How MOTH pivoted from a dying brand, created a category of one with RTD premium cocktails and won listings at Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, TESCO, The Hoxton and British Airways

0:00Hello there and welcome to Hungry. Hungry is the podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands looking to pour gasoline all over their growth. Each week we'll interview successful founders, thought leaders, unpack their lessons and provide you with a toolkit to scale super fast. I am Dan Pope, I am your host and without further ado, let's get started.

0:25Hi there guys, thank you so much for listening as always, it means the absolute world to me. Before we jump into this episode, I need a really big, big, big, big favour. I have pitched to some massive guests, humongous guests, and unfortunately they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough. Please, please, please just hit the subscribe button on Apple or Spotify or Follow. Ultimately it helps all of us bigger guests equals better conversations, equals hopefully better insights for you, which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well. So please hit that subscribe button and yeah, enjoy this episode.

1:00Hi there guys, just a quick, quick little ickle interruption I am so, so, so gassed and thrilled to announce that Mackenzie Jones are extending their partnership with Hungry Beyond thrilled Who are Mackenzie Jones? Well, first and foremost, Billy is a great mate, known him for years Second, they are, well, FMCG recruitment specialists I know Recruiter probably gives you the ick rest assured they're not the negi norse heads who will pester you on linkedin asking you've had your breakfast yet i personally less recruit a more growth partner they are loved and adored and are trusted trusted by brands uh real superfood like he's saying hello fresh fever treat but why why reach out to mckenty jones very very simple if you want to launch brand into retail you need a head of sales speak to billy if you want to in-house your marketing activities with the head of marketing rockstar speak to billy or if you want to they really specialize in dtc so if you need someone who's going to really kind of pour gasoline on your dtc channel speak to bill or if you just want a general nitter natter chew the fat have a chinwagathon speak to billy he's a top bloke message him on linkedin or ask me for an intro via email and i will get that sorted thank you all there's a horror story in food and drink that absolutely no one talks about it surreptitiously scurries through the underbelly causing throbbing headaches wasted money huge amounts of pain dodgy barcodes so many brands do the hard work they create the product name the brand open the bank account and then they cut bloody corners online and they order a dodgy barcode not sort your barcodes out is like scoring your own goal before you've even laced your boots and got on the pitch it's a souffle of agro you know you've got to relabel products waste time i've even had a pal who's um who lost the planet organic listings they had the wrong barcodes but thankfully not all heroes wear capes gs1 uk are the superhero and they are the solution barcodes from gs1 uk are globally recognized uh trusted and accepted by all retailers and marketplaces giving you the confidence to sell your products anytime anyplace anywhere but gs1 uk are so so much more than that they really are kind of a spring well of advice for buccaneering brands 95 % of their community your smes you can get free tickets to events and invites to talks big big picture opportunities you'd like to pack organic boots and sainsbury's and help you know with advice like exporting it's just so so so much and look don't say don't treat you and there's an oh so special offer through the podcast get 20 off your first year's membership with gs1 uk by using the code hungry 20 at to check out thank you so much so guys thank you so much for coming today um super excited to welcome the wonderful um rob wallace onto the podcast rob is the founder of the uh cocktail juggernaut uh moth so thanks so much for coming on mate i really appreciate it thanks for having me man it's a pleasure to be here um so just before we kind of jump in into the weeds um a little bit about about moth so 2019 uh rob launches uh boova i think i've heard that's hang on uh into selfridges harrods dalesford hoxton hotels the ritz so super super premium brand lockdown comes ravages the whole business and they pivot take a u-turn 2021 they rebrand and they actually launch moth into waitrose moth is now absolutely flying uh 2775 uk oh not supermarkets that'd be too many uh distribution points in supermarkets um uh working with home slice the hoxton camden roundhouse you're on the airways um so look super excited mate thank you thank you so much i think you were actually right it's that many supermarkets i really hope there we go um so where i want to start and i always kind of start on like a weird place i think it's the best part let's do weird the place best place to start a podcast um but one of my kind of obsessions is is inputs versus outputs right so you have lots of different inputs you end up creating weird outputs right so you're super young you're like you're you're you're 29 um you're building this huge business you're scaling the teams like 20 people but your background was was like was in music and singing and opera and what i love is how the kind of the the music really filters into the brand's dna and like the way you write the lucid copy it's just i mean like on abatevo the way these way they describe the products is like full of rhythmic charm and twinkle because it's a beautiful life so swing swing your hips through italy caress a little classic romantic self like that is just beautiful like that makes me want to jive right um so i'd love to know like how did being an opera singer or an aspiring opera singer make you a better leader to run a challenger brand it's a really interesting question and definitely a weird place to start i think from my point of view there are basically two types of musicians there's type one who sit in a practice room all day and you hear on cds and they're amazing but really hard to talk to often quite self-absorbed and like their entire focus is the sound at the end of the day and then there's type two musicians who don't do nearly enough practice but specialize in people and those relationships and you know big ensembles and things don't happen without you know keeping ego in check and bringing people together and so funnily enough i'm type two not type one i should done some more practice but the type two being getting people together getting big groups to work together and to be part of these sort of big enchanting projects that i think is easily the most transferable bit of just because you know math as a journey is not one person's work i have an amazing co-founder and now a growing team like we're putting the ensemble together we're putting the people together because it doesn't just happen with one person in a practice room right yeah quite a few founders have said that i interviewed uh julian metcalf is the founder of pret like two weeks ago and his whole thing was leadership's symphony it's like you're the conductor and it's about getting all the different like moving parts to kind of you know co-elease and work together um you know this this is i sat here yesterday with with giles brooks or giles brooke and he's you know he's had so much experience in leadership he's had the big sort of um you know like corporate training you haven't had that like you're in a i mean it's like complimentary way like going into this super naive lots of people in the audience are like going into this super naive as well they're like just starting out and that can be a real advantage but what what have you learned about leadership over the last three years and like what are your i don't know if we try and boil it down into like these three principles yeah sure i mean i think we learned about leadership is part of the reason we started the what became moth is because we didn't love our jobs right we were we turn up companies every day that we didn't love to work at and a big inspiration to move and to leave you know cocktails was the was eventually the reason but we knew before we knew cocktails we knew we wanted to leave and work in somewhere with a great culture and i think as you said this is our first rodeo and we are super naive about things and that it can be a superpower but i think what we've learned is sort of being very willing to say that we don't know the answer and so there's a few things that moth that we have that sort of guide sam and i co-founder through the process and those keep us on the straight and narrow and then we're asking lots of questions to desperately try and learn as much as we can around the edges and those are like being transparent with the team like everyone at moth like they know what everyone's boss's boss's boss is doing it's a really open transparent culture everyone should know what's going on it's not hiding things from the top or what's going on day to day you can ask a question to anyone at moth and you'll get a straight answer and they should know what the big goal is everyone is super transparent from top to the bottom and then it's respect we came from jobs where we didn't love the management style and just actually in a small team if you can actually create this atmosphere of respect and the great ideas that someone might have been afraid to say come out of the woodwork and then the final one is we have like we have four tenants at math of what we sort of guide everybody through and the most important one for me is be the perfect host and that generosity of spirit that sort of because we come this whole thing comes from a hospitality a love of hospitality and food and drink that being the generous host and making people at ease and giving them the best possible ride while they're with us is is a huge part of what we do so be be the perfect host so i'm just trying to think if we like dig into that a bit more, like zoom in a bit more granularly.

