How All Things Butter Started - Thomas Straker, Toby Hoppy

0:07Creating content became harder and harder as the ideas were getting thinner and thinner. not that i was running out of ideas it was just always like what do people want to see online and i got into i was trying to get myself into that psyche and i was thinking i went back i was like oh i worked at this restaurant the door just so we used to make these three butters in the first course for the bread we had three different types of bread i was like fuck i'm gonna do bread and butter and one of them we did which was brown butter and we used to do it in a canal so or roshay or whatever you call it um so we used to do it in that shape and so i was like fuck i'll do that so i did that on tiktok made the brown butter did some warm sourder and that was like got a million views on tiktok and i had only had a hundred thousand followers on tiktok at the time i think so i was like oh really it's great fantastic and then about six months later i did a wild garlic butter yeah and then that went that was like a million views overnight and i was like fuck something like clipped i was like shit tiktok loves butter yeah so i was right i need to make the series so i made one more flavor and i did a quick like three canal video oh yeah and i said welcome to all this butter in the series i'm going to show you how to make all things butter from this this this and then boom put that out on tiktok and he meant it was like 10 million views and then i put it out and put then i was like shit i've got to make the next part so i made the chicken skin butter the next day which is still and then that was like 10 million views then I made a honeycomb butter 10 million views then I made a bone marrow butter 20 million views and it was just like fuck it I was feeding this beast bam bam bam one butter a day and then I got to about 20 and I was like oh man I'm going to do 10 more yeah I was sort of like starting to like feel the like flogging and I'm still going 80 on but it's still like I post them now last week I posted two butters and one's got 7 million views and one's got 4 million views and then I do a really nice fish pie and it gets a million that fish pie looks unreal yeah then I do like a lasagna Okay, firstly, it takes me about 10 times longer to make something nice.

2:06And I get half the amount of 10 times more about a view. So anyway, so yes, I did not have a brand in mind. It was just purely to make content. And that, it really did switch my, it changed my business a lot. You know, I went from 150 ,000 followers to a million Instagram followers, basically in overnight, two weeks. Yeah. yeah i think then i went to then tiktok went up to two and a half two and a bit million and then i've basically uh you know i was opening the restaurant at the time it just couldn't it was just there it was just the right timing for me and you know never went into into it to be like oh i'm yeah i started making cooking videos in lockdown and i was just like i've never gone into it to be like the main part of the business it was like a it was just like a fun thing to do whilst I was stuck in working in America.

2:57What does, because it's fascinating how much momentum that builds. I think with content, people only see the clip of you doing it with the canal, if that's how you say it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to just go back behind the scenes because even I know just doing this podcast for this hour and a half conversation or two hour conversation, the art of ag that goes into just getting the fuck around. It's so much. what is the stuff that people won't see behind the scenes like the creative process like what is your creative process into creating these uh butter things make a lot of mess no i mean it's at the moment i'm sort of was it it is actually quite rewarding um creating in such a tiny space because like i'm creating in a butter space i'm looking always looking for flavors to get into the butter and to not seem like oh you just chuck that in for no reason right like you know it's got it you've got to like think how does it actually go in there like i made this saga loo butter and i think that's how you say it i don't know you have saga loo but i've got slated there's a man saying it

4:10so i created this the saga loo butter and i was thinking like because obviously when you're at home I was like all you have to do is boil the potatoes and cook the spinach and then you've got the butter and it turns it into the whole dish it's basically you roast the spices you put the the garlic all the mustard oil and everything like that into the butter and then all you're doing instead of like getting all the spices out and toasting them and doing everything all you're doing is boiling the potatoes put the spinach and wilt it down then add it in the butter and you mix it you've got sag glue yeah that's where I think you guys are going to smash it because it's you're selling butter yes you're actually saving people time because if you I know you did the chilli butter with the broccoli the other day someone sees that on social and they can knit to waitress get it and bosh that's good and done that's how we serve broccoli in the restaurant we make it from scratch in the restaurant but we do chilli butter over the broccoli some seeds and nuts and stuff on top and it's like it's a certified bang I had it last night but then so yeah creating in that space and trying to make sure it's actually useful and some of them questionable which ones were questionable I can think of a few the one which Toby thinks is questionable which one?

