The Brand Strategy Experts: Why Marketing Is Broken & What Actually Works in 2026 - DASH Water, BOTIVO, All Things Butter, The Pickle House Founders

0:00Everyone wants a bit of cottage cheese which is very strange to say. To get listings initially was quite easy. I think in order to charge a more premium price point it's all just about trying to... From Trip when they were doing the can they were so fixated on the feeling of the can. We must have had in the office 60, 70 iterations of printed cans. We're not in everywhere but we're in the places that matter. They're seeing that yellow wax top everywhere, they're thinking that you're much bigger than you are and then you start to open up conversations with buyers and that opens up doors to retail.

0:30What's the downside of that? I was suddenly walking around the factory one day and I spotted some cans over in the corner. They'd just copied exactly Dash. But luckily it didn't do very well because it's all about the brand. You kind of want it to be someone someone's happy to take it around to their friends as like a gift. You know, go to a barbecue with it. You're not going to go around with a, you know, I don't want to name any brands, but like... Give her a glass of wine.

0:57okay sick good to rock and roll yeah i think what i would love to start with is um we'll start with you mate toby when well we launched what all things butter or now all things all things um what three years ago everything what was the last thing you've radically changed your mind on since that launch since we did our podcast pre-launch are we starting now yeah we're rolling. Oh, we're rolling. You've told that up as well. Yes. What has it radically changed? I mean, going into cottage cheese has obviously been a fundamental change of the business. I think for us, we launched initially as All Things Butter, but trademarked All Things with the idea that we were going to go into cross-category.

1:39But I think that for us, we thought that cross-category would probably be mid to end of this year. But there's so many kind of macro factors within dairy that we were completely naive to at the start of launching the business that we didn't realise we're going to kind of have an impact on growth. So things like shortage of cream and particularly organic cream which has been a complete nightmare in the UK that has kind of forced our hand a little bit to look at different categories and to make cottage cheese you have to use milk, not cream and it's a lot easier to get milk than uh than cream so now three months into launching cottage cheese it's like 70 of the business so it's feeling like an insane change um in the last well we spoke one of it two and a half years ago yeah yeah yeah um so yeah pretty radical so because that's still in dairy yeah still in dairy because that's the interesting thing is because i know you mate you went into what was it those big because there's i always feel like there's paradox some people on the podcast say focus on one thing do one thing well like david milner says other people um like douglas from um tony chocoloney is like spread your bets try lots of things because you don't know you might have that you might have your cottage cheese moment where it's like you thought i remember you saying to me before you thought it was a shit idea yeah so you tried it it's absolutely fucking flying i thought i know you jack you mate you went into the bigger bottles like and your whole thing's focused like discuss i just think it's interesting conversation to have focus versus trying lots of placing your bets on small things yeah no well i think the sort of the size of the business is obviously really important so if you think that you've got like a product that can take you to a certain level of growth or revenue then i think you should really focus on that but if you don't think that you can sort of grow beyond where you need to go that's where potentially you need to look elsewhere so your tony's uh Chocolonies going from like 200 million to 600 million.

3:41And that's probably where they need to diversify their range. But I bet from zero to 50, they were very focused on their one thing. Yeah. And what was the product that you launched that kind of... Yeah. Yeah, well, we launched a mixer like four years ago. I don't know if you remember it, but we thought it would be quite simple. It was just in a smaller can. And then we made some really interesting different mixer flavors. But what we quickly found out is coming sort of 15th in the mixer category, even though it was sort of selling relatively well, was taking away the focus from the whole team.

4:22So from an ops, sales, brand marketing perspective. So lose focus from the main thing and sort of muddied the water, so to speak. So that was a big learning for us. And luckily we cut that pretty quickly, despite it doing okay. in the market interesting we've seen cannibalization from existing the buyers who just wanted who were who were originally buying it as a mix yeah anyway just within the space yeah exactly you're bang on there it was people were drinking as a standalone drink which was not what it was made for it was made for mixing so that was also difficult to understand and yeah so we had bigger bottles didn't you guys go into what was the crack with that well that was us trying to be really focused on what we currently have, but it put it in a new format and situation.

5:10So we launched a 750ml glass bottle. And the idea... Which is like, that's like... Yeah. And the idea was that we could sort of play in the entree. But what we quickly found out is that if you go into a restaurant like here at Straker's, you're not going to order 750ml of sparkling raspberry water. You're going to just ask for water or sparkling water. So in the soft drinks world, you'd have a single serve soft drink. or have something beautiful like Petivo. But you wouldn't necessarily, oh, let's all have some dash water at the restaurant tonight. So it didn't really work in the entree. Flo, what about you, mate?

5:47What's the last thing you've, well, when did you start Pickle House? When was that? Well, it was quite a while ago. I first started making pickle juice back in 2014, but it was quite sort of on the down low, like literally just making six bottles in my flat. So we've actually gone quite full circle because obviously starting making pickle juice, I think like 10 years ago now, it was so niche. I mean, it's still niche now, but it was like super, super niche. What was the, like, I want to make fucking pickle juice? What was the name? I went to New York, had a pickle back. Yeah. And it was just like...

6:21A pickle back, like a cocktail? No, a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice. Oh, nice. I should have bought some. No, actually, I have your product in my house. Oh, nice. Okay, well, there we go. They used to do this at Black Axe Mangale, didn't they? with the with the i lived in new york for six years and they had like a little um sausage on top yeah yeah okay i have had those they're delicious yeah yeah yeah sorry no that's yeah so you just like have this amazing flavor tried it tried it in new york came back to london started making pickle juice and just selling like i was probably making about six bottles at a time in the my flat and then going around to different bars being like hey guys do you want to buy some pickle juice and then one evening I'd sort of into Hawksmore and Spitalfields and spent a night sort of making cocktails with one of the bartenders there being like okay what else can we put pickle juice in and Bloody Marys were like amazing with pickle juice in so that's when we went to launch our spiced tomato mix and our real focus became the spiced tomato mix for Bloody Marys just because it felt a little bit less niche than pickle juice and more people knew what a Bloody Mary was and it just made sense.