9:06Right. So, um, you know, if these guys are like leading teams, what are you doing on a, on a weekly basis? Like what are some of the systems you have in place to, to actually like be the perfect host and create that super transparent, that super, um, you know, no questions, a dumb question environment. Cause I think I'll ask the dumb questions. Yeah. I asked the dumb questions. Um, but cause I think that's really important. Cause I think one of the things I've learned is there can, you can kind of create cultures where by and i've had it before you're scared to ask a dumb question you don't want to like an idiot right but in a challenger brand like dumb questions are the way forward because most people are too scared to ask them but so how do you kind of manifest that yeah so i think one of the ways we do we have a thing um at moth called rocks where everyone each week decides like the three things that are going to take up most of their time for that week rocks rocks so the big rocks going first right and so we have that for the week the month and the quarter and everyone can see what everyone's chosen in the whole business.

10:02So I know what the most junior to the most senior person, I can see the three things that are most important to them this week. And then I'll know if I can do anything to help that or I'm not gonna be able to talk to them about X because the real focus for them in the business is Y. And so I can see and anyone can see what I'm up to this week, like everyone knows. And so that can be massively in like, actually, this isn't gonna be a priority for Rob this week and therefore, and then the whole business gets set rocks. So it filters all the way down from the top. and so everything we do should filter up to the hopefully moving needle okay and then it's so yes it's that that almost uh what's the word like the radical candle i think is what people say yeah um i want to kind of take a turn now and go in to um saying no to retailers right so i think all of us you know on your journey there'll be a point where a retailer comes knocking and you've dreamed about that listing you've dreamed about that ocado dreamed about that holland barrett dreamed about the sainsbury's and i always say it's like getting blinded by the listing lights like oh my god i want to be in this place so bad that fuck it we'll just go in and like not think about it and you guys had the like the cojones to say no to ocado and i think saying no is actually it's really hard talk to us about that situation like firstly i suppose why did you say no and then like you know you get the get the email you get the call what do you say to sam to be like we ain't doing this mate just yet yeah i mean i think it would be wrong to suggest that anyone is coming knocking down my door i'm ignored every week by hundreds of buyers just like i'm sure plenty of people in this room are so like it was us desperately trying to you know to get hold of them and to have the conversation but i think the bit where we came to was there was a proposition on the table and we had to say no and it sort of there's a basic overarching principle at moth that we try try try to hold on to which is really challenging which is that when you work with us and when we work with you it should genuinely be win-win like nobody should be squeezed when you work with math and everybody there is a way to do business that everybody benefits from from a relationship you know it's not you lose you get low margin so i win it's not that it's both of us should be able to win and set it up in such a way that therefore scaling is in both of our interests so if you work with moth the more we do with you the more you get and vice versa and so it's a real incentive for you to grow with us and us to grow with you and so when we got to ocado because online rtd when we spoke to them was really small like it's just like people see a tinny in a fridge and waitress and might pick it up right but in ocado it's much more of a planned purchase so that was sort of the first time we're now talking to them again because we're looking at multipacks and that planned purchase and stocking up for the big shot might win might mean that there's like a win-win relationship with ocado at which point well we'd love to say yes so that's kind of so what was it like was there just not enough margin in it because just again because Giles yesterday was just talking at length about margin.

