The Marketing Expert: How Nandos, Pret A Manger, Green & Blacks Make Consumers Addicted

50:23So you then, because of the data that they have, they can do a brilliant description of who those people are where they live how they shop what newspapers they read in the days when people used to buy a newspaper what magazines what media they consume what car they drive what they do with their social lives do they go to so from that that crowd for green and blacks were going to sort of local food festivals and wine clubs and they were going to these outdoor jules holland picnic concerts and things like that so all of a sudden we said we'd like to attract that segment so we will pinpoint our marketing to raise awareness of green and blacks against that group what were some of those activities we well we did it i mean i nearly got i say i nearly got sacked but i was threatened with the sack if it didn't work that's the other great thing with small companies isn't it's much more real um we spent the entire we didn't have much marketing budget but i persuaded the board that we should put we should increase the marketing budget and then we spent all of it on one thing which is we sponsored a series of outdoor uh concerts which was called music on a summer evening and they were at places like Kenwood House, Kew Gardens, those sort of places and we became the official sponsor.

51:30It was previously sponsored by Waitrose for many years and we took over the sponsorship which was a big ticket for us. We invited all our trade customers there, we gave it so much love, all the team were there pretty much, you know, every night's a series of about 20 concerts but we were all there, it became almost our place to meet customers and we we would basically go we'd have Corinna Black's team and ambassadors mixing with the crowds and doing chocolate tasting but doing it more like wine tasting but on scale was super generous and then at the end of the evening we'd give people the most brilliant goodie bag to go home with so the cost per sample was epic kind of off the charts and each event had maybe had four or five thousand people but the quality of contact we went from a brand that wasn't on their radar to being really noticed.

52:14Meek fans versus diehard fans that's what I'd say. And we did know that a lot of the customers or a lot of the people that were going to those concerts, we kind of knew where they shopped as well. And they did massively over-index on some of our, perhaps more premium early stage grocery customers. So we'd worked out who we were targeting, not just the eco set. We were doing quite well with the foodies, but how do we get the next tranche of foodies? They happen to be a bit older, this empty nester profile. How do we sponsor the flower shows? How do we sponsor music concerts? How do we sample at those places?

52:45we advertised in the Sunday SUPS things like the Telegraph magazine and You magazine with the mail on Sunday and we did a cover mount, put a bar of chocolate on the front of Good Housekeeping magazine and things like that then was there another set of customers after that not as deliberate as that because I think that's quite a big broad church and then it just spreads out really for me so Seth, I'm sorry I've literally just read this book I'd say that was actually this is at the stage where we're doing like, you know, six million and trying to get to 10 and then we kept going. But I think it was, we didn't do any further.

53:21The biggest strategic shift on the targeting was to just realize that people bought chocolate because of the indulgence and the taste, not just because of its organic credentials. And then when we started to just sort of say, well, who's the next likely tier of customers? We pinpointed the marketing to that group, did it very, very consistently for four or five years. It was a big commitment for us, but we kept doing it and we became a very meaningful brand to that segment and i think people then sort of migrate and find the brand and discover it and those customers probably recommend it to others so we didn't ever really do a big reset after that to say now we need to go for yeah it's seth seth talks about it as scaffolding it's like your idea to go from early adopter to mainstream needs some form of scaffolding maybe like you're almost like say you're building a house you're going to put on to help to help build it and i suppose with the scaffolding you've put round, you've used the shopper insights and said, right, well, where the Kenwood is scaffolding.

54:17The, the, the, the, the over-investing in the goodie bag is scaffolding the you magazine chocolate sample scaffolding. And I think, yeah, cause I've always wondered and it's like, cause it's a bit of a, not a paradox, but just a, it's a bit of a contradiction as a brand has to be really like when you start out, be a bit sharp arrows is what I like to say. It's like, we're just for you. Yeah, absolutely. And it's like, there's no one else. you're going to be our die-off fans you're going to be our first thousands of true fans but at some point that arrow almost needs to go be a little bit blunter and open the net slightly more which is basically what you've done with that it does but remember that I think I used the word narrow and deep is my kind of favourite marketing phrase I mean work out who you're targeting and be meaningful to them what were some of the other options that were on the table which you were discussing with the board before going with the Kenwood like because as I said you put your neck on the line mate can you remember like what were some of the other because I think how you select where you go narrow and deep is also a fascinating.