7:27But now pickles are trending. Everyone's talking about pickles. Everyone's doing pickle juice stuff. Like we're doing pickle spritzers and cocktail bars. But then there's also this whole health and wellness trend about pickle juice. So although I started making it for cocktails and picklebacks, we've now just launched a pickle juice shot for health and wellness. We've just launched them into third space gyms because they help stop muscle cramps. So we've done this like weird full circle thing but also gone into a totally different category that i have no idea what we're doing but we're gonna figure it out

8:07yeah so it really is europe like yeah that's a big thing is that yeah well in eastern europe they love having like pickles and then they'll just um drink it with like a side of vodka or something and then just drink the juice afterwards anytime

8:25oh my gosh wait we need to like hang out and eat i can let's do an office swap it's fine um no that's sick and then what's the thing what's the thing you've changed your mind on since making pickle juice in your flat um oh well i think it is that sort of focus thing well I've always wanted to make I have a list of all the new products I want to launch and I think it was sort of like oh no we have to be focused like the amount of investors that are just like you've got to stay focused you've just got to do tomato juice you've just got to do this but the pickle juice shot kind of happened by accident because we had all these people drinking it for muscle cramps like we have a quite a big customer base who buy it on our website of older customers who drink a shot before bed because it stops them getting night cramps but then we've also got athletes drinking it because it stops them getting cramps when they're on the pitch sort of playing football or playing tennis um so it kind of felt like we have to do it because we've got the products we just need to change the format for it from a marketing perspective have you gone into sort of like more the boozy side with the the bloody mary and then now it's this health thing but how are you not getting pulled between pillar and post yeah we're We're kind of just testing it out a little bit and seeing how it works.

9:45I think Elizabeth and Harriet have been at Third Space all week doing samplings just to see what's happening. And so we're sort of just doing it slowly. That's an amazing first listing for the shots, isn't it? Yeah, they're great. They're a great company to work with. Probably the same consumer, perhaps, who are going to Third Space and then go and have a beautiful Bloody Mary and strike it. Yeah. Yeah. Sick. Emma, I wanted to go to you, mate, about, I think you guys, I love watching from a distance, the geniuses at brand collaborations. Yeah. You did Ottolenghi. Was it Café Francois? Yeah, Maison Francois.

10:25Maison Francois. That was our first, yeah. That was your first. That was a pastisi French wine. And now you've gone... It was delicious. And my mum's still got the Ottolenghi one in her fridge. She's like, she canes it when she's not caning wine. um and so the new one you've got is coco de mer which is just detail that uh because that's actually because i think all you guys have done sick collaborations i mean maybe this is a path we can you know swim down um what is coco de mer for people listening and then what's the why why there you know you could pick anything yeah i mean collaborations are well i think there's lots of really great things about collaborations for us because we make the liquid ourselves which is so unique and sam my co-founder is just this like willy wonker liquid kind of character who just kind of makes delicious things so it's such an obvious opportunity for us to like demonstrate the craft the product but also to like really do storytelling in a really interesting way through the liquid as well as brands and to kind of bolster like different i guess core values within our brand so from the beginning all the collaborations have you know been about the craft also about bolstering something and you know our first one was actually well second one was actually with Berry Brothers so that was like a three year aged version that was aged in like Berry Brothers that's so cool yeah it was really cool so we basically aged like British Apple Cider Vinegar oh what is Berry Brothers?

11:44it's the oldest what is it? the oldest wine it's the oldest wine merchant in London and they've got their own like wine as well yeah but if you go under so they're on they're just off the off Pall Mall yeah oh my god have you done the tour? yeah I did the tour and you go oh my gosh it's insane It's a beautiful old shop, but if you go under, it's like, it's a maze of, like... You feel like you're in, like, Dickensian London. But it's, like, incredible. Like, they basically own, like, half of St. James. There's, like, a maze underneath it. But there's one bit, which you probably saw as well, which was, is it Queen Victoria or Queen...

12:17I mean, one of the queens, Berry Brothers, like, basically created, like, you know, whatever, how many years ago? I don't know how many years ago. A couple hundred years ago. An exact, like, doll's house reenactment of their, of the Queen's cellar or something. and they had all these tiny bottles that are doll size they all have the exact liquid that was in like the bottles in real life in them and they have this in this like glass case underneath it and anyway it's just so much history in it and it's like you know it's just a very old school like but it's like the ultimate kind of drinks um sort of heritage brand i guess anyway so that was our first one the whole point of that was like really celebrating an aged version that didn't exist yet so it was like really pioneering and otolenghi was about um pleasure and feasting and really leaning into that foodie side of the brand because, you know, like our brand is really different in that we're not a moderation brand, we're a pleasure brand.

13:04So we're always trying to like bring that part of the brand to life through different ways. And that one was about the kind of foodie pleasure and feasting and having a merry old time around a table, which is what Ottolenghi does so well. But from there, I was like, where the hell do you go after Ottolenghi? He's like the best, most famous, arguably chef in the world, you know. But I was like, you know, pleasure and our brand's about this intersection of craft and pleasure and i really wanted to do something a little bit disruptive and i think there's something super interesting happening in the mashing together of fashion and food and drink you know everyone here has probably done something in that space and i think um you know ben and jerry said the nike trainers um and your high mash done like ice cream there's so much stuff going on uh and i just think it's a really cool space so it's a sort of luxury pleasure brand which is also sort of you know very high-end like lingerie and sort of saucy toys anyway and so it was just a real opportunity to do something a bit unexpected and and lean into that pleasure side of the brand and you know we actually even though it feels unexpected have a lot in common it's british it's artisanal it's pleasure rooted so actually even though it seems unexpected they kind of really make sense together um and it was just um a bit fun to be honest like it's good to go and literally go about getting one of these is it a message on yeah no i how do you get that done yeah i mean to be honest it was um i just got obsessed with the idea of like doing something with coco de mer because i because i do see so many synergies but in a in a way that no one else has done before so i put together a big pitch for lucy who's the founder messaged her and connect with her on linkedin and then went to meet her and she never actually heard of bativa at the time i'd put together like a very thought through like storytelling deck and i got designed and pictured her and did a tasting and i'd obviously had otolenghi under our belt already which helps open like doors uh and she was just really up for it it turns out it's their 25th year anniversary so she was actually looking for like interesting things to do so it was just a timing thing and then sort of you know coming forward with like everything prepared and like the story and the synergies and i'd put loads of thought into exactly what it would look like and why it was a story piece what was the storytelling angle like what was the story you're telling her well i was well exactly kind of what i was saying i was like there's loads of stuff happening that's really interesting in food and fashion like here are some examples like you know we did otolenghi we want to move into a slightly disruptive space and like do something unexpected you're british you're about craftsmanship you're about pleasure so are we so this feels like a interesting and unexpected like partnership which can like you know just create um some buzz and you know and it's not a money maker this one's actually very much like a sort of brand builder and kind of PR piece.

