Nina Parker: Thriving As Female Chef in Tough Male Kitchens, Manufacturers & Panic Attacks & Building Saucy

0:00Hey guys, this episode this week is absolutely banging. I'm currently recording this outside because I didn't get to do it this morning because I was lazy but it's with Nina is with Nina Parker. I've been having it on literally everything in terms of like a fast rate of sale I went through the whole thing in literally a day it's so so good I think the brand name Saucy is amazing um she's had an eclectic wonderful career in food she has worked in as the only female in all male dominated Michelin star kitchen in the city there was loads of learnings in that um she's written cookbooks all around the world she's built a huge social media following yeah she's cooked for some amazing people as well but i think with saucy she's really really onto something and we talk about just the pain of being in the trenches the muck and the bullets flying everywhere you know panic attacks three manufacturers who are completely well everyone's listening to this knows the pain of manufacturers an absolute nightmare um but i just love this conversation she's amazing uh she's a wonderful storyteller it really sort of peaked or i should say re uh rejuvenated my interest in food brand building building sick things doing what you love and i think you absolutely love this please as always do share it if you enjoy it and leave a five star review thank you so much nina thank you so much for doing this um apologies for the sort of last minute hurdles i basically for listeners rocked up and um forgot the most important thing for podcasting which is your sd cards and i was fucking messaging my my editor like mate and uh it just so's all that there's actually a rhymonds over the road so yeah we've managed to make it all happen um but yeah like i don't know we met uh very briefly a couple of years ago i I think when I did the shoot with Amelia from Bold Beam, you were cooking up a whole sort of corny copia of delicious dishes.

2:24And I think I just stuffed my face that day before we even hit record. Followed you since. I love your content. You've obviously got a massive following. Love your recipes. But I also love what you're doing with Saucy. The name's genius. and I really want to, as we were sort of messaging, get into, speak to other founders who are in the trenches, who are in sort of, you know, trying to get through each day with avoiding the muck and bullets as it is. And yes, I'm excited, excited to talk a whole smogs of all the different things these days. So thanks for doing this. Well, thank you for having me.

3:03It's such an honour. I listen to your podcast anyway. It keeps me inspired and so many great ideas and people talking on it. So, yeah, I'm very happy to be here and, like, give any, you know, knowledge. I'm definitely in the trenches. I love it when you said that because I was like, yeah, that's exactly what it's like. You're right to hold it a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be great. No, for sure. And I think what I want to talk about is, I think the best place to start is your love of food, your insatiable love of food. and then we can sort of weave into into saucy because that was very much a byproduct of your your passion and your curiosity a bit like milia to be honest yeah um and one thing i've been reading about or kind of obsessing with at the minute is this there's a writer called marcel proust right a parisian writer and he talks about like proustian moments which are these sort of moments in life that really make everything sort of come alive and you really experience it so it It could be, you know, you start really experiencing instead of just living.

4:10And so it could be something like the smell of freshly made grass, right? Bear with me. This sounds like we're going a bit crazy here, right? Bear with me. It could be, what his example is, is the smell of freshly baked madeleines in Paris. I know you wrote a book. I love it. Yeah, I know you wrote a book on it. I know. I know the madeleines. Exactly. I know you uh you wrote a book in a tour guide in Paris that's why I wanted to start here and yeah he talks just about these moments of like it could it could be like you know you smell some perfume and it takes you back to your grandma or you listen to a song and it immediately reminds you of someone or like a period of time right I would love to know what some of those in food have you know you cook so many different recipes what are the real moments that sort of um or dishes you create that sort of give you that sort of feeling of like really being in the moment and aware do you know what I mean yeah I mean great question uh and yes I do love Paris love so many things French um and funnily enough I would say it probably is I've spent a lot of time in the south of France and I have grown up going there and that has shaped my sort of love of food and like early beginnings with food and the kind of Mediterranean style cooking and it just being the ingredients that you know they're so abundant with like good quality ingredients and that it's sort of an easy style of cooking and growing up I went to a lot of restaurants with my grandma around in the south of France who loved sort of just outside Saint-Tropez somewhere called Port Grimo and definitely I kind of have memories I mean even the smell of that place is so sort of salty um dry smell which you see air but also from the heat in the summer in August and I just love that part of France so much and I used to go with my grandma a lot to a lot of restaurants around there and she would um take me to have like she was obsessed with um creme brulee and creme caramel and that kind of stuff and what's the difference between creme brulee and creme um creme caramel yeah so creme brulee is the one you crack on top with them which has got the um sort of sugar coating which you blow torch yeah and she would always she was very sort of fair and she would always crack it very equally half with her spoon uh my Polish so I'm half Polish and this is my Polish grandmother and um I so sort of she introduced me to kind of the love of food I would say she was obsessed and like she'd have oysters out there and always like prawns and with calvados fried in calvados that kind of thing what's calvados uh brandy right um and yeah I'd say those kind of memories one take me to the south of France but also she introduced me to kind of those rich flavors um and also like the restaurant scene like my parents weren't as into going to restaurants as her and yeah and also like her love of ice cream there was an incredible ice cream place there so I'd say that and I did have an ice cream van uh in my 20s um really because i just love sort of well-made ice cream and so the and it and this place in france did like old school ice cream desserts like uh waffles like a golf which is like whipped cream vanilla ice cream and it would be served with like a hot um with like a pot of hot dark chocolate sauce and like toasted almonds and those kind of my early food ish that's your prussian moment then yeah and also i think for the brits is like one thing as i mean we're recording this in like snotty gray and miserable life more than today but one one prussian moment is is the 99p flake you know you hear the ice cream van yeah there's pretty much every everyone in the uk understands that and knows that and you know with a strawberry sauce yeah you know i'm a glutton two three flakes in that fucker yeah yeah yeah yeah um but those are it and i love that i love that i can just sort of imagine you know you kind of go into these um uh restaurants with your grandma and um the ice cream van is i wanted to talk about that because that sounds fascinating but like why was your why was your grandma such a good guest to go to restaurants with versus your parents um she was passionate about food she loved and you know she just loved the so she polish and food is quite rich and sorry sorry to interrupt right so i you know you listen to the rory southern episodes we've done i've listened to one of them yeah so one of the things i was talking about is polish nandos like how you'd create a polish nando it's it was a stupid question right but like it was it was kind of to get him how to get him thinking king because the polish food isn't known as well as french food no right french food's got this whole romanticism again like you know people like proust writing about fucking you know freshly made madelins totally polish doesn't have that food so um it's because it's quite heavy talk to me about yeah polish food what are you actually eating i mean it's it's quite stodgy and i might probably be criticized for saying that because it's it's moved on a lot since then but um you know the dumplings and the donuts and I mean it's so cold there so you know through the winters you need a heavy sort of very hearty food to get through these like minus temperatures so it is kind of built around that um and you know a lot of uh potatoes you know and um you know jellied eel and you know not not typically what say British people would like hone in on and I think that yeah when my my grandma had a real love for France and the south and she just yeah she she dined out properly out there and loved it and was always she loved bringing me or my sister or one of my brothers out with her and it would always be like a little date the two of us together and it would always be such a treat that whole experience and she knew the restaurant owners and they loved her and they know to order to make sure they had oysters um cooked in champagne for her i mean she loved the finer things in life yeah yeah yeah she sounds like an amazing um amazing woman and i like people who indulge in the yeah the sort of the jazz of life which is she loved it the pate Yeah.