55:13Well, one of the other, I mean, look, we ended up, like a lot of small companies, you end up kind of doing a few things because you can't stop yourself from, but I suppose it was a tension between, should we spend more on new product development and innovation or should we invest more in marketing? And we managed to do both in the end because we've managed to work in a way that we could do innovation and MPD in a very low-cost, lean way because we had lots of very talented food people in and around us. So at the same time, we were on our original range, which was really big 100-gram bars of green and blacks.

55:50We were starting to go, well, how do we take... Now that we've got fans there, how do we increase the number of times they buy the brand? How do we get into new occasions? So we did little mini bars and we put them in a box so it became more giftable. And, you know, we started to do a few things that would appear in the extra fixtures that emerge around seasonal times, Easter and Christmas. And so we stretched the brand in that way. But the bigger choices were, if I go back in time, do we invest in marketing, telling people about the brand and being clear who we're targeting? Or do we keep hiring more people?

56:24Do we put a field sales team on the ground? In that business, we chose not to put a field sales team on the ground, but to go more for the marketing. And then with some of your other businesses, talk me through those other marketing. Well, Causton's been different. I mean, so Causton, I think similar philosophy, good quality ingredients, huge addressable market, way bigger than dark chocolate. I mean, dark chocolate is a niche in the very big confectionery market. But when you're into fruit juice and cans of fizzy pop, you're a mega market. So you're very happy if you get a 1 % market share. It's still a big number.

56:55But as I say, I think the how do you get getting distribution on soft drinks is more complex. The market's bigger because there's more places you can sell the drinks to. but surprise, surprise, there's more people wanting to sell their drinks and there are more complex supply chains and routes to market. So there's lots, more than half of our, way more than half of our sales on the sparkling drinks in Causton, for example, are outside of supermarkets. But to get our drinks to all these amazing places and different diversity of channels, we have a big network of partners that we work with, wholesaler partners, and they might be an expert in a regional area or they might be an expert in a type of channel.

57:34like people like Crest and Cotswold Fair who are really, really strong on getting to farm shops and good quality delis and specialty stores. So you have this much bigger sales task, really. And this business here has a way bigger sales team than we ever had at. What was the size difference? Well, total headcount for the company, total number of people that work in, and of course it has about 30 people. I think Green and Blacks had about 25 at the time when we were sort of running it, and it was around 25 million turnover business. But half of the team here at Causton are salespeople, where it's probably about a quarter or a third of the team at Green & Black's, and that's because Green & Black's was more concentrated into the grocery business.

58:17So when we come back to our gross margin point, Green & Black's was actually simpler to run because more of the products were sold through the grocery channels. So you need less people, but then you need to support the brand more because if you don't achieve good rates of sale, then you're not making an impact on the category. So if we could get the rate of sale up, we were already well-liked because we were trading people up, more expensive price points, drew better quality chocolate. We were good from an image point of view because we were able to say to the retailers by supporting and having a good offering of green and blacks, you're creating a good halo around sustainability and ethical.

58:57So there's plenty of reasons to stop green and blacks, but kind of needs to land the numbers as well alongside it. And that was about marketing support and promotions, tastings, and making their customers aware outside of the store of the brand. And we didn't do big, we never did TV advertising, but back in those days we did quite a lot of, we did an awful lot of sampling and we did do a lot with the foodie press. Magazines at that time were still much more prevalent than they are today. So we were a regular advertiser and we had all sorts of partnership programs with key food magazines. And then, but with Corson, what was the approach was just to get into distribution?