12:48You need to have that 40 % margin. You need 30-40 % gross margin. The true gross margin is everything. And sometimes you can go into a place and by the time you've actually promoted, spent on the media, there's fuck all left. What was the specific things? I think it was the commercial proposition of them. Premium RCD wasn't important for them. And if they're not going to prioritise it, it's really difficult for us to justify that. so then therefore if they're not prioritizing it the commercials the bit the opportunity isn't as big um so i think it's it was but we left it on really good terms and we sort of saw like it's not a no it's not now and so that we left that door open and and for us like every no is is not always a no it's just a right right now it's not right but look we'd love to go for a drink in a year and we'll be friendly in the meantime we'll keep you updated with our news because this might be that it works in a year and actually the rtd market has changed massively in you know the really short time that we've been going and so that hopefully the next time it's a it's a really positive conversation i think what you've said there is so great for like a sales like a tactic almost is is the no is not is a not now i love that but then also don't be super annoying and just be nagging but like oh have you you know you're doing the range of you yet did it it's like update them with it's like a smooth brushstroke when you're just updating with like news versus being an annoying salesperson which i've been numerous times it's professionally annoying yeah it's a great like reframe of how to follow up basically i think like almost having more of like a newsletter versus uh and there's no dread to open your email which they are another email from rob like it's not that it's oh okay nice there's no sales pressure here it's just we'll wait i think that's one thing you guys are really good at is it's like it's not what you ask it's how you ask it which is a really interesting like reframe and i'd love to use that as a kind of launch pad into waitrose because i think the way the story of how these guys listed with waitrose is is amazing so if you want to kind of just unpack that a little bit yeah sure so i emailed waitrose for two and a half years when they reply so don't worry if anyone else has had that like you know you're you're not alone and that was i now realize the exact right thing for waitrose through we did not fit we were a little glass bottle super expensive we were making them ourselves right like we weren't the fit for waitrose but then what we said is that we we we sort of reframed the question we didn't say hey take a massive risk on a new brand with a new category we didn't say that we said we don't want a listing but we'd love your advice no one is a more of an expert in your customer than you and so we went to them said look we're thinking about doing these tins we're thinking about the rebrand we're thinking about making changes here's where we're up to with the branding here's where we're up to with liquid try five negronis and you don't have to list us but we just want to learn like we really went cap in hand of like we are here to learn because we thought you know we thought the end game in the old days was oh we'll get in waitress and then we'll be no that'll be it you know but obviously it kind of became the first step for moth now but at the time it was we're genuinely genuinely want to learn it wasn't like a sales tactic it wasn't like a oh you know but we then said look we've done all this work together we got to the point where they really like demonstrably contributed to the brand like we made changes because waitrose told us stuff wouldn't work and we could show them so it wasn't fake we really listened and so that when it came to the conversation of hey you know what about 25 store trial they said no but we'll put you in 200 stores and that just changed everything because we weren't asking for a listing we were asking to learn so you get the 200 stores which is like I bet it's a great night out then you wake up the next day it was COVID so there was no night out there was a lot of drinking those at home so but then you wake up with a hangover of like shit we've got to make this listing work yeah like what were the you know for anyone who is about to go into like a big retailer or have you know even just like a a Planet Organic is still loads of stores compared to an indie is how what were the sort of if you go back to that starting point again like right now what were the things you do differently or what were the key like kind of fuck-ups or failures that you're like i wish i knew that that you could you know impart on to it's like therapy this don't worry mate yeah i'm here for way cheaper i'll send the check off yeah i think i think the thing that we did well is when when we went for the initial conversation with waitress we'd done so much homework and so we always try and you know you want to do the take the great bits of a small brand and use those and the great bits of a big brand and use those so we like before we spoke to the buyer waitress we went and spoke to their head of marketing at Waitrose and like they're all of the advertising so we knew how every piece of Waitrose media worked, we knew the rate card we knew what people had done to launch it and we knew like so we had that like we were a safe pair of hands because we knew the system and so we were like we had a plan before we'd had that first conversation so that was helpful but in terms of like fuck ups I think we underestimated like how on earth do you forecast for Waitrose and from being in, we'd had all our accounts are closed we'd had to put the business on Amazon from 0 to 200 stores forecasting that was the biggest challenge because you know when we got it wrong both ways too little too big like and so the big big learning for that was and small brands can get away with it because the big ones can't of being like really really open and honest with their operations team from day one like doing the really unsexy stuff of making sure the people who actually ordered moth and put it on shelves were the first people we call when they were a problem or the first people we were ordered when it went well because at the end of the day like that by relationship super important but day-to-day operations is what puts things on shelves it's the um the podcast i did with james bailey's the ceo of waitress he basically said like availability so if you're not on shelf it's like scoring your own goal so it's like you're doing all the hard work to actually get the product in yeah yeah so i think all that relationship with the supply chain team is vital like apply them with samples like there's no end um i kind of you we talked about the um forecasting being an issue what i want to link into this now is this creating category of one right so creating category of one which you guys are doing like especially in the uk first like super premium kind of rtd cocktail brand um and creating categories are way amazing like peter thiel says it's quite a love aim for creative monopoly escape competition right and so you don't have competition which is great but there's no benchmark to kind of um do all the forecasting officers it's a headache i kind of want to like go through like the good bad and ugly of creating a category of one so i suppose what's been the you're going and you're like right no one's really doing this to our level go to the bar like that's amazing but what is what's the downside of that what's the ugly of that do you know i mean yeah i mean i think it's starting from a point of like it's education before you can get onto brand before you get to liquid before you get on story you've got so much education to do on this category because you're not selling moth at that point you're selling this is a good idea as a category for your whole thing and so like those early conversations weren't necessarily about why is moth so special it's why is the category so special like we we obviously sell ourselves out like we're going to be the ones to lead it but we know first and foremost we've got to convince you that this whole thing is a good idea which is a hell of a challenge to go from you know that we've always done it this way it's always been 250 million it's always been five percent in rtd right that first piece is not education on math it's education on the concept as a whole hi there guys super super quick one um i write a weekly newsletter called hungry friday feast it goes live at 8am every friday i'm pouring my soul into this bad boy it's probably my favorite creative endeavor i've ever done i basically pick apart all the biggest lessons all the biggest learnings from all the wonderful guests and throw it into a feast or a newsletter we've got over a thousand two hundred subscribers come and join the party i'm going to put a link in the show notes it's right at the top subscribe and if you are already a subscriber please just forward it on to a friend do the amount of favor it would mean the world to me anyway back to the old episode boys and girls what is the category education piece because again giles brooks said yesterday he's like when he's looking to buy a brand or not literally him but like if you're trying to sell a brand it's is the category going to kick off are you going to be the hero of the category like those are the two of his key kind of tenants or principles to actually sell a brand.