11:05The champagne and oysters is the jazz of life, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you're getting involved in that. And then, so then how did she end up in France then? Was... She just... Sorry, so she was just, she vacationed. Yeah. So I started a yank there. Vacay. Vacation. Yeah. Did she holiday? So she lived in London. And then her husband loved France and also spoke French. and she told my parents about these flats that were going to be going up for sale, which were in this place called Port Grimo, just outside between Nice, very close to Saint-Tropez. And yeah, and then my parents ended up getting one of these flats.

11:46And they actually met on the beaches in Jeuil-le-Pin, my parents. You've got the nice French accent on you. I wish I could see that. Je m 'appelle Daniel. as far as it goes but the um the yeah and I think it's just trying to get that what I'm trying to get is some context is is is this sort of this rich um love of food and like even today you know you've cooked I was at lasagna like there's and when we did the stuff with Amelia I probably did a lasagna then I have a thing I think it was a lasagna and then maybe some noodle dish yes with beans of course yeah yeah yeah yeah loads of bold beans in there but um I remember um like it's a lot of work you know you see these one reel like it's a shit ton of work so trying to get into the labour of love um the the the ice cream um uh van you had talk to me about that period so you're in your 20s yes why did you set up an ice cream van so I'd worked in restaurants for about three years Nice.

12:53And I, you know, didn't, I just thought, okay, I've done enough. Chef, as a chef. Yeah. Worked in mainly Italian restaurants and then won French. Which restaurant? West Brunson. West Brunson. So mainly in Lanhamer, which is a restaurant which shut, I think, around the beginning of lockdown. Yeah. It was around for about 10 years. Amazing Italian restaurant in the city. and the head chef was Francesco Manse. He was like the first, he let me into his kitchen when I knew nothing and just was like, he's a very lovable Italian. I mean, he'll laugh at me saying this, but just, there was something terrifying, but he's also kind of Calabrian, so that makes sense.

13:40Calabrian. Sort of like very south of Italy, like right opposite Sicily. Yeah. So you're quite tough. You come from there. That's interesting because I interviewed Margot Henderson and she was talking about sort of females working in kitchens. And she said, I felt like I was walking into blokedom, the kingdom of blokes. and so then you've got this kind of this calibrin um chap who's traditionally kind of hard and toughened by living from the area yeah who then is soft and open and warm to yourself like describe what it's like as a female when you walk through the kitchen the first time in the city like paint that picture what does that seem like i mean if i think about it now I should have been pretty terrified and I just, like many things in my life, I just kind of don't think about things too much and just go for it so I met someone at Wimbledon when I was working at the tennis and he said, oh I know this amazing Italian restaurant, because I just said, oh maybe I'll be someone's sous chef I'd left uni, just left uni and I had no idea of the sort of hierarchy of a kitchen, because obviously sous chefs are bloody hard what is soup sous chef is just below head chef because what have you got you've got commie commie uh or chef to party oh no then chef to party and then uh sous chef yeah and then you've got head chef sous chef's face is a vice captain yeah basically it's just like another head chef yeah and i was just like oh yeah i'll be ahead uh sous chef no problem how hard can it be yeah zero idea yeah um and then he and she said oh i introduced you to this guy francesco he's really lovely um and i met up with him in his restaurant and he just said oh you've got any chef experience i said no but you know i'm really into it and he's like it's cool if you've got a passion for it um we'll teach you everything else wow and um now when i look back i'm i think that was so great of him to be so open-minded and i mean i did do a trial um so that he could see i wasn't totally bad but I mean I really what was the trial I think I just spent a day there um in the I think I was in pastries yeah probably in the pastry section at first and I think just not being a total idiot uh helped I don't know but I mean it probably was yeah and I um but he was so sweet and he's like cool well why don't you do a stage which is sort of work experience for a bit and then being a rest you know of restaurants the turnover so quick so within two months I was put thrown someone had quit and I was thrown into starters and it was hardcore and I was the only female in that kitchen um at that point I think it was 11 Italian men and me and my I didn't speak any Italian apart from like yeah Ben I see and just like oh good or yes and they were like sea chef um but no i um i spoke spanish and that did not help i thought it would but it didn't i thought why are you speaking to us in spanish she's not i was like oh it's not that people say it's really people say it's really similar so but no they didn't like that um and but it was it was incredible and i always felt i think it's changed so much now the restaurant industry and And like being a woman working in a kitchen is, you know, it's not the same as it was.

17:24Like, so I was doing it in 2012. So it's very different now. And I feel that, you know, they're welcomed a bit more and it's not so, but it's very macho. At that point, it was, I remember, you know, I was probably a real princess when I joined. That's fine. I can admit that. and like I'd burn my hand and I'd be like, oh, I've hurt myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'd be like in the service and they'd be like, whoa, die, die, die, which means like keep going, go faster, Nili, you're so slow. And I'd be thinking I'm going really fast. I think that I was going not nearly as fast as you had to during a service.

18:05And yeah, I had, I remember like at Christmas I had cuts all over my hands and burns and Francesco would be like let's see your hands okay fine you're a chef now yes swollen and red and yeah not looking great i love that you walked in a princess what did you walk out as um well hopefully a lot more yeah a lot tougher and more discipline and yeah definitely i mean yeah I'd be on the floor scrubbing and it definitely takes, you know, brings you down a few levels and it just made me not afraid of any hard work. What's the, so describe the, again, I think this is another thing that's I've just never really explored anyone, but it's like, so I want to understand from your perspective, because I've interviewed a lot of chefs, I understand the perspective of the head chef running the brigade, right?