15:47And actually also probably a stepping stone as well later to do something else, like even beyond the boundaries of what we can do now. Because I think every time we do a collaboration, I want to push the boundary a bit more so you can go more into culture and move more into interesting spaces. Sick. Yeah, because Andrew from Dirty was saying that they think about not how their brand stands out in a supermarket. They're like, how does our brand fit in? like a fashion show or like instead of being the selfridges food hall be in the selfridges you know clothes fashion hall essentially i mean we did that with our cans like like i think when you're designing like bottles v cans for us like my brief for the cans was i want this to be like an art piece i want it to be something like super instagrammable that like people like want to have like on their shelf not hidden away in their fridge and so i think that that is a really big a big part of it is thinking about you know if someone's holding something as a can that's a piece of self-expression right that's not just a product you're consuming you're yes it's like a badge and so that's a very different approach to maybe a bottle behind the bar etc didn't you do the australian fashion shoot show or something what taught me um through that that was what i think we've always tried to sort of find our sort of thing in culture that we could sort of ride with um so we did quite a lot in fashion over the years and so when we launched into australia we did you know sponsored the melbourne fashion show which comes with loads of different things and it's great for content and getting influencers down there bringing buyers so that worked really well there isn't something like that in the uk it's like this beautiful sort of open air ticketed event 40 000 people but it's like really sophisticated um whereas london fashion week is quite exclusive right this has got um sort of open to the public but it's done in a really curated way so it felt like a natural fit um and the big thing for us was getting the buyers down there um on you know on the catwalk and they loved it because that's what i found to be so important for these things is actually capturing the imagination of those key yeah decision makers of who's going to allow you that next stage of growth within like the london one zone so because I feel like I have seen Dash within Victoria Beckham's hands.

18:09Is it more of a gifting play rather than a sponsorship play? Yeah, maybe I'm downplaying what we used to hustle hard. So we would try and get into all the VIP parties and message people on Instagram and just send stock to influencers and parties afterwards. So you were sort of associated with it without having something sort of official. But Victoria Beckham picked up a dash in Whole Foods High Street, Kensington, and her PA... I thought I saw it on the Victoria Beckham... It was on the Beckham programme? Yeah, multiple times. No, sorry. She apparently still drinks, like, six raspberry dashes a day.

18:55She's, like, completely obsessed. When we first found out that she was drinking it, it was because her PA was mates with someone who worked at Dash. And so her PA had told someone at Dash that she's bought it from High Street Kensington. Do you see some of that massive sales upspike off the back of something like that? Well, we've definitely tried to do more with the Beckhams over the years. And we've done sort of bespoke cans for their various parties. We call it Posh Water and all of that sort of great stuff. And we've spoken to their team about doing something more substantial. and maybe in the future whether we can do some sort of collab around the flavor um but she's been great for us but no you don't necessarily see a sort of spike straight away but it's a great thing i think for the brand um that she's been sort of spotted drinking it and it's something that we can talk about in packs with the bars and all that good stuff it's nice that's your pitch deck sorted um how how do you think about um because i know we're talking about like new york opening strakes over there like about i think all you guys have said like infiltrating culture or you know riding with culture shaping culture um like how do you how do you think about that across both the restaurants and and all things yeah i mean just a little bit hold up as well yeah it's a direct the restaurants are really fundamental to the products that we do like everything we do it kind of revolves around food and tom um as in business partner tom and so for instance we won't create a product that we don't use in the restaurants so we have a restaurant on the road called Acre which is a bit more kind of casual and we do breakfast and things like that so we use the cottage cheese up there we use the butter in the restaurant here and we also it's a great tool to have the restaurant that when we're doing product demos or whether we're doing entertaining or anything like that we're bringing whoever it is whether it's an investor whether it's a retailer whoever it is we bring them to the restaurant and they can try the food and sorry they can try the product in kind of full swing in an environment that is very much kind of in the dna of what we're doing genuinely as a as a business and so yeah everything is varying everything's kind of very ingrained together um and we we we genuinely use the restaurant a lot um do you use it's like to jack's point about getting buyers in here yeah yeah get buyers but but part of it is because like whilst obviously it's nice entertaining people in the restaurant but this is like me and Tom have been best friends for 23 years like this is our we have essentially created Tom more than than me um I'm very much more like commercial numbers but I've created environment that is like our personality like this is our kind of music that we love this is the food that we love to eat this is this is your this is not my these these this is very much my business partner i didn't choose any of this but this is like when we think you're debauching like we obviously we are obviously biased because this is uh this is our restaurant but like this is my favorite place to eat this is because it's our kind of food and so when we bring people here this is like we're bringing this a little bit of we're kind of showing them ourselves and then we're showing the products in it so it's um it is very intertwined and it's and it's incredibly fun being able to kind of give people the experience of doing it like i remember when we first met yeah because we have a mutual investor and it was great to be able to whenever we meet people people for the first time i love to bring them in because it kind of it does give we give a little bit of ourselves when you see this is kind of what we're about as people and and we love to entertain and um yeah it's an amazing asset for us so with new yorks we go we get we launch and we launched the dairy business in America in September and Touchwood in September but we have a listing which are hoping that we're going to launch in September and we launched the New York Strakers in July and so again for us it's like the perfect opportunity for us to entertain buyers out there to show people what we're about as people etc and so obviously US is very different because of how many states there are how big it is etc like New York is very very small compared to the entirety of the country.