20:51So like, how are you saying the category is growing? And by the way, we're going to be the hero in that category. Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. I think for us, it's really basic. It is just data. Like there's a wonderful creative and interesting side to moth around the copy and the liquid and all that amazing creativity. But we're super data driven and the trends were really on our side. And I wish I could have planned and known like, oh yeah, I knew COVID was coming and I knew it was all going to blow up and it was all perfect. It wasn't like that. We were right place, right time, but we'd done the homework to take advantage of that opportunity because this was like premiumizing in RTD and premiumizing generally is a massive trend right now.

21:24In RTD, it's one of the biggest. So that trend was happening. COVID happens, it goes crazy. You have this amazing data set. So if it's not now, kind of when's it gonna work? So we really just went very data heavy because again, that's, we're a safe pair of hands. We've done the research. We are every, I always have this sort of like checklist in my mind that like there are a hundred reasons a buyer is gonna say no to you. And every single one of them is a risk and they just, buyers hate risk. so every single time you talk to a buyer if you can cross a risk off their risk list they're running out of reasons and it's much easier to get to the bottom they go all those things don't let them ask you like aren't you worried about this go we know you're worried about this and this is a really important consideration but here's the three reasons it's going to be okay and like taking those risks off the list off the list off the list it's almost like what you said at the beginning about being the perfect host it's like you're the perfect don't worry dan i'll get you yeah yeah we will do the work for you and you'll look really clever yeah yeah yeah that's i love that and there's a great like so much insight in that for for people listening um what i want to talk about now is this whole kind of building the plane and flying at the same time which is a i don't know where i read that or heard that but i think it's a beautiful quote for what it means to build a challenger brand and it is that kind of feeling of there's a pendulum swings from being kind of like ecstatic and elated and i can do anything to terrified and scared and i'm an imposter yeah yeah yeah so um you are literally quite built like building the plane and flying at the same time and what are i think one of the things when you're starting out is there's people can say to you right go and do a bit of tiktok or go and do a bit of facebook ads or go and do a bit of sampling like there's a whole like smorgasbord of different things you can spend your money on and waste your money on more importantly if we were to go back like where did you kind of frivolously overspend or like what what didn't actually move the needle because i think there could be some really like good insights in that yeah i think spend is really interesting so we obviously weren't spending money because we had none but spending time and energy definitely places it was wasted one of the things for one of the other of the four tenants of moth we have is just do one thing well and that temptation to run around like a headless chicken and say oh maybe this shiny thing or maybe that shiny thing or that is so tempting in your first sort of few years because you're you don't have that confidence in your conviction you're like oh i'm gonna find this perfect fit for my thing and i'm just gonna go out and test those different things but actually having the conviction to stick to just do one thing well and work really hard at it that i think for us is an absolutely massive learning what was that one thing so for us it was just liquid just get the liquid right it happens to be in a can because it's the most sustainable fully recyclable blah blah blah but yeah just how does it fucking taste is it delicious would you have a second one because there's lots of brands about out there who like engineer a thing and it's you can you can sell a lot of it once the idea for moth is not to sell a lot of it once it's for people to make it a genuine fit for their lives so you'd want to go back so that was really important for us and then in terms of like so i completely agree like get product right first like we're in food it's gonna taste good so you go into into the waitress listing and i always find this a fascinating beast whereby actually driving the rate of sale because as you said you had no money you've got 200 stores yeah you're previously in selfridges and harrods and uh the hoxton i think it was yeah so what were some of the things you did to actually get it off the shelves yeah i think for us we were we're a better outlier because obviously we launched first of feb 2021 height of covid pandemic like Waitrose was the bar, right?

24:55That was your night out. So what we did is, you know, we spent all of our resource on brand and trusted that when we put something on the shelf that looks so different that it would work. Because we didn't have money for these, like, you know, we're not going to do billboards. It was at home, like maybe a bit of social would have been good. But like, so we just double, double down on brand and just really focused on, we need something that looks on shelf as different as it tastes from its competitors. And also we talked about it like, or I read it at the beginning, but copies, like the writing and the description of the products.

