the lights, like go out on a boat in the middle of time and just, you know. How does it change your soul when you're in the water at night? Look, I think it's, you probably should be scared, but I don't really feel that's, you know, because you're pretty vulnerable. But I don't know, it's a good, you know, I don't feel that scared when I'm out there.

1:30:29I think what you said Dan is something I totally relate to is like the never satisfied or like constantly moving yeah and it's like it links to the thing you said right at the beginning the flow and that's where the I actually get I find sort of peace when I'm moving and doing things like the idea of just sort of sat there like I'm like fuck this yeah and I think that's mate I know you've got a ghost let's wrap this up but I've absolutely thoroughly thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed that and yeah thank you that was epic cool man thank you so much yeah nice talking to you right thank you so so much for listening to the podcast I really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it 5 stars, subscribe, tell all your friends, families, foes, next door but one, cat, dog, whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and I really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands, please do hit me up on LinkedIn search Dan Pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much