23:13But it's a great opportunity for us to be able to kind of showcase the products, which we wouldn't necessarily be able to do unless we had the restaurant structure around us. How do you kind of not going back to the focus, but managing lots of projects? Because you've got the form cookware, the restaurants. Very badly. Yeah, but how does it? Because I'm like, part of me is like, I should focus. and the other part of me is like just try loads of different shit and see what happens yeah i mean yeah one of the things yeah because what yes what's on your plate i think i i think having like i know this is like the cliche thing like having incredibly strong team around you in each different part so the restaurants essentially run themselves because we've got a really strong management structure and um each restaurant will have like a general manager who's essentially running to the p and l of the restaurant and so you're only really involved when it comes to a high level uh like from a hr perspective or whether it's like a big decision that we have to make on um i don't know whether expansion or whether it's we need to close for a period of time or whatever it is like that is really the decision i have like one meeting a week and that's pretty much it right with the other projects they are they we currently so so we have this we have an olive oil uh business that we recently launched but we use so much olive oil in the restaurants and so we're like well we got approached from some amazing italian family who have an incredible um uh olive oil grove in an olive grove in puglia and they were like we want to launch an olive oil and we were like well we go through x amount of liters anyway and so we can essentially take half the batch just from the restaurants but let's just sell some d2c because we've got the infrastructure already set up for d2c because we sell merch and things like that and then let's just see how it goes and when I essentially have a bit of time to move away from all things um to like work on other projects and that's just like grown nicely and slowly then I can do that the same like the cookware Tom is making videos every week of I don't know what it is like I'd say on average 15 to 20 million views a week he's getting on his videos well he's using someone else's knives so we're like okay well why don't why are we using someone else's knives when we can make our own knives and so we partnered with an amazing knife maker and we just again they're just like small batches so none of them are they like joint ventures then kind of thing yeah well then though the olive oil is yes the knives cut we have a knife maker who we work with and we have one other person in the team but they are very much like they're really fun projects and um i was talking someone asked me the other day was like was asking what my hobbies are and like my hobbies are like doing those side projects like that is i enjoy it so much doing i love the ideation of building things and so i guess that's kind of like you guys doing a collaboration with a new thing yeah yeah exactly and so we're gonna do we're gonna do a product soon within the dairy business in about in about six months time which is going to mean that we need olive oil and so we're going to collaborate the brands and where we're going to use the use for it and then when we and from a content perspective it's so seamless because like if we're making kind of I don't know a video around like a cooking video quite often the cooking video we're using a knife or we're using some butter or some olive oil or some cottage cheese and so they kind of they're not competing against each other because they're all in different spheres but I would say that like personally like 85 % of my focus of like long hours is on all things because it is like we have a team of 14 people we've got a long list of investors we are in a really strong growth phase and so the other stuff is more like passion projects but i hope to be in a position in a year's time of where i can put a bit more effort personal time into those where i am at the moment it's just interesting how the whole thing joins up yeah because i'm from the outside i just i'm thinking jesus all these different brands but actually it's like the olive oil you're going through it with the restaurant yeah yeah yeah it just makes so much sense yeah um i want to talk about hiring and flow i know you've just hired a is it c ceo ceo no managing director yeah it's been very exciting talk to me about that that process what like uh yeah why why was that why now was our first sort of senior hire um i think last year we grew quite quite a lot and i kind of felt a bit overwhelmed i guess it's just it's always just been me and then our team uh and it just felt like it got to a point where it was really obvious the things that i'm not good at slash I don't love doing um and it felt very needed for us to hire someone to kind of come in and kind of help support me in the things that I'm not so good at um which has been really fun and really amazing because yeah I'm not I love a spreadsheet when someone else makes it and I love looking at it and I'm like oh wow I love this this is so great but I don't like making them I feel like maybe we're the opposite it's only good when it's green it's all green it looks That's great.

28:13That's rare. Yes, we used a recruiter, which was first time also doing that. Normally, I've just been hiring through LinkedIn and kind of hiring people off their vibe and saying like, oh, you seem like a fun person to work with. I reckon you'll be good in sales, pushing pickle juice. But this was really quite different. And it was about finding someone who could really kind of level up a bit. and also last year we launched into Waitrose which we've mainly been selling into premium bars restaurants and hotels like hospitality has been like 90 % of our business the whole time so getting into Waitrose was one of my dreams but then we launched and I was like I have no idea what I'm doing this is so different it's so it's all to do on data it's not about just going for a drink with the bartender it's about sort of like promotions and it's just so different um so I really wanted to find someone with experience in that and hiring Tom has been amazing but he's only been with us for three weeks but already it's been great that's interesting the hospitality and um retail grocery crossover because I think you've been quite intentional about that from the jump yeah like how what's the good bad and ugly of kind of trying to do both of those things I think with our category because it's a non-alcoholic drink I think at the time anyway I think you had to come in through on trade and premium on trade because there was so such little trust in the category and at the time when we launched what three and a half years ago I think it was still very much in its infancy there was a lot of products that weren't great out there and I think the people in general were just like There wasn't much credibility basically around that.

29:59So for me, it was really, really important to go in via like the really big, like prestige restaurants, actually place like Strakers or that top, you know, top hundred, the Michelin stars, because these are the kinds of people that would only list you if actually it was delicious. And that was like a really intentional thing because actually knocking on doors was very hard to convince people that actually this was a different product from the other stuff they tried before. And so that the entree was a really, really big part of that proof point. and then once we had you knowst john's and the river cafe and you know mason francois and all those kind of places then other restaurants would be like oh okay well if they're listing it then obviously it's probably delicious and so they kind of went out from there and then basically with um you know there's so many like you know being in drinks is so expensive and for us um being in the on trade and in those you know when i think we're in 45 the top 100 now and 41 michelin and stars um which is separate it's not just about like volume and things it's actually where i think our premiumness is built in terms of like brand equity because we're not in everywhere but we're in the places that matter and people see that little yellow wax top and they notice it and then even you know buyers who are all going to like the cool places basically will be like oh my god bativa is everywhere but actually they're just going to the top like 50 restaurants but because they're seeing that yellow wax top everywhere they're thinking that like you're much bigger than you are and then you start to open up conversations with buyers and that opens up doors to retail so it's all kind of connected i think i remember you writing some of that that's it's a blessing and a curse that that almost halo effect that people think you're bigger than you are like what's the what's the downside of that well no i know i think it is well i think sometimes when you go into retail sort of thing um well no i think like well it wasn't so much a downside i think i was probably i think there's more risk to it so when we went into waitress for example they put us in straight away into like 260 stores and i was like it's Like we're actually like really small.