59:41it's been more about that it's been it's been i mean hopefully development of great drinks and we've still place a lot of importance on hopefully making the brands look attractive so we've absolutely invested in design we've probably done more product development and formats on Causton so Causton started out as a range of big cartons of pressed apple juice we then started to introduce more flavors all of which were blended with apple juice then we did a range in little cartons that were targeting consumption for kids whether they're going to a casual dining restaurant like pizza express or whether they're packing in their lunchbox or for a picnic so we took pressed juice put it in a carton added some water to get the total sugar levels down and make it a really healthy hydration drink for kids and families and then we moved into the cans it's about 10 years ago now and that was about you know that's well let's add let's add sparkles to the juice but still do a very high juice drink and that's much more into sort of on the go refreshments did this sort of step change the brand the business it really did yeah it did it's mad because that's what i was saying with what giles was telling me about the format innovation is not like it not this is like this is wrong but i want to say anyway but it's like it sounds too good to be true because it's very it is quite complicated but it's like just moving into different formats well if you can do it i mean you have to have a thread running through the brand as is you know we say it's always made with pressed fruit and we say no degree pokery which is our kind of way of saying that we don't do shortcuts and use cheap ingredients and you know fake messages around claims and things like that so there's an honesty to it so that's the kind of red threads for the brand that are not for not for negotiation and that will appear on all of the all of the portfolio and the range but they're different slightly different consumer target audiences different usage occasions different moments and different opens up opportunities in different channels the great thing with moving into the the cans 10 years ago it gave the brand much more visibility because suddenly we were in coffee shops and sandwich places and you'd see people drinking you know the cans out and about whereas previously we were in in-home brand with the one liters i was listening to a podcast um rory southern was on it uh with jamie lang and they talk about why is why is guinness had this sort of roaring success and obviously he's like into sort of evolution and um links marketing to evolution but he was saying one of the successes of guinness for example is that when you go to a like social prof and the memetics that we copy what other people do when people go to a pub right after this and everyone's having a guinness you're like oh fuck me like i know it's guinness it's black and it's white it's clear they those 10 people having guinness oh i'll have the guinness cider you don't know what cider is so it could be it could be a pub that's why he said cider categories always struggle struggled and i suppose this girl's kind of linked to you if like if you've got a family of five in Hyde Park and like loads of the kids are drinking these then there's that whole sort of mimetics and kind of our evolutionary desire to do what other people are doing I think he said that I was like that's genius but it does apply to this well I mean I think you know the marketing sort of theory they talk about mental availability for a brand you know is it out there invisible and you know can people do people see it really that's not just advertising that's the physical availability of a brand and i mean the other step that was definitely good for causton was was when we did the children's drinks because all of a sudden we were and we've been with pizza express for many years now but we're their chosen drink on the kids menus but we know and i went we now in wagabama we're in bills and we're in lots of great pub groups and that is an occasion where the kids aren't there on their own they're with the family they're all just they're on the menu suddenly the little cartons on the tables the proposition works for those channels because it's a cleaner drink and if you're running a casual dining restaurant targeting families you want to be the same way that your food you take great pride in your food you want to be offering families a good you know good ingredients clean label choice on drinks so all of a sudden that's a massive step change on brand awareness by having a different format versus the previous one which was really I guess where Causton started is it was one liters of pressed juice that were purchased from usually from supermarkets and then would go straight into the fridge and be used at breakfast time at home and that's still a valued and much loved part of our business but it's not very visible areas and actually the number of units we sell so many more units of the kids drinks and the sparkling drinks because they're smaller format and they're more frequent versus the sort of big home serve size that we have the juices but hopefully if people see one or see different parts of the range they sort of join them together and yeah brand ecosystem and having yeah that's like your hero that's your hero product right like it's the i think it's it's become that and you know when we launched it it was a it was a bit of a punt we certainly we certainly didn't do any we didn't do any reset we didn't look at the size of the rebar market because there wasn't one the uh i was speaking to steve about this the bp garage yes they've got the coldest fridges in the world and like honestly on a summer's day i will like go further to go to a bp garage and get one of those where it's like you know it's dripping it's so cold yeah oh my god yeah no it's glorious a can of a can of good pop in a proper fridge is good i think that's such an interesting marketing strategy from them of just make the fridges incredibly cold yeah i don't know why they've done it i'm sure that's there's something in that but but i think it's the what we just talked about though about how do you put a brand on the map and grow a brand And, you know, I think of all of that as marketing, whereas I think often we're too quick to sort of think of marketing as the advertising or it's the activation kind of plans.