25:26I mean, I can talk about this for you young, so I love talking about this. But I think this getting good at copying, getting good at the way you describe your product doesn't cost anything. Like it's cost reading a few books on like how to write your copy, but it's so important as like a differentiator when you've got a small budget. But it is quite an integral thing. Like in doing prep for this, like your Instagram is a kind of a reel of great copy. like how how's that why is that so important in your in your brand it's really interesting and we're a super wordsy brand and that doesn't mean using lots of them it means choosing them really carefully and there's a sort of another tenet of moth of like the little things matter so every ingredient goes in that goes in that can is super important and every single word that's a tiny billboard right it's this big so every word that is big enough to read has to matter and it kind of stems back to sam and my relationship he's pictures i'm words like i really i'm on your side the power of words like i genuinely believe there's an email that all of us could write in this room that fixed everything we don't know what it is because but words are amazing and so when we went to design it we worked with two partners a pentagram and one was words and one was pictures and usually it's just one guy that comes in and designs it but they were like no we're going to bring in a partner that just does words and a partner that just does pictures and that collaboration that togetherness and that sort of echoing sam and my's like like you know sam is so visual and detail orientated but like i would like there's nothing i love more than listening to great copy and great words and so you get that together that's sort of the baby and it's it does yeah the more you read it if you guys go on on most instagram it's it does have this whole kind of it makes you kind of want to have a bit of a party right so it's a perfect thing for a cocktail brand you've talked about sam quite a bit and um you know sam sam's your co-founder and there'll be people in this room who will have to bring on a co-founder or in a co-founder marriage whatever you want to call it and it can be quite tumultuous like all marriages but so it's a really important thing to get right you're both different is what you've kind of told me before have there been any real like clashes just let's just be really frank have there been clashes between you and sam or like what do you put in place potentially avoid them i think we put in place being friends for 15 years first so getting kind of that out the way like we're a bit of an outlier is like i didn't go i'm going to start this business i'm going to go and find a co-founder like it was always together it was always 50 50 and it's always that like he's fantastic at everything i'm shit at and hopefully he doesn't mind me saying vice versa and so that really helps that like the sam will list we have this atmosphere of transparency and so you can ask a stupid question but like i think like there's a lot of trust that i know i'm not good at this and i know he's great at it i'm gonna listen to him and so but for us be friends i mean he was the best man of my wedding three weeks ago like it's you know we genuinely have known each other and had that relationship for such a long time and starting more together i mean went to school next door to each other lived together at university and that's where the whole food and drink piece together started just because he was better than cooking than me and it really annoyed me um but like so yeah it's a so it's almost because they i mean the kind of the common thing is like don't go into business with your mates so you're kind of breaking that albeit maybe not true kind of thing do you know what i mean but it's i don't think it's true i think is when ego gets in the way of like like we're very open about there's plenty of stuff i don't know and lots of it thank god sam does um and vice versa and then the bits that we both don't know that's when we're like well how do we hire the bits we're missing because we both did the bits that we were shit at like we both did ops together like because we had to learn it but then our first hire was ops because we knew that was going to be that was the missing about our skill set that's something i want to go into is hiring when you haven't got experience when you're like naive because um you know like a lot of brands as they scale they bring someone in big who's been at like a png or a pepsico and it can come in they can be like sometimes a clash of values whereby it's like this is where you i always say it's like transgender brands like rugby big corporates like cricket it's not they're not bad people which is a completely different sport and it just doesn't work um but i'd love to know what like what has been your approach to hiring as this is your kind of first rodeo have you gone in with like yeah what is your kind of yeah i mean i think it really is a culture piece first like as you said those big corporates can be you know they can bring a skill set but again if it's not a no it's so there's a right time for that but we you know our first time was ex-innocent and we have always had a massive respect for the culture of Innocent.

29:52They've done an incredible job of, they started out, they grew, they grew a culture that was so strong that Coke couldn't mess it up. And so Innocent's culture today is as strong as it was pre-Coke. And so anyone, if you can survive there, anyone in that environment, we had massive respect for before we started. And then we're just very clear about the bits that we don't know and we go out looking for that. So I think the culture that they came, another great example is people who are ex-Camden Hells, like an amazing journey amazing culture like if you're from there you're off to a really good start and i would love it's a dream of ours for moth to be one of those brands that all they worked them off they're a safe pair of hands yeah i like that so it's almost like zooming out and seeing the longevity of of the brand as well as another interesting piece because i think so many people go into it thinking let's build and sell this quick and it's actually like well charlie biggin was here yesterday and he his whole thing at the front was the first 27 years do you know what i mean i love that that's the first part you know part part one um now kind of where i want to go now is the um like what's been the biggest win like what's been like what has been your moment of total happiness on this journey very good yeah i think from i mean i really hope it hasn't happened yet i think there are some ones that like hopefully this year will come and and as i said the first 27 years we're still in it right yeah yeah yeah so but i think i mean the first moment when in lockdown i went to hos and scanned a first moth margarita and it worked the barcode worked that lived on a screen and you know it was from gs1 for anyone in the audience but yeah like um that moment of it it's an idea between two friends that started on a facebook chat in 2018 when i sent sam a message saying i want to do a company that makes the perfect old-fashioned and he sent back that's not actually a terrible idea yeah verbatim that to a barcode that scans in a supermarket where i live was just surreal the other one was last like literally two weeks ago we hired five five new people started in one day and i turned around and looked at a field of 20 faces and you think that's mad that's just surreal what does that feel like as a founder because that's you've done that in two years like that's a mental like like super super fast um uh like rocket ship trajectory if you want to call it that a lot of people in the audience will are still kind of teams of two three four like you sit in your office and you're having your coffee and you're like fucking hell there's a lot of people like what does that feel like for you yeah i mean sam and i were two and a half years two people no team no office no money no nothing so we did that bit and that's why it's so surreal now i think again it fills me with it's surreal that every day i look around the room at like people who are genuinely brilliant that they want to come and do this like this is how you want to use your limited years on the planet and your incredible brain power you want to come and do this that buoys me up and gives me incredible confidence and like it's so rewarding that people who are so much smarter than me and really should know better still want to come and do this so if yeah it's an amazing thing to see them turn up in the morning and so these people like are they more senior than you is that like how everybody's more senior everyone's in the senior okay but that's not because they don't have junior people but it's because this is our first business right like so we have a real spread of people who are like you know 23 to how do you balance the almost the too many cooks at the stove i we're older than you like do this versus the gut intuition of like i'm the founder and ultimately this has this brand's kind of pulled out my soul do you know i mean i was talking this was another thing with what Giles was saying yesterday is he was like the relationships don't work whereby the founder's values don't align with the investor's values it was kind of I think was basically what he was saying and there can be times when the founder has to say no to the either investor and or senior employee because it's the the founder's brand it's the founder's baby but then there's times it's like well you've done this this is our first row this is your eighth whatever listen like how do you balance that kind of uh kind of either conflict or paradox yeah i mean the investor one's really interesting i think from our point of view there's not a single one of our investors i wouldn't go for a pint with and they're also like very hands-off and that's very deliberate um interesting and then secondly i would say like it goes back to the do one thing well everyone at moth is a very clear do one thing well we're all in the boat we're on the trenches we're all building the house but like own one thing and be great at that thing and become the expert in that thing so that you have a role and you own a thing like nobody is like just doing a little bit of everyone owns a whole thing at moth because yes we're 20 but we're trying to do things that a big company of hundreds would do so like i think it's that giving people genuine responsibility and holding them accountable for it like let great people work for you and leave alone yeah yeah so this is a kind of a fun question i ask um most guests who come on the podcast and it's it kind of it's a kind of good exercise if you want to see your brand as something bigger than like a product and a packaging basically um and i asked this to to like i've asked this to trip i've asked this to tyrells to um uh who else have asked this to amelia at bowl bean who's our mate so if moth were a song like what would it be and why i'm gonna give you a really cop-out classical music graduate answer unfinished symphony we're not done right yeah yeah there's still loads to do and i think we you know we're we're building the you know building the plane as we fly out all that kind of thing and writing the music as we go like we're not done i think it's really important i love the the first 27 years i think that's fantastic so it's that almost it's i kind of like that because it's almost it's it's the it will never end you get to choose where you go like the end of the song's done you know where you're going we don't know where we're going we have a plan and but you know things come up and then if it were a hotel where would it be and why so i think this is one that i like we spoke about this on the phone like for us one of our first clients was the hoxton hotel and one of the big inspirations before we started the whole brand is I went to the Hoxton in Amsterdam and I had a cocktail there and the bottom of the menu was a hundred euro cocktail and the cocktail was called call it a night and it was a sharing cocktail and it came with a room nice and so it's it's basically that covers their cleaning fees for the room right but for them that is the story you will go and tell your oh yeah I got this cocktail and I stayed in the room overnight and they don't matter how many people stay there but that real generosity that perfect host of look we're gonna look after you all at night and that like real surprise and delight and finding like little special things and that generally like this is not making them any money they are covering their fees but my god am i going to talk about how amazing that is as a thing and i wonder how many people buy it right but like it sits at the bottom of the menu and it states their brand in a drink and so i would love to be as generous but it's those little things that can really add up from compounds we were talking before i don't know you guys can see this but like all the booze like all the tequila the the it's listed on there and it just adds a whole like realness to the drink i think the story of tarquins who's the gin brand down in cornwall is brilliant about what you guys kind of did with them at waitrose yeah so tarquins we worked with for a long time and they weren't listed in waitrose and they obviously now are and they're amazing gin go and drink it it's fantastic gin um it's in loads of cocktails and they you know they're part of their pitch was yes we're amazing but gin is a really crowded category so how do you prove you've got any cut through well they could say hundreds of people are drinking tarquins every week in weight shows because it's in our negroni it's in our french 75 and so that that talk about a win-win partnership that we're looking for that for them we get amazing gin and get to talk about how great they are and they get exposure to loads and loads of people that might never you know plump for a 30 40 quid bottle of gin what's the like a few more questions before we kind of wrap it up and we can go to some questions from the audience but But you've got like a whole bevy of good investors.