31:48And I don't know how many people actually know about us out there in the actual real world. But obviously we feel like, you know, you're everywhere when you're going to like the best places and you're quite cool. But anyway, it turns out actually it was the best thing that ever happened because we actually ended up like way outselling what the expected rate of sale was. And that risk was paid off. But like we were in massive danger of actually not being like that. And we had no idea how it was going to go. but actually the other kind of reason why the trade is so important for us is like 20 % of our customers discover us in the on trade and you know initially prestige and those top 100 restaurants were like absolutely core to proof points and now like my strategy has always been to go outwards in terms of concentric circles so the first bit was about brand building and prestige and then you get those data points and then you manage to convince the casual dining groups that you have a great rate of sale and so then they take you on and then you get like the bills or you know now on code and we're like we're the top you know no and low serve and bills and that we can then use that data to that go to the next concentric circle so you basically just have to start in the middle and then move outwards because you need data and when you're a small brand you don't have data so you have to do it the slow way and you have to start in the core and then move outwards you can't just suddenly you know go to the big dogs with the volume you have to start um prestige and end with volume that's so that's like as you move from early adopters across because your marketing has changed i think everything we talked about this but like you know it started like with wonky fruits and that was almost like your diehard fans and as you've moved across it's what is it have your drink have your drink and eat it or something have your cake and i fucked that up but um

33:23but you know finally a drink to feel good about and then uh the one that was recently like how has your marketing had to change that old bad boy how's your marketing had to change as you've gone across that adoption curve yeah and what's been hard about that i suppose yeah i think at the beginning i we thought that the wonky fruit angle was perhaps going to carry us um through um you know growth but actually the reason why someone comes and picks up a soft drink is because it tastes great and looks good and has makes you feel something so that sort of ethical angle of the wonky fruit was great initially to capture the imaginations of some bars and obviously still is but the reason why you know dash is continuing to do well is you know the fact that we're dialing up taste more than ever so that's the campaign uh last last year which was drink that has it all and have your cake and drink it which is on the tune got that hand i love that one yeah i love that one and that was all about taste um and like tastes phenomenal and we we did this piece of research and we'd previously be talking about health quite a lot like the fact that it doesn't have any sugar or sweetener but actually the number one reason why people were drinking dash is because it tastes great so that's where we focused all of our energy in terms of sort of marketing perspective what was what what was the research because it's like some people say do loads of research pump some people say go with your gut yeah it's something like this conflicting wisdom right yes there's no right right way no what were you asking on the specifically on the research and how that informed the yeah well what you're looking for is just like little nuggets like that um which will can help you like massively just focus on one specific thing but it was a wider piece of research we brought in a new marketing director called James and the first thing that he did was did that big piece of strategy work which then found out that taste was the number one reason why people were drinking dash so that was going out to you know several thousand people and understanding why they were picking up dash and what they liked about it how because how many iterations are you how often are you how often are you iterating on how often are you doing those like iterations of flavor to keep it absolutely yeah making the flavor better is it is it yeah i feel like every time i try dash it's more delicious that's good to hear we've just finished a project called slightly more mate um Oh wow, that's quite a secret.

36:13I wasn't fucking around. That's perfect, thank you. God. He wants you to tell us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the more secret it's about? I want to get back into Coco de Mer. What really happened at the party? Honestly, yeah, what happened at the launch party last night? Tell me more. But yeah, we've just finished a project called Project O, which is trying to make the flavours hit harder, basically. So what was it? Project Project? Oomph. Oh, sick. That's about trying just rather than focusing or spending more money on media or why not spend that money on making the product better? Yeah. Because I think that's a lot of what a lot of brands do is that you get a little bit complacent about your product because you might be better than your competitors, but that doesn't mean you can't improve it by 10 % to make more people like it.

37:01And that's something that I've learned. So it's like making your product, your packaging much better. That's what Mark Palmay does at Course and Press. He says COGS investing in cost of goods is marketing. Yes. Like actually that because most people think about, oh, it's a big campaign. It's a big blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's actually boiled it down to the basics. I think that he's he's so clever on that. Yeah. He was he was ex-Corp. From that insight that we had around taste, we then changed all of our outer packaging. So previously we didn't have any fruit on it. but now we've just done a refresh on all of our outer packaging and that's made quite a significant change in our rate of sale, actually, because we've now got the fruit there and people are tasting.

37:42If you do then those consistent iterations of just improving flavour, do you ever... Yeah, yeah, of course. Do you ever... When is the point of where you call out it? Because I'd say that just purely because we do similar with flavoured butter, nowhere near on the volume scale. But we've never called out, oh, it's a new variation or a new and improved or anything. Because that does, that would make an effect because it's quite a nice sort of stamp to have on it, isn't it? And so if it's on a shelf in Sainsbury's new and improved, it might drive more. But then you've got to change your packaging that then you've got to deal with all of the, you know, what you might get back from customers.

38:30So ultimately what you're trying to do is get people to come back more, isn't it? So to buy it. So that's the thing that you should be focused on rather than necessarily calling it out. But if it tastes completely different, then I think you should. But if it's just an enhancement on what you've already got, you just let it be as a evolution. I think so. Yeah. Have you done anything to your... We've made some tweaks to try and make the flavor a bit um it's more salt in it or whatever it is but um we've never we've never called it out but they haven't but i wouldn't say there's ever been a material change of where there's like you would have to call it out and we've just saw it almost like an evolution rather than being like new and in because you i've seen that so much in more i would say more traditional brands perhaps who've done like an iteration of it.