5:37one of them we won't go into the other one I did a salt menu crisp butter for a chicken sandwich which is fucking dope I always put I always put Salmon and Christian in my sandwich and I was like fuck Salmon and Christian so I just opened a pack of Salmon and chucked in a block of butter buzzed it up which other one did you think I was going to say the cookies is that the Oreo one is that the Oreo one no no no can I say no no no you can't say it you can't say it please no basically I was really hungover I had to do a video and I was like fuck I was like oh it's got to do this cookies and cream butter I was like Is that an audience?

6:15Is it actually for a brand? Yeah, it was for a brand. Okay, for a brand. So I was like, Toby, is it really bad if I go to Asda, which was in Bar Royal, and buy some cookies from a packet? And I was like, right, what I'll do is I'll tend to mix the dough in the machine and then I'll just put the tray down and then I'll put it in the oven and put it out and there's some full cookies on there. That's a joke. So to put them in and to crumble them up, blend them in through the bottle. yeah it was just it was just that it was that movement of just like you know thinking that this came out that's hilarious i've never i never really by the way i don't ever do that yeah that was the only i think that is genuinely the other time i had a deadline and i was dying 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 know where 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 in 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 hungry thank you talk to me about the discipline of creating content and creativity and well that's it i mean it's i've been going through like a slight lack of i i have had some ill discipline in the content creation world because of just lack of consistency because obviously i'm running a restaurant which i'm super passionate about i love being in the kitchen and it's so much more rewarding cooking for people who are sitting on the bar full restaurant you know you're cooking food that i want to cook all the time and i've got a team around me a great camaraderie really lovely really lovely team great atmosphere energy content literally on your own in the kitchen and then you've got to do all the washing up and then it's like it's kind of like do i want to do that or do i want to go and have a great time in the kitchen with the with the with the chefs and have like speaking to some customers and listen to some music and like oh do i want to be on my own silence in fucking park royal that i'd much rather so actually so i became bad at doing content and then but you really do see the drop if you if you stop it takes two weeks two to three weeks to build back up a good rapport with the algorithm yeah that relationship with the algorithm is pretty key so it's like building up that building up your relationship with the algorithm then staying on the momentum like so let's say it's posting rhythm it's all about like you know if you post on a Monday Wednesday Friday Sunday every week they know that you'll post on Monday Wednesday Friday Sunday they reward consistency yeah they reward consistency I had a meeting with Meta about it and they were just talking about posting rhythm and scheduling and doing like so you know to patch out I did half a day of film yesterday I did two videos I've got a full day tomorrow I'm doing a new series can't tell ya but I need to well you also don't know the name yet so I do working title I know he's always going to be welcome to oh no I'm going to not say that because I'm literally sometimes I have to shoot myself in the head when I say it just for the camera ring actually I could send a welcome to all things butter for an episode no I missed it to what to remind Mandy what for she was posting a video if I'm pushing you to the voiceover.