19:07and like how to get people uh in what you know working hard like paul ainsworth's got a wonderful i went down to his restaurant i went to a very went on my own long story but anyway that's so nice though going and like having a meal yeah it was but i basically so this is when i just podcast had just started so i was going through a bit of a rough patch and so i just wanted to get me to some headspace so then i went to paul ainsworth's restaurant on my wands i felt like a bit of a div because i'm like me shouldn't sell me on my larry treat yourself yeah treat myself it actually worked out quite well because i got um piddled on site on craft beers and it gave me the courage to ask saying i was like mate i've got a podcast i was like it's called angry yeah i thought i'd love to speak to paul and then long story longer i eventually got hold of paul so it was worth it but i looked through the kitchen it's like they plopped me quite literally where I needed to be and I could see straight into the kitchen I saw the the silver glistening and glittering Michelin yeah thing as in Michelin star like they had not the red certificates they have but like it was like it was just a Michelin star Michelin thing through the kitchen I could see all the chefs leaving away and there's a quote on the wall and it says we make it happen dot full stop we make it happen together and it's like that so I understand and I've talked about, talked to it from Paul's perspective, talked to Thomas Drake about how to mobilise and galvanise teams.

20:37I'd love to know from your perspective as, I don't mean this in a derogatory way, as a princess in a... I really set myself up here. No, no, no, no. But as in like, as in, and I mean that in an encouraging way because you've walked into this world of Yeah. of macho men and like, and you've come out stronger from that situation. but you were saying it was, you were behind people. It was slow, but you thought you were going fast. Like just talk to me through that. I just think it's a whole culture that I had no idea about. And I, you know, I'd worked in restaurants as a waitress before and I thought, yeah, I just think it's being completely ignorant to the whole side of that, you know, all, you know, in the kitchen, the kitchen world.

21:23And I think, yeah, there's, it just, you know, hit me hard. I think the first three weeks, I didn't really cry, but I did cry there. And I remember, like, I think I was crying behind the bins one time. I mean, not cool. A low point. But then it's sort of, as you say, there's this wonderful camaraderie in the kitchen as you talk about a team. And I love the guys. they were amazing and because I was the only woman in the kitchen I was a bit of a novelty so they were so kind and lovely and like you know I'd maybe I did some funny things about like I'd obviously if I set the fire alarm off in the building one time which was a big building a lot of there was all the there were loads of because it was the city there was all these different offices above and uh they just knew it was me and I tried to hide it and like cover it up and but they were always so kind I think because I was a bit of a novelty um and but I think yeah I mean I think to work in the kitchen it teaches you this really great discipline and that has helped me in business as well and just not being yeah toughening up and maybe sometimes too tough about things like because I've sort of learned this very too tough about how things about things like just like pushing myself too much and not having an off switch and just always be like i've got the energy yeah i can do it i don't need to stop and i have that you get that do you get that sort of frenetic energy from being in the kitchen never stop you never stop and like you're exhausted and it's sort of celebrated in a way like that kind of it's so labor intensive because you're on your feet the whole time and it's it's almost like you cut yourself and you've not done anything about it and well done you a little bit you're you're like tough enough you know there is a little bit of that and it's it's maybe I think it definitely has has changed I don't think it's probably maybe as bad as that and but it is I think that's been instilled in me so that when I I can push myself too much and you know not get burned but I've you know and I think that's pushed me you know I've maybe had panic attacks because of that because I've not I've always been like oh but I can take on this yes I can take on this because being a chef you are taught about juggling a ton of things at the same time like I can have five things going at the same time you know my cooking at the same time for example and that's cool because you've got to be like that and yeah weirdly that's sort of gone into my life a bit and yeah I relate I relate to that so much as well because it's the um yeah I think ultimately if you've got the spectrum of relentless discipline and taking on too much and beating yourself up for doing some great things you want to be if that if that's the spectrum and the spectrum here is sat on the sofa doing fuck all day right you'd rather be this way yeah for sure oh sorry on the right hand side for listeners um but the detriment of that is you can bludgeon yourself to the bone of just working too hard yeah and and and being a bit of a workaholic yeah yeah but also i think you know i've got this at the minute it's like as i was saying to you before is so the founder of minor figures you know the oat milk brand yeah he's got a quote and i've sort of talked about this a lot which is bite more than you can chew and then chew to hell and I've been basically I say that to myself a lot as I can just take on more so obviously we've got three pods this week we've got like two supper clubs coming up and I'm sort of like thinking am I going to fucking nuts it you've got supper clubs coming up yeah we've got one it comes to that actually with Giles Brooke in in the Draper's Arms in Islington okay nice was there on Saturday having a few drinks it looks pretty sick it's very nice have you been up is the food good?

25:25I haven't eaten there but I've been for drinks there okay yeah yeah so it's kind of like nice the open spaces very on brand but so I get that feeling of just not knowing how to sort of turn it off and so when you said you had sort of panic attacks outside of the kitchen in the city like when did that manifest? that specifically I had when I was doing my cookbook my third cookbook and I would be just had these weird deadlines in my head oh it's got to be out this time because I self-published the third one which was called Saucy and I had in my mind oh it's got to be be in time for the Christmas market and that meant I put together a book in eight months which is kind of how long does it usually take or should like what's the usual I mean definitely a year yeah around a year so I cut myself short quite a bit and it just then I was also doing Instagram and some catering and you know it just and then I was on holiday with my family in France and I was having the panic attacks there and they're like why are you having it we're like in this and I was doing x you know you just take do too much basically and now I know not to I try and check myself a bit and not how do you do that I plan my weeks a lot better right so I have like rest time a bit more chilled time worked in there and if I have like a week where I'm working in the kitchen a lot I'm like okay maybe don't do exercise you know as well don't go running and play tennis or you know yeah yeah it's all too much yeah the full shebang yeah yeah the no no i'm just sort of uh as i sort of do these are sort of very sort of self therapeutic these podcasts and or therapy sessions yeah no you have to make the time and i think yeah what's been really really helpful recently for me is i'm planning my week you know one or two weeks before of what i'm going to do so i and i plan specific like time where i'm gonna chill whereas before I'd just say yes yes yes to everything and then not do you know just and then feel not great about it and now I just feel so much calmer about my weeks and they're still busy but I've factored in that time better I mean this might be really obvious to most people but I was not it's not even no it's just it's just but it's of some sometimes the obvious things are the uh the ones that people ignore the most yeah to be honest you could sit around and people think i if i just download this fucking ai software i can do a hundred more things that i need to which actually it's just like actually just just planning some some rest let's go back to the ice cream van yeah because i love ice cream i mean who doesn't like who doesn't love ice cream what's your favorite flavor of ice cream um so i love i mean yeah this sounds boring but i assure you it's not boring i love vanilla okay well fuck me you've You know, if you make a vanilla ice cream properly with like good quality ingredients, and I started making ice cream.