39:27I think it's weird. It creates more questions than I have. Yeah, it's like, it was short before. Like, that's what makes me think, yeah. But presumably you guys are always iterating the same with the Pickle House because you sort of make it yourselves. We are. I think like, I think that it's actually a big focus. We're just, we're just building a new production unit. So, Pivo's so unique in that I think we're one of the only, and definitely when we started, of the only brand that was making liquid ourselves and so we have like landing farm etc and we're pushing through to a new production site which is much bigger to scale us but also we're changing our um technique as well to go like a bit more like techie so we're now like moving more to beer equipment versus before it was like big icps i always say it wrong acp anyway sam's sam's the production guy yeah um but anyway so now it's with this new tech that we've got this new tech equipment in production, we're going to be able to control so much more the different flavours and pull out and make it so much even more consistent because it's a craft product and we do only deal with real ingredients.

40:31There's no flavourings or essences. But now we're able to have pressurised tanks and we're able to control the heat and it's going to be a much more consistent product. And it's also going to allow us to remove things like, at the moment there's still vinegar smell in the product, which once it's diluted with orange, obviously you can't do it, but it's still the biggest pain point for customers do you get a lot of ag from that from people yeah it's one of these well it's it's it's one of those products where like eight out ten people like when they love it and then two out two people don't get it and it's just always going to be that way and i kind of love that because it creates talkability around like the pub table and often it's because people are mixing it wrong as well but also if you love sweet drinks you're just not going to like something that's like a bit of sweet and it's just like but i think like with like things like the vinegar vinegar and it is a vinegar based product is that's something we can remove with with technology is that as the kind of herbs and things get better but also what i've also just realized is that some people are just more susceptible um to vinegar than others just just genetically which is this really interesting thing that i never thought about before but you know that coriander has that thing in your like dna so if you basically look into it these things called like super they're called like super sensors or something and basically they're like super super sensitive to anything to do with vinegar and so it's about 20 % of people have that in their DNA which is super interesting well exactly so I mean if you look at our like if you look at our like Waitrose reviews it's like one stars 20 % and then five stars 80 and there's no two three or four not one yeah and it's just this like very like like kind of very passionate response to it and I personally love that as a brand builder and that's what makes people become like like advocates evangelists but also creates you know the occasional like interesting because we have exactly the same thing yeah i guess we're a vinegar based product as well so i bet it's the same thing yeah but we find like we've got our pickle people and there are people that try it and they're like oh my gosh i love pickles and then everyone just tells us all of their like deepest darkest secrets about drinking pickle juice and how they eat pickles

42:35but do you also get because like when we do get a one-star review which it's not it's not like oh it wasn't very nice it was like it's like it's literally it's like i could clean my toilet with this or whatever and you're like whoa whoa whoa like okay i get you like oh my gosh we need to sit down and talk about this because we have exactly the same i think it is i honestly think it is uh like a genetic like a dn like you know people cannot handle certain tastes and it's it I've done the scientific, like, studying into it, and I'm like, this is so weird, like. Yeah. But it's the same with spice and Bloody Marys.

43:05Like, some people love them, some people hate them, and especially with spice, like, if we're at a, you know, like, Taste of London, people will come and have a Bloody Mary, and some people are there, and they'll, like, cough away because they're like, oh, my gosh, it's so spicy, I can't do this, oh, my gosh. And then someone's there, like, trying to add extra Tabasco in, and you're like, it's impossible to find, like, a happy medium. I don't know why we've chosen such complicated products. can you ramp up the negative yeah you've thought about or you just but to be honest like it's such a minimal part of it like that like i think by if it was at 50 50 but it is still just a very small vocal minority and and to be honest we have way more people like hand carrying for their wedding in tuscany for tea but they can't bring anything else or like you know like that that that noise is so much larger than this kind of very very small yeah and it's nice to focus on the community that really love it rather than worry about the ones that don't too much i don't ever want to be the kind of product that is like yeah it's like i want i want people to be like yes don't get it yeah that's just what i think is interesting yeah um and you know and also like i also don't really believe that that's not a good thing like thinking about like campari or i think about like fernet frank or whatever those are those kind of products like no one's like everyone people either get campari they don't get campari yeah yeah totally it's not something that should be shied away from i mean it's a massive advantage i want yeah go on mate no it's clever i was just thinking the bigger house because you have that base layer which is great because actually then you can do what you like with it and everyone likes their bloody merry different don't you yeah totally would people always mix on top of your your base mix not really it depends especially in like bars and restaurants so like one of our big things is allowing the bars and restaurants to have that consistency of serve um my biggest hatred is like going to a pub one weekend and having a really good bloody mary and then going back and there's a guy who's on his university holidays like making bloody mary with like tomato juice and a bit of worcester sauce yeah and so it kind of just allows any any place to make a really good bloody mary and we do get some places like you know really lovely bars that want to add their own touch to it because they're known for their cocktails so they'll use us as a base but then there are places like coat and gaucho and um well we're just about to launch into young's pubs as well they'll just use that as their like bloody mary mix and it just means that they get the same bloody mary across all of their pubs it is also great in the morning i've drank your product just in the morning yeah as a virgin mary is great yeah and it's for me it's just it hits the spot um i've not drank a lot of vodka also all your boys should drink loads of tomato juice because it's good for stopping prostate cancer so get on it now and that's not a marketing thing we're gonna do uh let's i want to talk about mistakes because i think like the bigger the deeper the wounds to the deep of the wisdom like everyone's going to make mistakes and I think there's some really interesting lessons in that um Toby mate what have been in the sort of what have been the big mistakes you've made to get to where to get to here um I mean if I take if I take the uh the dairy business at the moment I'd say for us we because we had kind of I mean Tom would hate me calling him talent but talent associated with us but someone who had kind of like who had a large following uh who we were very we were kind of perfectly timed with things like skims and 818 tequila like the kardashian brands and feastables that just happened really with um mr beast and a few others so to get listings we were really fortunate to get listings actually initially was was quite easy right um which is very different i know from every other um uh from 95 percent of other people's uh uh view on that but for us we essentially just said yes to everything and we thought that'd be a great idea and there wasn't actually kind of enough thought to it of of do we think that we need to build this community more and find a single retailer who are going to really get behind us and we can put all of our effort behind it um uh and also really thinking about the demographic that our product is kind of serving um do we think we're going to sell a whilst we're not like in the french this is when we just did butter we're not in like the French butter sphere of cost.