37:34Bevy, nice. Yeah, quite literally. Of great investors. And I'd love to know if you could kind of impart one piece of wisdom on the audience. What's the best piece of advice you've been given on this journey? If you could kind of like sum up in a sentence. Yeah, it's actually not from an investor. That is from my dad. He said, it's not failure that will kill you at success. Like failure happens slowly and can be rectified. Success overnight, that can break you. like 200 waitress stores if we weren't ready we'd have said yes and fallen over and so it's not whereas not getting waitress you just continue on just keep going slowly slowly building it's the big successes that come up that will kill you and so being ready for those preparing for success as well as failure is and how do you do that because it's like success you're at 20 people now right there's more listings coming there's more distribution coming like there's more things coming it's kind of i've never talked about that actually it's a really good point if like how do you prepare for success because it can happen whereby the retailer comes you're suddenly in 500 stores you're like what if they say yes yeah what you know what if actually what you want happens happens yeah so good so how do you how do you do that i think i mean going and asking a lot of stupid questions to people who've done it is really important like i'm always happy to be the idiot in the room yeah and again today um but like so that that's really important and i think it's just understanding like like be really generous and what could go well and if what could go well breaks you you need to change what you're doing either your margins are right or you've not raised enough money or or you should whiteclaw is an amazing example they launched in 1500 tesco stores that is an enormous launch for like a canned drink like an rtd but if they got that wrong they probably would but they sold amazingly in 500 and rubbish in a thousand they probably would have been delisted maybe it would have been better to start in 500 look really really clever and then grow from there and so like just thinking having a really careful think about if what you actually won and if it happens can you survive it that's really that's something i've talked about at length it's almost like um i don't know who forgot who told me about it but so many brands want to go from go from almost like not sunday league but like championship football straight into like the champions league which is 1500 stores and it's like you can't make that jump so it's actually better to go small slow steady and just build build build slow bohemi our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenger food and drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist your first hundred stockist to wholesale boemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger boemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollies ollies been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 uplift in sales when using boemi to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff is coming on this podcast in a couple of weeks weeks he uses it to manage the team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using boemy look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time at ireland so one of my favorite books of all time is the obstacle is the way by ryan holiday sick book and i would love to know like what's been one seemingly insurmountable obstacle like at the time you're like this is just i ain't getting past this that retrospectively now when you sit here you look back it was like that was actually the way forward yeah i mean the really obvious one for us is covid right we lost every single account everything closed we had to put like the only place we could sell was amazon and so but there was a trend that was happening premium rtd and covid poured fire on it because that was the only place you could drink.