28:44Obviously, I had those sort of early years having it in France and the South and like those old school desserts like the Gauvet d 'Ange or the Peach Melba or Banana Split, stuff like that. I always had that image of I'd love to have something that created those, you know, with nice ingredients from scratch. and then when I worked at Lanima they had an ice cream machine like a small one. Lanima's this the Italian restaurant in the city yeah yeah so my first job that I went back to twice um to work there and they made I just remember the ice cream they made there was just all simple ingredients good quality and it was like ice cream I never had before I just thought this is amazing like also how did it taste different it was the taste when it comes out straight from the machine it's just like perfect scooping you know consistency and they just they did it so well and I think maybe I also haven't had homemade ice cream for a while probably when I got there I'd just be having like anyone else from the supermarket twisted I'm right yeah I was last to say that you're having a fucking twister but yeah they are pretty good to the fact but basically or haggen dust I'd probably have you know something like that or like you know nothing that special when you start having it from a you know restaurant like that I thought oh god maybe I should make something the markup with ice cream was really great and so when I left Lanham I thought I'm gonna have an ice cream van and I told my dad and he was almost had a heart attack you know like where's this going and I bought a 1970s uh Citroen H van um and you know renovated it and it was a ice cream and cake van so i did all pastry as well i was really into pastry at that stage i mean i still am but specifically that was going to be what the most of what sort of pastry had you done paste the pastry section at yeah so i'd done pastry how's pastry different to because i um i mean more precise more precise yeah i'd probably be hopelessly bad at that but but i think i hate it yeah yeah because there's there is a massive difference isn't it because and I think um just talk to me about that and then we'll get back to the ice cream um it's well more scientific I guess but yeah and you know you can't just wing it you've got to have the formula of how it's going to work um you know but once you I just don't think it's that complicated I feel like if you know it you can just mix it up a bit as you go along not with vegan baking that's the whole thing you know that's a different structure yeah speaking um but I just you know love um sort of classic um cakes and that's and tarts and things like that I think if you do them simply without too much sugar um because I think a lot of I think a lot of people don't like desserts because they're too sweet and you know what I learned in restaurants it's just again it's quality of ingredients and uh yes I kind of had and a lot of chefs don't like doing it because sort of savoury I guess chefs or you know they they don't like the faff they're just like oh no I just want to chuck a bit of this you know the recipe's in their head whereas quite often with pastry you do need to go back to the book and just be like oh yeah because there's quite a lot to remember and they don't like the precision so would you say pastry is more sciencey than uh less intuition that's what maybe some chefs would say i mean i don't think it's very yeah it's more technical it's more technical okay interesting yeah okay so then and then so what pastries were you did you have in your ice cream van so i did all the kind of what i do i mean like frangie pear chocolate frangie bran tart uh load of different cupcakes um i would do lots of meringues um and i yeah and then paired with ice cream and brownies blondies sounds like my kind of ice cream truck it was it was it was so fun what was the brand called it was just called nina ice cream and cake yeah um and and then i had i could only really fit about three or four flavors of ice cream in there but what flavors they would change always but this is why i'm saying vanilla because i think if you do and i would always serve it with like a hot dark chocolate sauce as well yes and if you do those well there was this restaurant called Racine um I don't know if you remember it but it shut a while ago but it was just on Brompton Road and um my uncle so my my Polish grandmother her brother who's also obsessed with food he used to take us there um and the dessert was literally a couple of balls of vanilla ice cream the hot dark chocolate sauce whipped cream and it was just so good.

33:44Simple but effective. Simple but, and people have it and they just say, bloody hell this is good. And you know, then you can always have more sauce and honestly, that's my favourite ice cream every time. But I would do salted caramel, raspberry sorbet, all you know, with a load of raspberries. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, raspberries and white chocolates. What I really want to try or I've tried them, have you seen the It's the Argentinian sort of delicacy, the Fronny P or something, which is basically a raspberry, frozen raspberry, in white chocolate, in dark chocolate. Oh, wow. There's a brand called Hidden Fruits.

34:25They're actually in M &S now. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a challenger brand, but my friend was telling me about them from Argentina, and I love, like, I mean, I'd much rather eat just chocolate buns, to be honest, but if I'm trying to be, you know, somewhat relatively healthy, then they... Raspberry covered in chocolate does the job because they're like that and they're like that and it carries. And it's frozen. Oh, nice. But you basically let them set for... It's not like the way you let them set. You let them kind of come to room temperature about 20 minutes. A bit like the little moons. Exactly, yeah.

34:54Yeah, basically, yeah, kind of not so dissimilar. So, yeah, I think raspberries and white chocolate is just... Yeah, that is a good combination. Otherworldly, yeah, otherworldly. So then you've got Nina's cakes and ice cream. Yeah. That's what it's called, right? Yeah, ice cream and cake. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where were you sort of selling that? So I was doing like festivals and I would do events so people would hire the van out for like a party or something like that. Or like a dinner. Sometimes I'd do a pop-up and then I'd have that as the dessert. Like I did that a couple of times in Brixton.

35:30Nice. Because they had this amazing space that I could drive the van in. And yeah, it was so great. I mean, I cried when the van left my parents' house because I was, you know, after lockdown or just before lockdown, it hadn't been used in a year. And I always said to myself... Was the van at your parents' house? Everything ends up at my parents' house. Did you have a name for the van? No, I didn't. I mean, it was just the van. But there was a lot of love. Just the van, I love that. All right, see you later, the van. Bon voyage, the van. It only went 30 miles an hour, so I was on the motorway.

36:05and it was right drive because it was obviously French and I would be... Oh, that would confuse the hell out of me. Yeah, it wasn't easy to drive and it had the old everything, you know, gear stick and it was a workout to even drive it and the gears. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it did, it drove. But I know how much graph that stuff is. Yeah, no, it was a lot and I only just sold the ice cream machine which I sold like two weeks ago. it was also very sad oh no oh is this these big pieces of equipment otherwise was it a robo cook no it was like a korema um and it did 30 liters an hour type of thing so it was like a big machine yeah and then what do you do you shut that down because of lockdown yes and the business couldn't get going or what i just i was ended up doing because i you know i was doing a lot of sweet stuff and then I obviously ice cream's quite seasonal and so I'd be catering off season you know in the winter and I just love doing more savoury as well and you know I just always what I love about cooking I'm just always learning new things and different cuisines flavour combinations and I just yeah I kind of didn't it was I didn't want to do it as much anymore yeah and I preferred going to people's houses, cooking dinners, doing pop-ups.