47:57So that's like£3.50 to£4 a block. We're more like at the£3 mark. Do we think that that is going to work in kind of the more lower end supermarkets? And I think for us, we just got overexcited and we're like, X, Y, Z wants to launch us. So we just basically said yes to everything. And we launched and actually like we lost a listing pretty quickly of one of the lower end supermarkets. and it massively it impacted us generally as a business because from a revenue perspective it impacted us but it was from a confidence perspective like our rate of sale was like five times less at that supermarket as say like sainsbury's who we knew was like bang on for us uh as a as an audience and so i think like thinking it like being a bit more well thought out from that from that point of view but i was similar to you like i had although i'd worked at lots of consumer brands I was predominantly in the DTC space rather than the retail space and so I was coming from it quite naively rather than knowing kind of what I know now and so I would definitely take if I could do it again I would have taken my time a lot more would have really put a load of effort similar to like you with like the Waitrose deal I would have say got the Sainsbury's deal and put all effort from everyone within the business to make sure that Our OTIF is 100%, our marketing efforts are absolutely bang on, on time in full.

49:25It's like an operational percentage of whether you're delivering in full at the right time. So you're not shorting anyone. And rather than being like mixed messages, because then we built this big social following. And it's like, well, where do you go? Do you go to Waitrose? Do you go to Sainsbury's? Do you go to Asda? Do you go to Thingy? and it's like actually it would have been better if we just had a single sort single place that we could send people to and really double down on that and go rather than i i think there's like whilst i don't think there was a negative there was it was that we weren't we i don't think we thought we were being greedy but i think that if i look back we probably were being greedy and without even without realizing realizing it yeah yeah yeah uh and and we just got a bit over excited and so now we are like for instance with cottage cheese because it is cottage cheese everyone wants a bit of cottage cheese which is very strange to say but we've been a lot more thoughtful with like so yeah how have you done it this second time around well we've just we've staggered approaches so we've not launched everyone at the same time we've really been like every single launch we've done with we've kind of like had a proper in-depth plan of how we're going to engage community how Are we going to get certain videos for certain retailers?

50:47We're looking at the right demographic for the right retailers. So, for instance, a Waitrose customer would be better with certain kind of influences he will work with versus, say, a Tesco one or a Sainsbury's one or anything like that. So we have a lot more of a bespoke approach to each launch now. And we don't launch everything at the same time. and so we've been we've had to like it you've had to you have to have difficult conversations about it like we've had more difficult conversations whilst in a positive it's great because people want to launch cottage cheese but we have also had to like say look it has to be in three months it has to be in september it has to be next year which is a nice problem to have but it's um it's it it's just being a lot more patient and a lot more thoughtful and looking long term rather than like there's nothing worse than i know that otif sounds like the most boring um terminology in the world but like that's not retail retailers like you guys will probably know it's like they are on if your otif levels are really poor like you will get a black mark against you and if it gets to a position of where it is just consistent like you there is opportunity for you to get delisted and so um rushing these things is whilst it's nice from a vanity metric of having revenue sooner rather than later but i think longer term it's um yeah it's not it's not that great you said difficult conversations i think that's just an interesting thread to pull on um because in business you've got to have a lot of difficult conversations what's the art of maybe if you want to take this the the you don't have to give specifics about the most difficult conversation you've had but like but like i'm fucking awful at having difficult conversations i just avoid them like what's the art of having difficult conversations i'm terrible at having conversations i i i like that's why i brought in actually alex is our new commercial director head of commercial because he's like he's like the numbers guy so he could be like just take out the emotion and be like quite clinical about it um i mean my i think like just think about mistakes and how this maybe links to different conversations was i think the mistake which which we did recently which I guess is kind of a difficult conversation was I went through this whole thought about like okay let's let's change because on our bottle it says a big sipping botanical aperitivo and the idea behind that was like to bring the kind of bigness and the boldness and like the slurping up and sort of massiness of it to the brand um but then I was like okay well maybe you know we're doing really well on waitrose like people love the fact that we're really that we're British brand we're gonna lean more into that part of it um that's like you know we're making ourselves we have a place etc anyway so I actually was like right we're going to change the front of the bottle to like British botanical aperitivo whatever and we actually changed it on a whole label batch and and so it was about to sort of do this whole rebound was like we're now the British like one anyway and then the Parage stuff started like kicking kicking off basically and it was like sunny it was like everyone was like flags on every on every roundabout and like you know i was just like i was like i was like obviously like being british is great but i have no idea what being british is going to mean in like 12 months or or two years or whatever and if we actually like put our stake in the ground and be like we are the british like for town comparativo there was just a bit of it was too risky basically and so we actually launched we actually like released this like batch it was all labeled and all that kind of stuff but just never mentioned it and then switched back to the next batch and so there's 12 000 bottles out there with the british botanical imperativo in someone's kitchen and but i was like you know what like maybe later on that's the route we can go down but like it's just you know i would have to backtrack on it and that is quite awkward because you know obviously i love i love england love britain but like you know it's a very like sensitive topic but i also um feel strongly that that's not the way that british would go and i don't want to i don't want to be in the hands of a cultural moment that i can't control so that probably was for me like a kind of tricky situation we just immediately just like interesting what about you mate in terms of difficult chinwags oh gosh yeah well it's like classic sort of british we're not very good at having difficult conversations um but yeah they you do have to have difficult conversations whether it's with manufacturers or people in the workplace.