41:15So it's put the category way further ahead than it was. And we were there, right place, right time to get the Waitrose opportunity. But we were there day one of lockdown with everybody else. Everything we had, we lost. And so that gave us the time to rebrand, to make changes, to go to Waitrose, because they knew they weren't going to list us in that first year or whatever. So we could go and ask questions. And so, yeah, that was the biggest thing. I remember you saying there was an absolute ball ache with the manufacturing. because i think again you've got to cross the chasm from yeah sorry cross the chasm from um you know make it in your kitchen to find your manufacturers like hard like i swear that was easily the biggest challenge 100 i mean we had because we're hard to make right we're not like the thing where you do flavors alcohol water we're not that we're hard to make we are a cocktail everything in it is what you'd find in a bar like it doesn't you know i would feel like oh how do you make it well imagine a giant cocktail shaker right that so we're hard and so finding someone that can do difficult at scale is you know a huge challenge and we went through two or three together because that's another thing we've talked about is is actually hard is a unfair advantage yeah to do something difficult well is a competitive advantage well i don't know it was the guys from athletic brewery the guys i interviewed the other week there's like a massive um they're basically like the lucky saint in america they'd probably hate me if i said that but like that's basically uh and his whole thing was you know run so hard at the problem that you create a moat that the competition can't like you know they can't cross um and with that manufacturing piece like just giving the like putting your guts on the table right like how many did you have to go through like how many calls like how because i've heard that it's just so hard to get right yeah i mean it was worse at the time like we had global pandemic global can shortage global cardboard shortage global logistics crisis so we're going to put a drink that's hard to make in a can it's hard to find in a box that's hard to buy and put it in a truck that doesn't want to go places so like it was but if you can do that that mindset and getting through that sets you up for as it gets better so i'm so glad we went through that absolute trauma of that because day-to-day operation style like it's still of course it's still challenging but you've been through that i mean how bad can it be so okay that's a good point so so there's obviously some say say there's some trauma trauma down the road in terms of traumatic spirit experience for the for these guys so what what were you saying to yourself when you're like looking in the mirror and thinking fucking hell i'm like how am i going to do this like what were you saying to yourself and what would you impart onto yeah i mean i'm really fortunate that i didn't have to look in the mirror i looked at a co-founder and that strength of having two people is i mean i don't i genuinely i have so much respect for sole founders like i literally have no idea how you get up in the morning like i couldn't do it and so i'm very much like uh like one of two and having each other for that was massively important and then the other piece is like i think the startup mentality and one I've always held very close is no isn't an option this thing is going to happen so if you take no off the table the thing's going to happen how do you get there and so like when we're hiring and stuff like it's really tempting for us oh no you can't do that no no no is not an option in this situation how do you do it stop saying oh it's quite difficult and just no no is easy no is really easy yes it's really hard and so how do you get there yeah that's a common theme for everyone I've interviewed I think it was um uh rich at moju he was like he had the same thing right so he was he was creating a category of one with those shots out of like pulling out of the ether or the dust right and uh his whole thing was there's just no no optionality like there is no as soon as you actually take oh could this not work or is this too hard off the table yes it's harder but it's actually in some respects easier because it just it's gonna happen yeah it's gonna happen yeah yeah um cool so i think how long have we got sorry oh five minutes okay perfect so we'll ask a few more questions then we'll go to some some questions from the audience um so this is a question like i ask a lot of guests as well which is what is like one truth that you wholeheartedly believe in but a lot of people will disagree with you on that's really interesting i think for us it's like it's the simplicity to it sam has given a great piece of advice which is like what it takes to succeed he like asked his old boss like how do i get on and it was it was like be good at your job and don't be an arsehole and like actually if that's step one like that's a phenomenal advantage in in the world so if like if you think it like there is a way to do business where you're always kind and with that there's another thing i heard from i listened to a podcast of the moon pig founder and it was one of the most inspiring things i'd ever heard because it was like stephen bartlett or someone interviewing and he was like oh did you have really late nights did you miss loads of kids birthday he was like fuck no i went home at six i was at every birthday i went to every school play and he built a billion pound business like there is a way to do business where you go home at six and you have a life and do well and i really like we get that wrong like everyone has late nights and sprints and stuff you have to do but like you can go home at six you can have a life and you can be there at the kids plays or whatever right like you can do that but it's a very conscientious decision so that like push against hustle culture i can't stand against hustle culture epic mate so look um can we are if anyone's got any questions if you just want to like raise your hand and we'll come around yeah sweet so we'll go here first thank you for that it's really interesting um i saw you did a recent big out of home campaign did you do that in-house or did you outsource it and what was your rationale behind either choice uh yeah so we've never done it before so it's really a big learning for us um so what we're trying to do within moth is we look at seed lip he did an amazing job and they built a creative agency within seed lip ben's dad obviously was at pearl fisher so that big that would be nice but thanks dad um but so we're building like a little creative agency within moth because we genuinely believe you're going to lead a category you've got lead on liquid you've got lead on brand but you've also got a lead on marketing so it's like partly internal but then we also went back to some of the partners we worked with in the first place at pentagram um and so we had a kind of like real internal process but some just some outside stuff to sense check what we were doing um but yeah i think again like it was a rory sutherland i listened to it and uh i think it was in his book that you recommended of like simplicity is sophisticated and that as a principle of like like the way we describe our drinks are not how a bartender would describe it it's how you describe it to your mates like it's that inclusive like you don't have to wear the right shoes to enjoy a moth like we'll wear trackies or tuxedos you do you and so that simplicity for our first campaign of just like have we met for us was was that was the sort of cornerstone hi rob um i'm chris uh great great talk and stuff curious um from your investors side of things you said well how did you go about raising who've raised from but also you said you went from having no money for two years and all of a sudden you're now hiring pentagram where did you get to like how did you come across deciding to yeah so we had nine months on zoom with investors and the first round was like friends and family like really the whole pitch like being really honest was here's what we've done with no money imagine what we could do with money um and that was the entire first like year and it took ages and it was awful because you couldn't go and have a drink with them raising for a drinks brand it was like bed like my other my wife is a barrister she was in the front room in court and i was in the bedroom like also being judged um with it with investors so like it was a lot of friends and family first but like towards we knew like we did the first brand ourselves like made it designed it did a lot of that and we knew that if we wanted to the like the lick the brands to keep up with the liquid that we worked so hard on we know we needed to invest in brands so we raised that round and a big chunk of it went to Pentagram and it's one of the best investments we've ever made but it was terrifying because like it was Sam was like we need you need to invest in this you need to spend money on it and I'm fundamentally like it's new for me like how can you possibly justify that and how did how did you make that decision I did as Sam told me sorry I did as Sam told me right he was right I mean so we we raised around we thought we knew we know we raised when we raised that we we just earmarked a good side of like we know we need to rebrand and we know we need to get someone good and so when we chose Pentagram one of the reasons we did is they'd never done on RTD.