37:28I love that because I think sometimes you've got to know when the right time to quit is. Yeah. Because there's one of those things which is like, there's some advice which is both right and wrong. So like, don't quit, yeah? It's right. It's like, you know, don't quit, keep going. Yeah. It's great advice. But, you know, I'm a half pint, right? If I'm going to try and play fucking basketball, I should probably try and quit or be an Olympian swimmer and suddenly, like, get to react. not saying that your ice cream wasn't good but i think there is an art to knowing when to quit you know what i mean and it looked it served i loved it at that time soft served yeah sorry yeah um it had it had its place and then um so so you yeah you've got this like yeah kind of insatiable curiosity towards food and cooking go into like the getting the instagram going and off the ground because like yeah that's no easy feat um and just talk yeah talk me through your first kind of six months of that what did that look like i'm just going to check the cameras yeah um i well i went actually at first so i did a little bit of instagram but not really that much and then i went to um i wanted to uh i wanted wme agency to represent me and they one of the agents just said oh well they just what's wm william morris agency so they're like a talent agency right and so you he knew from the job that you wanted these guys yeah i i just you know my friend's brother was working there and they were just saying this is the place to work and or you know to be represented and who else do they look after they do a lot of just asking for a mate they do because they do a lot of commercial stuff they might be a good one for you to to ask or you know talk to but it was you know so I get to have a ride for each podcast yeah yeah totally yeah why not no don't make me a coffee yeah yeah and the agent there told me oh well she didn't care where I'd worked she didn't care I had a I think I had my deaf maybe my second book I had so I took it to the meeting and she didn't care about any of that she just said oh how many followers do you have on Instagram and I was like what do you mean like only 800 uh and i was so embarrassed and she's just like well you know not interested really you need to sort that out what year was this this was like so when would it have been because i'd had it probably would have been could have been 2016 maybe um and i remember thinking but you know that's just a pretty picture like how does anyone know i can cook from that picture like that was sort of my idea on instagram i thought how isn't it more important that you know the books or where i've worked from my cv i thought that was more important than pretty pictures um and but i listened to her and i thought okay well she seems to think it's important i guess i should pay attention to that and learn how to because at that point it was mainly photos so you know putting myself out there more and and and so it was sort of steady building gradual building it how did you get what's that now 160 000 something like that not quite 100 uh 155 um round up yeah yeah yeah um and yeah i i sort of i say it was in the last four years that it took off more yeah um just understanding oh i guess doing a lot of video and learning how to do video well and i don't know people just learning what makes the algorithm work for me it's clearly cheese so a lot of cheese yeah my family always like oh god more cheese yeah that's why there's a lasagna down the wheel basically yeah the parmesan wheel yeah 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.

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42:08They 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 northstar i'm not like another data company that force feeds you data like foie guac 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 northstar 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 you know it's tricky because it's um there's i think there's a fine art between creating the food or content that you want to put out plus what's going to slap the algorithm to infinity and beyond yeah that's how you grow really yeah just following the algorithm like what works well and as somebody who likes to create you know recipes it is frustrating sometimes because I think oh this would be great or I want to do a healthier dinner for example but instead I'm you know I'll either put that through maybe a newsletter or I mean actually with the saucy account I've been able to do more healthy stuff which has been great so I've actually enjoyed that outlet because the algorithm was a little bit different on that maybe but you know and it's only like beginning so I'm asking this selfishly like so we've got videos like if I do a hospitality person on the podcast we're at like 17 000 followers now yeah obviously no idea really how to grow it like i've just sort of been throwing spaghetti at the wall and just i can have a look in yeah i know yeah yeah but you've got way more of an idea than me yeah but so the hospitality episodes are always going to do well yeah because it's like i think hospitality is a way bigger net than say so so for someone like someone like giles brooke who divides cocoa that was in the challenger brand little sphere is he's a huge guest but like the north star guys were like there's only 8 000 i think there's about 9 000 active challenger brands in the uk really which is fuck all in the grand scheme of things obviously you've got teams but the total addressable market is much smaller um so i don't want i'm never going to stop doing that content because i love love it but then my ego wants wants wants 200 000 gazillion views yeah it's a but it's not a lie it's a huge buzz it's an addiction oh it's an addiction i'm sat at the pub like not even listening to my mate i'm like yeah but i've like this is booting off and like you just get kind of addicted to it but it's like i don't know i don't know i don't know whether whether to do more of those hospitality episodes so those are the ones that do well for you those the ones that just boot off on the algo but then there's the ones that like but then I and that's just purely like ego metrics but then there's the ones that as um hey um that are that that kind of are the main crux of the podcast yeah I suppose I suppose I've got my cheese on the left and my my healthy dinners on the right do you know what I mean yeah and so did you how did you manage that tension or were you just wheeling out the cheese wheeling out the cheese yeah and actually that built it and what series is do really well and um but so what sort of series would you do um cheese so cheese well lasagna what i like to put in my lasagna so i've done a load of different lasagna what's some of the bookiest lasagnas you've made uh what is the crazy i mean my style of cooking I always want it to feel not weird because I just genuinely like non-weird stuff myself but I what's the craziest I mean I've done a rocket one rocket pasta it's not that crazy um I love using as many different vegetables as possible and like encouraging people to just yeah I more like veg sort of centered dishes.

46:23So I'll do a lot of different combinations and maybe some cheese. Yeah. Burrata features a lot. Burrata, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Burrata's like, it's kind of weird when that became big. It was probably about 2016, wasn't it? Yeah. Well, maybe from off my little brain. It's probably been going for quite a while, Burrata. Yeah, yeah. I've done quite a few with scumosa. But it's the most, Burrata's the most Instagrammable cheese in the world. It's just beautiful. Because it's like you slice it open. It's like a little creamy volcano. You know, it's... I know, who's not going to love watching that?