1:05:18But marketing is just about how do you get your brand out there. And doing it, so product development can be a... I think you have to be aware of it. I mean, product development, look, you can keep going. You can develop the 75th flavor of something, and it's just, you know, very small returns. But if you can do smart, adjacent product development that is true to your brand but just unlocks new customer groups or fucked up on format innovation or have you well um well it's about um is it is it a big is it a big fuck up it was a is a restriction really and i'd say that we so when we launched the cans in a multipack format due to some supply chain constraints we worked so hard to get what hopefully is a beautiful can still like it today 10 years on but the multi-pack solution that we had which was four cans um for lots of kind of supply chain restriction reasons we've been unable to present that in a smart card outer for many years just due to constraints around packing lines etc at a cost that's acceptable and therefore on shelf i think we've that format should have been a much bigger product for us than it's been so far still it does okay but we're really proud of the drink that's inside but we're not very proud of how it presents on the shelf because it it's in a sort of shrink wrap um that's not printed brilliantly it's sometimes misaligned um so it's a very functional piece of packaging but it's not beautiful it's not crafted it doesn't feel very causton uh are you going to try and solve that or is it well we are we're finally in fact there's one over there we're finally moving now to um okay so we're relaunching the multi-packs uh next month and they will finally have a much smarter card sleeve more like you see in craft beer that type of present which is a significant on cost and we've had to work and rearrange all of our some of our manufacturing um partnerships and and there's been some investment and some investment attached to that in order to be able to do this pack but i think that again will mean that uh the image of the brand in stores where those multipacks are will step change and i think that would be the most important marketing investment we make this year in fact to pay for some of that to pay for some of that we're having to do less the way your brain works in terms of how you think about this marketing and mental um availability it's like almost like your cogs are your marketing your innovation and your platformer is your marketing like it's just 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 Listen to this.

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1:08:27They 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 feed you data like foie gras 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 yeah it's almost seeing seeing the way you view things which is just so unique is is the the cogs are the marketing the innovation is the marketing like i think i really i'm a big believer in that and as i say you know i worked i was fortunate enough to work at prep as the marketing director there for several years and that was um i mean that's probably the the greatest case study there really i mean prep doesn't do any but I mean it does a few things now around loyalty programs etc but it never doesn't do any advertising but what's the biggest marketing investment for Pratt it's it's actually securing the best sites that have beautiful visibility good face years so their marketing spends actually the rent bill because they're getting more places and that's opening up their mental availability and distribution and then they choose to make a low a lower gross margin on their food than most of their competitors because again they invest in the quality of the ingredients and they invest in freshness and there's more labor costs involved in making food throughout the day in every shop rather than making it all in a central factory they're all choices and decisions they can't do all of that and go and do tv advertising because there's not enough slack in the p &l to do it all but that business has chosen to um do certain things and really commit to them because i mean maybe one way of thinking about it is rather than thinking is it marketing or is it sales or thinking about if you wrote the word marketing investments on a piece of paper and then put a big red line through it and just said, you know, things customers see or feel.