9:56Okay. You can cut this out. We're mid. Yeah, you can cut this out. Okay. You can see it in action. Welcome to All Things Butter, Season 2, The Italian Segment. Episode 22, Cacio e Pepe Butter with Peachy. There we go. Happy days. Happy days. Done. So, I'm going to keep saying, because I like seeing the way I do my adverts on my phone as well. I think it's about cutting corners with content to make it easier as possible. so I used to set this up to the adverts that's all good and I was like this is taking me forever and now with the iPhone, bosh I'll be like this is the advert it's done, it's quick the problem I find is sometimes you wrap yourself up in a duvet so it doesn't sound too tight or you go and sit in the car cars are great for soundproofing it doesn't bounce around the sound we should record this in my car so okay so that's me too and then we're going to get on to how you come into the into the fold mate because i think that's really interesting but just on the um consistency piece because i the consistency is so hard i think people talk about consistency enough like it's i find it well i've recently stopped drinking and that has helped consistency i think it's because if you're hung over two or three days a week you don't want you know it's a lack of i've got so much energy now like i'm up at half five six and i'm going to bed at midnight i've got like all of the i've got 18 hours in the day every day yeah does it does does it so you've got this shoot tomorrow does it feel like work is what i'm trying to get to uh yeah i've got yes that's definitely work you know i've got to i've got to do some i've got to write the recipes i've got to get all the ingredients bought i've got to make sure all the studio is set up or wherever we've got a another we built this outside sort of production place uh above the restaurant we've got like i've got the flat above the restaurant so we've got on the back roof i've got a sort of i've seen kitchen set kitchen set up there so we can film upstairs and that i mean the great thing about that is right next to the restaurant i can put take the washing up downstairs we've got a tea um so i'm not so it's actually really time efficient and i can make sure that it's set up the only thing is is that you have to climb out a window to get there so it's a bit annoying I'm the team of that so it's like there's a vibe it's like a buzz exactly you can go back into the office you can have a shower or something between freshen up but it's yeah so that's the that makes it so much easier to do like having multiple places to do it I also love doing the longer form content I've done a couple of I've done a couple of series on I've done a few series on YouTube and you know we went up to the most recent one we went to Isla with Berghaus that was fantastic we we and that's really educational what i find about the shorter stuff is that is it's big it's less educational people like the ideas i don't spend hours and hours writing recipes to put on instagram and stuff like that i'm writing a book at the moment and that is yeah that's where i want people to go go buy the book and get the get the whole vibe of the of what i do that's the thing this is the same with podcasters is as we were talking about today before we hit record is with instagram you can get fucking loads of views but it's quite it's not shallow like obviously people like can become obsessed with recipes with a podcast you can go super deep and like really get to know someone and i thought the views are never going to be as big as a tiktok reel but the depth you get you can't kind of that's where it's forever in a way yeah instagram reel yeah just a tiktok yeah tiktok sorry no no go for it the mad thing on tom's content is by far tom's best content is his stuff on YouTube, which he did by the Taste of Business series.

13:37And that's got by far the least amount of views on all of Tom's content. And it's like... I've got ten times less subscribers. But when you look at even the quality of production is so much better. The fact that Tom is in his environment, in his garden, using all of his... I mean, he's got so many toys you can imagine in the garden, which he plays around with and cooks on. All your grills. BMW. W kids car. And, and it's for me, it's like, I would love, and I remember me and him have spoken about it so much over the years, like building out that long form content, but it is, it costs, I mean, I'm not sure.

14:16It costs the money now. It's not as long form video. How much? It's not too bad. Yeah. Because obviously the editing times like a day. Yeah. Maybe you get a good editor. It's 300 quid a day. And then if you've got a good videographer, he's working with you at 500 quid a day and you can maybe batch out two or three but they're long took two hours to film and then to edit two different cameras it's it was costing me a shitload of money to do one a week and i wasn't making money off it and i was i didn't have a i didn't necessarily have a job at the time because i was the restaurant wasn't open i wasn't earning a salary so all my money was coming through like partnerships on instagram and stuff like that it wasn't too it wasn't like free flowing but i think i think as you say even though half the people have listened the audience on that is much smaller than say the TikTok the people who have watched it will have a much deeper relationship with you with the restaurant I think there's an unseen value in that we need to get back onto it I was just saying to my PA yesterday I said we need to book two days a month for long form content on YouTube so you know two days a month two full days a month where you get someone in and you've had it planned out for a while and it's just you know next week Thursday, Friday you're shooting six recipes yeah which which is once a month two days block it out go 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 means the world to me

15:56From the course.