46:58Exactly. Yeah, no, it is. It's also, it's interesting how many foods have got big purely out of Instagram. Yeah. So like, I mean, avocado. Yeah. I don't know what everyone was eating, but I generally think avocado works because it's green. Yeah. It's kind of true. And little things that are visually beautiful. Yeah, like matcha. Imagine if matcha wasn't green. It's basically swamp water. yeah but i think there's actually something there's something in that there's like a whole psychological um thing whatever your eyes are drawn to the expand you eat with your eyes first yeah apparently that's actually because there's um again what rory's told me guys get on who basically will make who's played with all the psychology psychology of how we eat and he was basically saying that um you he'll get um strawberry actually this is kind of like strawberry flavored um strawberry sorbet yeah but he'll make it yellow and put it in a lemon oh really so then it's something there's a whole psychological trick and like the color of food is fascinating i think again there's a whole it's the instagrammification of food and what we eat this guy is endlessly um endlessly fascinating so then so then you grow you grow the um the following and so it sort of has this sort of kind of um this compounding effect where you hit x at some point what was some of the brand partnership deals you were doing or like how did you monetize that before we got on to sources um so i work shocker a lot of cheese brands so my granola do you know i used to deliver cheese for a living oh really yeah yeah do you know how we brought no oh yeah i mean you can tee you up with them yeah yeah i used to deliver i don't actually like cheese it's kind of a bit oh i do i like i like i know it's very yeah i know it's uh i like parmesan and i like burrata burrata and but any of the sort of stinky blue shit no thanks okay fair enough but yeah i used to live with cheese yeah so sorry yeah um so yeah like grana padano and then i worked with quite a lot of drink brands like um a lot of italian ones actually so quite a lot of italian brands will come to me because i guess i'm doing a real mixture of kind of mediterranean food or like rose brands um delesford um uh menabrea beer and and you were doing all the commercial doors yourself yeah yeah yeah and how did you find that because i'm again that's something i'm going through now which is uh yes it's a whole thing it's a for sure yeah yeah not lava but it's like it's not it's not as you've got to read your contract yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly um it's you know what it's just getting used to it really and it's it's fine I think that what I always think with advertising is you know just make it feel as natural as possible and as as in keeping with what you usually do and it just shouldn't feel like too much of a cell and it just should organically flow like cheese for example it's such an easy one for me to work with because I'm using it all the time um but yeah I think I it's it's actually great you know constantly thinking of like new ways to promote a beer and but it's all these are all products that I genuinely do love yeah and um yeah i think it just as long as it all is in keeping sometimes there'll be a random thing like i did an electric car once uh which was father's electric ice cream van yeah to replace that would have been good yeah that would have been bang on brand i was always like power steering and a sound system yeah yeah i know that's it's um it it's it's just yeah it's so like good for me to understand how it all worked the um so then you build the following and you realize that cheese is cheese is life cheese is life cheese is the you know the way yeah yeah and i'd love to understand how like i don't think people are quite understand the creative process and how much fucking work goes in to each lasagna and fill in the blank of other dishes yeah all the so it's like when i came so like when when we went to the shoot at amelia's or amelia's about a place to battersea yeah i walked in it was like a war zone and it's like you see those reels on bowl bean or your your channel and you just think oh this guy's your girls just dropped up cutting up some treats so some burrata bish bash bosh you know it's a fucking obscene amount of work talk me through the sort of the creative process of how you're thinking of a dish and then all the work that goes into that one 60 second reel so don't think people myself included understand that it does i mean i think with something like instagram instagram's changed so much um in terms of obviously taking the still image to now everything being video and having to learn what works with video like I had to learn all of that and learn you know what makes a great video you know what makes people want to stay engaged and watch it and so that's and it's like a constant learning all of that but so I'll either be inspired by a recipe or something I've eaten or an ingredient I mean, it can be anything.

52:48And then I will, I mean, I'm not organised enough at this part of my work. I quite often am doing the recipe on the day. Like I did the lasagna today, today, which is going to go out today at six, I hope. So you've already edited that as well? No, I haven't edited it. I can edit it. I will edit it very fast. Is that all on iPhone? Yeah. yeah and i'll just do it i actually do it all in the instagram app um and yeah it's it is sometimes just you know i've got like i'll be cooking and then i'll think fuck i haven't got a um you know a reel or something ready because i do three a week and like me with sd cards yeah exactly and you know it is just this constant thing monster you're having to feed yeah um and And yeah, sometimes I'm caught short or I'm having to make something and I'll just quickly go to a supermarket, grab a couple bits and something will be cooking or I'll be on a job and I'll be thinking, oh, where is the light?

53:55And, you know, quickly film something. I mean if you could see some of the weird I shot something in my car a few weeks ago because I was driving down like to Shropshire and I put a white tablecloth on my passenger seat and this whole school of kids just walked past me So what did you put on the passenger seat? I put a cake there so I was shooting the cake so I made it and then it needed to cool before I could slice into it What cake was it? It was a, I think it was a caramelised pear olive oil cake. And I had some yoghurt in the car and then I got yoghurt all over the gear stick because I dropped it.

54:37And then this whole class of kids go past saying, Miss, she's got a knife in that car. And they were just thinking, who the hell is this weird person? And yeah, and I'm shooting. It looks like it's on a white table somewhere when really it's in my car. and yeah if you could see if you'd zoomed out you would have thought this is i love how i think there's a i just love the scrappiness of content yeah i think and making it look a certain way well yeah but also everything you're seeing is it's just most of it's super um like it's mad how scrappy you can get and still make it work that you know the eating with todd guy i've told you about him but he does it all on his iphone yeah so it's like people he rocks up to these shoots and people are like mate like where's the where's the crew that's just on this mate yeah and I think um yeah it's reassuring because this is getting this out every week it's like getting one of these out every week it's just scrap central you know it's just like you can just you can make it work you can make it work you can definitely make it work it looks great you can make it work and it helps having lovely you know places like this um let's go on to saucy um so you've built the following you've done the ice cream van that hasn't worked or like you parted ways with it then what's talk me through the the the vision the thought process to create saucy because i still i still think it's one of the best brand names have you got that trademarked this is a great question yeah it's on my list it's on my list i don't have a trademark yeah i've actually got a guy because i basically i hadn't i hadn't trademarked hungry and i was gonna ask you about if you'd had a trademark yeah yeah yeah because i was basically like um i should probably get that trademarked So I basically, I've basically, um, no one on, uh, any sort of media can use Hungary.

56:44That's what I've basically, I'm like, mate, I said to the geezer, I was like, cover me on fucking everything, mate. Courses, the full shebang. I can, he's based up in Norfolk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. It's about 700 quid and he'll do it all for you. You should do that because I think it's. I'm worried that there's going to be like a porn site somewhere that I'm going to have to negotiate. Because there was for Nino.com. That could be an interesting sponsorship deal. chili sambal and porno yeah i know i'm but actually it is free i have checked i've got that far oh yeah if it's jared and also sauce e because there's no is that you've taken out the e right it's just yeah it's just y is that how it's yeah yeah okay maybe i'm this is my dyslexic kind of kicking in um yeah so talk about how you came up with the name the vision for it sure um i well i first started making a chili oil um when i was on my capri uh book shoot in italy um and i was there was this amazing lady shranken lady or we had this house an airbnb but it was so much more beautiful than an airbnb it was just blue and white tiles everywhere in the kitchen head to toe and a beautiful garden what's the garden like it was so overlooked a cliff and And it...

58:01You had the sea behind the gif. You had the sea, just, yeah. Wow. Beautiful sea view. It was in Anacapri, which is the sort of bigger side of Capri. Did it have like, was it like a big patio and a barbecue? It was just everything. It used to be used for parties in the, I think it was the 60s. And it was owned by this very eccentric doctor, Italian doctor on the island. Wow. It's Capri an island? Yeah. It's an island just opposite Naples. Naples isn't an island, is it? No. No. Naples is in... it's a lot going on at the end of that boot isn't it and yeah it's in campagna um that the sort of um district or um yeah area and um i yeah met this lady and she was very kindly making us food in the evening after the the cookbook shoot um And she made this chili oil, which was so simple.