1:10:43So swap marketing and write customers and then say, what's this investment going to do for the impression of our brand for this customer? Will it matter to them more? So at Pratt, one of the other great investments that, I did all of these great investments before I worked there, by the way. They were such a, it was a joy going working there because there wasn't much to build. It was just. You can be like Arnie Slott, mate. Just let Klopp build the Ferrari and then you just get the keys and jump in. so Klopp and Shankly and everybody else and Dagley had built Pratt long before I rots up my job was to sort of help them kind of expand it and not fuck it out of the guys keep the brand special but as someone said like any idiot at the time could have run Pratt but it was a gift of a role but how do you kind of keep the philosophy going and just because you get bigger just because you get bigger doesn't mean you can now do you can afford to do TV advertising doesn't mean you should do it so the idea of just get bigger therefore you do what all the big guys do is a is a massive fail but i remember another investment that they made was um which i look back i think it's one of the greatest investments so most of pret stores were in um most of them were in london but they're in city center targeting office workers or busy transport hub type customers that was the profile so what's the thing that matters most to people um people want nice food and drink but what you're really selling is time because they were in a hurry so speed of service was the most important thing so installing more tills and then at the time when um transport for london started to introduce oyster cards or and that and therefore the whole thing around contactless payment again this 10 years ago whatever became a thing and pret just rolled out contactless in breakneck speed across all of its shops and it just sped up the speed of service massively because people could pay faster than they used to have to do when they have to sign the docket and everything else that's an IT investment I mean you couldn't get any more kind of away from marketing so everything is marketing in some respects everything is marketing yeah so I mean the first thing to do is to say well you're doing some of these things anyway how do you just make sure that those initiatives are other businesses that as I'm trying to think of other businesses where like that's the case where everything is marketing or they've thought of things you know sort of differently

1:13:00let's think about that we'll come back I think there are there are a lot there's always like it's just the little touch points you're not thinking for example I went to cricket last week which is a there's this wonderful Indian restaurant Will's been on the podcast they've just opened a new one in Shoreditch potentially doing an event there right um and so we sort of had some lunch and went around and then i took one of our clients there and never seen this with a new restaurant and um he at the end the next day with the meal i get a personalized email from a guy called adam and i'm thinking oh fucking hell like who's is this and it just says i i we thank you so much and it's like hey hey Dan, and this is all done from, because basically at cricket you can only pay, in this short-lived shot, you have to put your details down, so it all links, but it's a moment of magic at the end, so you pay for it and you can only pay, you can't do card.

1:14:00And it goes, hey Dan, we know, God has kind of links to this, times are tight or something like this, there's a plethora and an ocean of amazing restaurants in London, we are so hugely grateful that you've come with us, and next time click this link again it's almost like it and make sure you book it through this link to book again i think there's like a little discount yes but then it's it's signed like have an amazing day adam obviously the whole thing's automated but it links to like i haven't that hasn't happened to me the restaurant london it's usually like it comes from like trust by like rate it out of five so personalized probably took 10 minutes to write yeah the knock-on effects wild i.e.

1:14:40I'm talking about it with you on a podcast. Yeah, absolutely. And it's the whole peak end rule thing, which is like your Daniel Kahneman's, which is your perception of experience is how things end, not the beginning. It's why Oasis leave their best song until the end. And I was like, that is like, again, it's not a product thing. It's not social media. No, it's customer experience though, isn't it? And joining everything up. That's it, joining everything up. Joining things up is hard because actually most things are developed in silos. So there's someone that sends out the... So what's the art to joining things up?

1:15:08Well, I think it is around having an all-seeing eye on the brand. It could be the marketing director, it could be a creative person, but ideally it's a group of people who all worry about stuff and are just automatically wired to be thinking that way. So you need people that believe in the brand and are worried about every aspect of the experience and how it all connects. It's easier in small companies, really, because there's less departments running off in different directions because you don't have as many people. It's really difficult in bigger companies It's all siloed. Everyone's got separate objectives.