55:24But I think it's like all things, as long as you can, you know, give people sort of warning about certain things going wrong in the lead up, normally sort of make things a lot easier. We had to move. Well, I actually actually had a really difficult he was sort of like a mentor which i shouldn't probably say it but i'm gonna say it um go on do you see a manufacturer manufacturer get him some wine they had water and coffee what else can we get out of him a manufacturer um who was making our drinks um and uh i was suddenly walking around the factory one day uh with him and i spotted some some cans over in the corner i was it looks like a bit like Dash but I was like well we haven't just done a production run so as I looked over and basically they just copied exactly Dash so the same the same recipe the same the same can obviously they had an understanding of what it's so that was very difficult was it called well maybe I don't need to it but it was quite early on the journey and it was like it was keeping the other eye because you're like someone's just copied you and you know they can go and put it in at a cheaper price alongside you um it was sort of you know we didn't we had a difficult conversation we ended up moving because of it um but it was just one of those ones that you had to sort of and did they launch it or was it um they launched it yeah yeah yeah what happened with that but luckily it didn't do very well are they still around so they're not around let's talk about that because i thought um do you know the brand salt s-u-l-t um they came about they're hilarious henry and millie but i don't know if you saw on his instagram like he will literally call out people who who copy them and as it was i think he put on linkedin it was to the fucking t it was a brand based in india they have these images of you know like um like uh like you know those goggles you wear running or like sunglasses with like water on them they'd literally copied everything everything was copied and he started calling them out he put up the whatsapp conversation or instagram message has been like called you out blah blah blah blah blah and actually what's really interesting when you see see the two images they've copied literally everything to an absolute t but the brand of just the nuance and the brand of salt pulls through and i know again it's kind of a wanky cliche thing but like branders branders are modes but how do you think about because ultimately loads of people will come in and try and copy you i know amelia's talked about this with bold bean and like those people are moving into that space but that's where brand really is that like how do you think about that i mean amelia's anyone copying bativa as well sorry i'm jumping around um no one i think the thing with bativa is it's actually quite hard to make right because we don't use flavorings or essences so i think when people want to copy something they're probably using flavorings and essences because you can sort of do it easily elsewhere and actually it does take a lot of like toil to make it and i'm sure you know at some point it could happen but the reason why it's got that complex taste and it's because it is real ingredients so it's like you know we spoke about the chicken stock theory that i always bang on about like if you buy like chicken stock in the supermarket yeah yeah yeah i'm obsessed with such a good way of expressing it like if you buy a chicken stock cube it's very different from when you make your own chicken stock and you put fresh herbs in it and thyme and all that kind of stuff and the taste experience is quite different and so i think for people to copy bativo they could do it but they would they would have to put quite a lot of effort in i think if you're the kind of person that wants to copy something you probably can't be bothered to do it you probably want to copy something which is a bit easier to make um but with amelia like what i what i love about her example i was talking to her about it because she had that where she went to uh to a supermarket and they went to her source and sort of launched it um at some point um under their brand and actually what happened was that it just didn't do anywhere near as well as as the bold beans brand even though it was the same product because actually at the end of the day brand is a huge part of the consumer experience and why people buy things and it shouldn't be underestimated and I think you know like we um I think our cans you know on a car day in the last 12 weeks outsold all five of the M &S um non-alc like can brands in one skew because there is like the power of brands and and I think like you just have to keep continuing to invest in your brand because people can always copy you but actually at the end of the day like what you pick on the supermarket shelf is really an emotional what are the best things you think you keep investing in that brand piece like i know collaborations well for me it's like particularly in an alcoholic space because you're not getting pissed um the experience needs to be invested in so much more from you know the packaging the way it arrives how you undo the wax to the ritual around making the drink because actually you come out of an experience feeling like it's really satisfying it's like a really special and amazing experience because of all the details.

1:00:26And I think with alcohol, you don't necessarily need that because you basically get pissed and it's like delicious. But I think in order to, you know, charge a more premium price point, what you have to tap into as an alcoholic drink is the whole experience from being in the supermarket and seeing like a beautiful like package and the characters and the details. And every detail when I created the brand was built around creating like a really special moment. So the wax is like undoing it and, you know, making it. and then the ritual with the orange is like taking a pause and you know the the packaging when it's d to c comes in a yellow box with our characters everywhere and you get i know a pair of free yellow socks in your third order as a surprise like it's all just about like trying to create like something really experiential versus just a product experience and i think it's much more important in a product where you don't get um because the value it has to be more than more than that and like you know that dash does that's like yeah like so well as well how do you think about that mate matt yeah because actually we're like a really maybe it's more like all things quite simple we're quite a simple product so you know it's actually simple yeah i mean it's not like fever or the pickle house where but it feels very premium yeah the way that your cans design and like set up and yeah well I think design it like designs a big part and you know how it looks and how it makes you feel like so to get that right we knew that we had to get that right so we you know spoke to 12 different agencies and made sure that we were connecting with the people who really understood our story we had the name we had the story of the wonky fruits we had the products we had the can and and then it what they did which i just thought was amazing is the dash marks which makes it like something that you want to put in your fridge and give it to your friends on the weekend and open up your fridge whereas the soft drinks norm is more like functional so the amazing thing about dash is that people are very happy to have their tuscan wedding on the side as you come out of the church but also in the tesco meal deal and i think that's very you know unique in soft drinks because they're not going to have a a fan to her outside waiting for people coming out of the church so i think that's a really important part is that like desirability um of the person perry perry said i'm not going to rebrand wasn't that because i think you're the only brand that hasn't changed since the beginning Yeah, well, Big Fish are amazing and hope to work with Perry at some point.

1:03:05But I think it's really interesting saying it now because actually we have been going for nine years and we haven't really changed the design. So there comes a point where perhaps looking at a slight refresh might be something interesting to do. I think for you with cans what I always find really interesting is like it's like how the texture and how that can completely change the experience and like you know when Trip came out and obviously like just the fact that it was so smooth and calm feeling. That was expensive. Yeah, yeah. Because they sleeved every can. Yeah, yeah. So they don't sleeve any cans.

1:03:41Oh, they not, yeah. But it's interesting how that tiny design thing. It's still got that texture, right? It has got that. It has got that. It's still got a smoothie. Jack will know more about, I mean when I was at Trip it was like they used to be a lot of stuff. sleeving the cans gave a matte texture but it is so expensive to sleeve because you essentially have to do it at a separate site from where you can it and then you have to send it to a separate site to sleeve it It does make such a big difference because there are some labels that have that kind of sandpaper feel to them and I just pick them up and it makes me feel a bit gross There's a thing and it's called psychophysics that's an actual thing about feel Do you guys have the kind of papery one like us because I feel like your parents it's the same one as us I spent ages trying to find the paper and went to I'm not sure I think we looked at yours and they're doing ours messaged me and was like which paper do you guys use we had it in the office it's so premium and crafty feeling it's good but then sometimes when it gets wet it's not ideal