58:57And because of her roots being Sri Lankan, she used sunflower oil, not olive oil. So it was a bit more unusual there. What's the difference? How does that do differently? It's just more of a neutral oil. And you can just flavor it much easier. Whereas olive oil, it's just quite specific. It's got quite a strong taste to it. And I think if you're trying to do something, I think fine with garlic. and chili but this had a slight um well firstly also fries much better so you can get crispiness on the ingredients and um because it was fried but fresh ingredients fried uh in the oil and if you did it with olive oil it's a much heavier oil fattier um even though it's better for you it's not great to fry like deep fry and we just used she served it with tomato rigatoni and we just had it on the side and it was obviously in Italy doing so how come this Sri Lanka lady was there she just was sort of the housekeeper slash chef and she you know that we I think they offered it to us they said oh you know because they're about my whole family came for the shoot obviously because they were like free holiday yeah yeah yeah and was this a self-published book or no no this wasn't so this that that deal had been done with the book publishers with the publisher yeah so they basically got you this banging gaff yeah and we could shoot because we need to do all the life lifestyle shots oh yeah that one yeah need to go somewhere good for lifestyle shots darling exactly no no i'll do i'm absolutely milking as well this is the nice i'd do exactly the same thing and yeah and then she was just incredible um i mean a great cook anyway and I just love this concept of something very simple um but textured um making something I mean to be honest it was already delicious this pasta because you can imagine the Italian tomatoes at their best or September and delicious um but she would and just having that extra sort of vehicle of flavor and so I kind of had that in my mind and I started making my own version of it and you know when I do dinner parties for clients or friends I'd always have a pot of chili oil like a similar version and because it was so simple the whole thing and but yet very effective and then I made this then lockdown happened and I had this um did I have yeah I thought oh this is a good opportunity to maybe do another book so this would have been my third book which was all centered around sauces being what makes food delicious and being you know whether it's a marinade or some kind of pasta sauce or dressing that makes simple healthy food delicious and so that's where the idea of saucy and that was called saucy and I just liked how it was a funny name really and cheeky and not serious at all um and but also you know kind of described it very well and i actually put the chili one chili or maybe two i think i put two chili oil recipes in there and in lockdown i did a video with the chili oil a bit bit like the chili sambal actually because i created so what's the difference between sambal and the oil so the oil it's not actually it can't be sold it's not being sold at the moment that's the one i've taken off the list Yeah, no, I'm just saying, what is the difference between oil and a sambal in general?

1:02:35Oh, so lots of different types of sambals, but this one is... So what does sambal actually mean? It's like another type of sauce, basically, or paste. I mean, quite often it's sort of like a very kind of intense paste that you can get. Like in Bali, they have sambals quite often, but also in African cooking, you can have a sambal. Okay, we do, yeah, yeah. But mine is more kind of Asian. I wouldn't say it's... Yeah, they're very kind of Asian influenced, we'll be saying. But they're not from any specific ones. That's why I rate them. I mean, that's why when I first tried them with Amelia, it's uncategorizable, if that's a word.

1:03:19It's a great word. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uncategorizable. Say that in a Tesco's meeting to the category director. Oh, fuck me, where do I start with that? but I do think um as I've said like my friends I did a bit of work with the white mouse here I don't think that that's they're kind of from the same tree of of of product but totally different and like the flavors in that is completely different theirs and I think there is almost this sort of magic in adding your own fresh ingredients and and as you say sort of a hodgepodge melting pot of different ingredients that goes into the saucy is what makes it so unique well that thanks well it's it's been such a just going to check these again by the way yeah go yeah you keep i'm listening yeah i um anyway so i put one recipe the sambal on my um website during lockdown and it was i think after a few months it was the most made recipe on the site and And I thought, well, that's a bit weird.

1:04:21Like, it's not the easiest recipes to make. And, you know, there's a lot of chopping involved. You know, everyone wants very easy, simple food. And judging by Instagram, and actually this was a bit more technical. Well, you know, you had to focus on it and stuff. And I thought, well, maybe I should just bottle it and take it off the website. So I did. And I thought, I've been doing catering for ages. and you know this was a way of reaching more people with my cooking and yeah really and it and cheaper as well you're not having to have me my tummy is rubbing talking about it and um yeah I thought well this is like a way of just reaching more people and more affordable you get a jar you can have however many meals and I am still making it so it's still technically well fully my cooking let's talk about that yeah we were talking before we hit record uh about there's a sort of and it's kind of it's there's a sort of um a pain yeah yeah no no worries yeah go for it there's almost a pain and a labor of love that goes into doing things the right way yeah ain't that the truth yeah yeah yeah yeah preach it sister but the the the let's talk about that pain because i know you've been trying and i think it must have been about two years ago i think when we did the shoot with immediately i think you just started it and you've gone through three manufacturers and i don't think people talk about it enough about the pain of of manufacturing and just because it's like it's it's the tension between like scale and escape velocity versus putting the product on the shelf because for example you could outsource it and you could get it into the M &S down the road there.

1:06:27Right. But you know that the product on that shelf is not as good as it can be. Yeah. And that is a tension, like, to play with. Like, talk me through your first manufacturer. How did that go? So, I mean, I think, like, did I have panic attacks with him? Probably. I felt like I needed therapy after him, but I never got it. Because... We got it now. We were on the sofa. Yeah, you were on the sofa. i feel um i was just starting out and i actually firstly outsourced the whole thing uh so i created it and he said oh you've got to do uh four products minimum so that's why i created four sorry actually can i just just for for listeners sake can we go back a step just to understand the complexities of how that's made yeah because it is fresh ingredients yeah yeah just just quickly for like a couple seconds just detail that and then we'll get into roughly the process yeah just because why it's why why you can't just flog that to a yes a manufacturer so that I mean I've simplified the recipe now um but a lot of stages of frying and because of all the different ingredients require so that all a good proportion of it is using fresh ingredients and they're fried and they all have different cooking temperatures uh and you know to where you're not burning something you've got to focus on it um and i mean i've simplified it now so that you can pretty much do it all in one go like chuck it all in with very strict uh timer but it's not that easy for i think if you do it in a bigger batch like a massive batch for a manufacturer they just want something it's that's too much for them and they want it's too artisan and I think I was sort of saying to you earlier that the ideal is if I had something that was a hot chili sauce for example or a fermented one maybe fermented is too complicated but if it was just blend it done bottle uh whereas with mine there is there's whole creating it and you know the chilies the the long red chillies that I use, which are fresh, some of them are hot and some of them aren't in batches.