1:15:42Someone's charged with making the business more digital. Someone's charged with doing lots of innovation. Someone's charged with improving the gross margin. They all are kind of fighting for their kind of objectives to make sure they get their bonus every year. And meanwhile, the customer's often completely forgotten. It just doesn't get curated or knitted together. Because is Pret, what's your opinion on Pret now, how they're doing things? Because it's not, Julian's no longer involved, is he? No, he's not a shareholder. anymore uh or hasn't you know it hasn't been since i think 2017 or or something like that i mean many of the uh many of the senior team that have been there for a number of years so they had good continuity obviously the pandemic was about i mean of all the businesses that could be that were hit prep was very badly hit because it was a very office worker type concept so that was you know extremely extremely tough i think they you know then work they make great efforts to sort try and go more be a more digital native kind of brand so they've pushed the coffee and they've pushed the loyalty programs to get people back through the doors and I think that was successful but it my impression is it caused you know it wasn't as joined up as it might have been and perhaps the customer experience suffered a little so or if you were not the person that had signed up for the coffee subscription was the experience you almost felt like a sort of second-class citizen if you just wanted to go in and buy a sandwich as you do before because the queue was suddenly three times longer and everyone's waiting for their you know caramel latte with extra customization on the loyalty program so all of a sudden it became a bit tense i think it was more difficult for the team members so the the very slick brand delivery suffered a bit but being back in london the last couple of weeks and i'll always be a prep customer and you know tuna sarni is just a thing of beauty there's many there's many things of beauty at it and the and the The croissant with the ham and the cheese.

1:17:32Yeah. The little breakfast thing. Only available until 11 o 'clock. But no, it's very, I feel they've, you know, I think they've course corrected again. I think they've learned from some of those, you know, experiments and tests. And I think the, yeah, I've been impressed with it this week. I think it's been good. Tell me about, so you're now based in Melbourne. Yes. You're working for Nando's in Oz. Yeah, I'm an advisor to, or sort of advisor non-exec to Nando's for their Australia and New Zealand business. So how many, so where, like, so they've got Nando's in UK, South Africa. Well, Nando's started in South Africa originally.

1:18:10That's where the concept started. What year was that? Roughly, like. 40 years ago. Oh, 40 years ago. Yeah, that kind of time period, I believe. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, what, so 1980s, there was Nando's talking about. so it's a it started in south africa the the largest market for nando's is the uk today yeah but uh nando's is also in america it's been in australia and new zealand for many years but there's now about 160 restaurants in australia and new zealand so i work um means in the uk like uk's i think about 500 now that kind of level four or five hundred yeah yeah the head office is in putney isn't it head office is so the uk office is in putney yeah because i I always think that Putney Nando's is the best Nando's.

1:18:53Well, that's my first... I used to live literally... My first flat in London was around the corner from the Nando's office and one of their very, very early Nando's restaurants on the Upper Richmond Road in East Putney. So when I came... The first meeting I went to when I came... Flew back last week was to go to a Nando's board meeting that was in Putney. It was great. It was like a... Coming back home... I mean, I'm a newbie in terms of involvement with Nando's, but it's kind of great going back to Putney. but I do remember trying it yeah 20 plus years 25 years ago when I first moved to London I remember going to the uh Putney restaurant yeah so that is the best one like I've got like a thing about how crispy I'll eat my chicken but the one in Wimbledon's is is just not they just don't get the crispiness right so I always think because the head office is involved I always say to my mate like we've got to go to the one in Putney um but yeah so talk me through through Nando's and how they do marketing in the UK first and then what's the supple nuance in in odds because I think we've said it's not the stores aren't it's not a like for like at all well food food food's very similar branding's very similar but yeah there's the sort of size of the restaurants and the way people use them is slightly slightly a bit more off-premise in australia whereas in the uk it's more dine-in as a as a concept so the store the the restaurants in or some of the restaurants in australia um just for legacy reasons are kind of much more they're smaller sites less seating but as the business evolves it's you know more focus on restaurants that would be closer to the style that you're used to seeing yeah in the UK I mean I feel like Nando's fits my philosophy it's rather like Pret in that I mean they do do some advertising now but that's only been a very recent thing for Nando's the entire development of Nando's has been about you know obsessiveness around customer experience the food the design why don't they so I've always wondered this um why don't what's the whole thinking of you getting your knife and fork and your sources and because like you know you like there's no service is that like a well there is the food is delivered to you but yeah you're part of serving yourself aren't you and what's the what's the genius behind that has that ever been unpacked well i think that often in a restaurant you know someone sits you down because you're the menu then you wait for them to come back to take the order it's kind of a lot quite a few pain points and frustration and people are quite happy many customers now order they can order with a with a team member or a nandaka as they called it at Nando's or you just do it on um the QR code which more and more people are doing then there's a bit of a wait for your food and you don't it depends who you're with of course but you know you often you're with family and friends and you've been you have plenty of time to chat to them so it's a bit of a it's a bit of sort of wasted time period until your food all right so actually to go up and help yourself to the sources and help yourself to a bottomless kind of uh fizzy drink or whatever is sort of something to do in it kind of yeah I'm trying to I've always tried to sort work out the genius of it because also i think there's an element of personalization so this is i think in any sort of marketing or business personalization is like well yeah because i know i'm going to go for that for suva sauce well they want you to feel comfortable and feel i mean sometimes in a restaurant people feel quite awkward they want you to feel comfortable and empowered and you're able to go and choose your soft drink and you can you know there's a there's a sense of generosity and hospitality in the way that it's laid out yes you're part you're part of serving yourself so you almost i guess you could argue you're paying for your own labor cost to do some of those things but you're enjoying doing that and your personalization you personalize it yeah so you're so you're you're more in control than you are in a restaurant where you just feel like i'm 100 in the hands of the server and i have to wait here and i can't move until they come so it's just make yourself at home and then yes experience so they've always been big on that and a personalization obviously goes right through the menu from how the basting that you choose and and how spicy you'd like your chicken to be.