49:04So we went to a brand who didn't know or had previously used any of the rules for the category. So to create a new one, it was just fresh for them. Yeah. I think last question, was that last question maybe? Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm called Chris as well, funnily enough. Great. Rob, yeah, we heard a little bit earlier on about the amazing out of home campaign that you're running like what was what triggered that decision that okay we're now going to run an out of home campaign because that money could have been invested into more sampling or to i don't know deeper promotions what triggered that decision okay we're big enough now we're going to go out of home just really jealous of lucky saying no i'm joking um so no i think for us the distribution justified like we got to a point where we were big enough that it kind of made sense but for me it was like a real leap of faith like this is not something i pushed for it's something that the team has said like we've never done this and we need to know what happens when you do and so how can you do that in the most efficient way possible not just splashing cash but like how do you measure really carefully and the important bit is not the out of home campaign that sort of finishes this week it's this next bit of how do you measure it because you could like it's fine to spend money once to learn a lesson that it might not be right it's not fine to spend money twice and get the same result so now it's the important bit of what do we learn good afternoon hi my question was around your rocks you mentioned about three rocks each week for the team how do you share those with each other um so we have like an internal like a like i imagine like a wikipedia it's like called notion you'll have seen it advertised on the tube everywhere we use notion thank you uh thank you really really um interesting uh talk so i'm daniel from value africa and we're importing palm spirits from nigeria so we're kind of creating a category of one um finding that really really interesting like the what we get constantly is what is a palm spirit yeah we're here to kind of build a category long term we know that we're gonna have to be here for like 15 20 years before we really hit uh success um just some thoughts on um what you think about kind of collaboration and how you can uh build a category through uh through collaboration and you know what does new product development look like and are there opportunities to collaborate with brands on that and how, what might that look like?

51:19Yeah, sure. So obviously we collaborate with all our spirits partners. So it's vital to us, you know, we're only as good as the rum or the gin or the tequila we put in it. I think secondly for us, like the biggest learning of a category of one is like there's a sort of belief we have a moth, like it has to be the perfect fit. Like we started out to say, you should use no more brain power to have a moth Negroni than you would a can of Beaver Town, a glass of wine. Like if it's genuinely a straight, no extra brain power choice to have that, then I would choose a Negroni. So for you, if it's no harder to have a palm spirit cocktail than a gin and tonic or a rum and coke, that's a really, really interesting proposition.

51:52What's this? What's it? I don't know how to do this, but I bought the thing and it's easy to enjoy. It's an easy spirit fit in your life. And so who is the mixer brand or the collaboration with it? Like two keys, grapefruit mixer or like double darts or there's Lixir or like there's amazing mixer brands like to make it easy to enjoy. So that that another one of those reasons to say no is off the table because you don't have to wear the right shoes to enjoy it. You just can enjoy it. Hey, Rob. It's Priyanka. Firstly, I want to say a huge congratulations on the distribution that you guys have achieved over the last couple of years.

52:22My question's on store compliance. So you've obviously won a lot of listings, Waitrose, Tesco, etc. over the last two years. And you talked about managing those relationships with supply chain and ops being the most important. How do you actually do that on a store by store basis? I mean, when it was Waitrose, I went to as many waiters in the first year, like I had nothing else to do. So I went to every Waitrose I could go to like, and did it myself. So So having done it for a year, like that understanding of what goes wrong, why does it go wrong, and what do we need to do to fix it? So I had that.

52:50So then eventually when we get to a scale, like I can't go to that many Tescos as much as I'd like to just go and talk to people about moth in Tesco all day. So we actually then, because we knew how to do it, we could then go out and brief externally and say to people, but like these things can cost you a fortune. But we knew very specifically what went wrong, why it went wrong, and what we needed to do to fix it. So that brief is much tighter, so we can then afford to go and spend on like a field compliance agency to go and do it. Because I was a field compliance agency for a year. thank you yeah there rob uh christian here from sunnyside drinks um as a startup my my journey through um finding a manufacturer to begin with has been horrific um but you know when you make it through how was your journey and have you had any bad experiences with with finding an appropriate manufacturer and also you know deciding on costings with them as well yeah i mean similarly traumatic and like it's because it's really hard um basically it's it's really difficult there's a weird gray no man's land of like there's lots of people who'll do like a little run of something and then there's people do a bajillion tons of it and that's fine but the space in the middle is the hardest thing in the world i was saying someone earlier like if i wanted to start a really lovely profitable business tomorrow i'd start a mid-range canna that was really good and had all the accreditation and was just safe and a great pair of hands and got it right every time so that like you're not doing something wrong it's hard for everyone it just is really tough and i think but that that's like when you start to have those advantages being a small brand how do you get them involved how do you bring them on the journey how do you have that relationship so that when you call in the middle of the night with a crisis they're happy to do something for you and what is it you've done for them you know so like first manufacturer like we have lots of friends in this space who are looking for people to can like if we find a good person we're going to recommend them and maybe like a million cans go down their line thanks to us if i call them at eight o 'clock and they're just about to leave work like probably more likely to answer the phone so i used to think this is this piece of like i've one of my biggest learnings in all of this is i used to think business was really really technical and decisions were made on data and it's like really clever people in clever rooms doing clever things, it's not.

54:44People buy from people that they like and people will do things because they like you and they want you to do well so it goes back to the pick it at your job and don't be an arsehole, like if you're nice it really is like the most basic thing but people buy from people. If you want to have trauma over that we can talk about it afterwards over a drink. Guys please big round of applause for Rob. Nice one brother, that was epic. 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 five 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