1:08:46So I've got to regulate the heat with dry chillies. And each batch I try, cause obviously I'm, you know, consistency is so important. But so there's the whole making of it. Plus, because it's an, because there are bits in it versus oil, I'm having to, for consistency, when you fill the jars this is maybe this is boring but when you fill the jar you've got to separate the bits to the oil and a manufacturer just usually has said oh but that's that's too time consuming or with the first guy that was doing it you know he'd fill it so unequally or oil would be seeping out of the jars and the lids weren't fastened properly um because with oil oil gets out of everything so just lots of things like that really and then breakages yeah yeah yes i think it's really fun it's just a whole uh yeah panoply of different problems coming your way with that and so then you how did you first find these manufacturers um what was your just you know talking to different people like the first one i found was making it from the get-go and i just always thought oh great i've made it i've handed it over what do you mean as an as in he was just doing it so i sent him the recipes and he was already making oil or something yes he actually specializes in chili oil yeah chili oil so you must so you must know i'd struck gold i thought it was great yeah you know this is part of the plan yeah you know i'm not gonna have a vat of oil overfilling in my kitchen spilling deliveries people you know asking for jars at my my front door no it's done it's off and then just so what how did it go so wrong he was these this basically is his speciality it's not it's not you're going to make some bloke who does hobnobs do you know what i mean it was like i thought i'd got you know and also nuts are a real problem in this country and he did he dealt with nuts so i thought it was great you know it's one of the few in this country that do where do i sign yeah yeah yeah but he expanded his company very quickly I think when I joined and it was just impossible to get him on the phone and I would be and I just yeah I'd never done this before having to call someone 10 times like I felt so needy and um but you know I had people asking like where their order was and so I needed to speak to him and it was just everything you could imagine went wrong and then I I think he dealt with it for about six months and um yeah um yeah okay good is that the cat or it might be it might be it's rustling yeah yeah yeah um yeah and then i just thought actually i'm going to take over a production in one of my so my sister works in property and so i started making it in one of her a house that she hadn't started development on so i was making it there for six months with always the intention to find someone else to make it and I still found so talk me through like the production days of making itself like what would a typical day look like um and maybe listen to the hungry podcast um but the the how would you keep yourself like what's the vision at the point because I think there's a lot of people listening to this right now I mean I was terrified to start doing it myself I just had images as I said of this is not what I pictured when I started it and I always thought oh I'll just keep it'll be sort of you know my passive income coming in and it's all good I've done it created and then suddenly I thought oh god I'm gonna have to take over production and can I how hard is it gonna be what kept you digging out that like what's the spark in your soul like what's the people were buying it kept me going really Every time I'd get a sale, I'd, you know, think, oh, well, someone's liking this and it must be good.

1:12:55And, you know, when people would write to me and I'd have repeat customers, that is what spurred me on. I kept on thinking, well, there's something here and I've got to keep going. I didn't always think that. I definitely had moments where I almost quit properly in 2023 in the summer. I just thought, I went on holiday, I thought I can't do this anymore, it's too stressful doing the production, and I had a chef helping me, but you know, all the jarring, because the orders were getting, you know, I'd be doing a few hundred at a time, and that was a lot for me, just me to be doing, plus running, doing the Instagram, trying to...

1:13:38You were one woman band, quite easily. So, you're on, whereabouts were you on holiday? I was, again in France. okay if you're in france you've got a nice property i don't know negroni or a daiquiri i don't know what the tipple is but it's sat in the groney they are amazing i know they're kind of in vogue or they're swooning into vogue but like they are good um you're having that the sun setting you know probably some olives or something on the on the table some crisps some crisps yeah crisps abroad why are crystal boards so good i you know i actually thought we're doing a business which was absolutely awfully bad.

1:14:16But basically, it would be a subscription service where you get different crisps through the post from foreign countries with a selection of homemade sauces. Oh, my God. What's the dipping? Yeah, so, like, saucy would be one, and then you'd get some, I don't know, like, you know, jambon leis are so good abroad. Yeah. And, you know, any, like, oh, actually, the barbecue leis with the black packet is fucking banging as well. Oh, yeah, yeah. So that was my idea. but anyway it sort of never happened they're so good abroad yeah crystal abroad minor jamon jamon ruffles yeah ruffles they've got the crystal abroad are so good they're so good in Costa Rica though they did something fucking peculiar where they did so imagine like getting they did like a collaboration in a bag so you'd get like Doritos imagine getting Doritos skips and knickknacks all in one bag I was like it was a bit too it was too much of a trick do you mean um but yeah sorry sadly you didn't do that yeah you could still yeah no yeah i mean you know yeah hungry for crisps that could be interesting but yeah so you're sat on the veranda or whatever and you're almost about to quit what what you you can go right to quit you can go left to stay to go back to the product producing it yourself in a dilapidated flat like why do you pick the option like what's going through you i i mean the customers really helped so much so every it's so bizarre like every time i'd hit a low thinking i can't do this anymore what am i doing like i'm slogging my guts out for this i this specific time i had a um mahalo um the distributor um approached me and sent me this email saying that they love the product and would I be up for you know they wanted wanted to take me on and so I thought oh well she's got an interest and really like clearly sees there's something in it if she's so you know very much you know people love Mahalo and so many great products that Tara yeah she's amazing yeah yeah she does bread and jam as well yes yes I've got so much time for her Yeah, she's great.

1:16:34And so I just thought, maybe a bit of time away. So I had this holiday and started drumming up kind of... She actually wanted me to change quite a lot about the product if I were to sign with them, which was all such great advice. Such as? You change the size of the jar. What was the size of the jar? It was a bit bigger than that. So it was a 300 mil. And what was the RRP at 300 mil? It was the same. What was the first time I was asking the questions? things no no it was the same as seven no it was actually it was 8.95 yeah and then now it's gone down to 7.95 yeah when it got smaller um and yeah and and also the branding I've made a bit slicker um took a lot of time doing that put a sticker you know little little things but make the whole thing look more like a brand um and so yeah but I didn't end up signing with signing with uh Mahalo in the end because I think she wanted me to change it even more and I just I think she wanted me to fit into a slightly different category and I just knew that it was selling so I didn't want to like change it that much so I sort of said see you later at some point yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and so and so the customers were you you're at this at this sort of left or right fork in the road so you decided to go back to the as I said this was the dilapidated kitchen yeah um it's just the juggling it really the production versus juggling uh you know if I did a catering job or an Instagram and keeping the Instagram going as we said it takes a lot of work um so it was just how do I those were always the moments when I think can I keep on doing this it's a lot and you get and you decided to because the customers are there yeah so every time a little you know i'd get a little pound or cha-ching on my squarespace when i had doubts and that always helped yeah yeah yeah money talks oh bloody hell i've got to keep going doing this someone would send me a really nice review and about like oh yeah i put it on everything and just if let me You know, if you stop, I'll stock up.