1:22:41And they've done some terrific menu development that, you know, on the salad side, and they sell lots of, you know, this amazing broccoli, and there's more, it's not just, chips are fantastic, but it's not just. Perry's salt on those chips. I think there's kind of much more variety than you might expect to get in some of the more convenient, you know, faster food places. It's a restaurant. I also think the genius is when they put the taps in. Yes. I don't know when they did that, but again, that links to the Pekin rule. it's like when it because you're walking out of nando's or like you go to so like like some restaurants with you with finger food it's like for fuck's sake like it's all in your hands and you get in your car and it's all over the leather or whatever it's like they can wash your hands with soap i'm like that is but they are genius but you know the founders of nando's are still shareholders and involved in the business but they've got a long-term kind of senior team obviously there's been some more recent joiners but there's a real deep understanding of what makes that brand you know tick and they they just worry about the the details and they join it all up beautifully well they all join all up well i think they don't sit in an office i mean they're out in the restaurants a lot of the time so they're very they're a very humble grounded team that are not like you know big flash execs they're a lot of them have grown up through the restaurants and they spend a lot of time on the shop floor almost and they're close to the detail and they're but all good businesses are like that i mean you're in trouble when you've got people sitting in an office that forget what happens at the sharp line you know it's all like they say it's it's all about the people that make the chicken they're the people that matter at mando so how are the how are the team members being looked after supported well isn't it ultimately i mean i don't even call it head office i think it's restaurant support or something like that is the description but it's almost like we shouldn't have one of those it only exists to help the people on the front line deliver the brand and that's the mentality there the same gales that I was speaking to Ann.

1:24:31Pret was the same, though. Yeah, they don't. Pret was the same. Lots of businesses are the same, and lots of people like to say they do that, but I think they worry about... I've been really impressed with some of the... Things like the playlists and the music there and the lighting, right, and the sound of the music. I'm obsessed about stuff like that. Really? Now, so they're not just... And that's not left to restaurant managers for individual choice. It's carefully curated. it's done with some brilliant South African kind of artists so there's a sound to Nando's as well all these touch points are very very carefully considered and how they sort of coexist and work as a system really matters and it's not done on a workshop somewhere it's done by putting things into the restaurants and working it out and they don't get it right first time all the time but they are obsessive about the details and trying to keep it What other principles would you say from your experience with Nando's that are sort of instrumental to their success other than being in the trenches, being in the details?

1:25:36Well, I think the offer itself, the offering is very clear. So, you know, having flame grill peri peri chicken as a signature kind of dish that they're famous for, the ability to customize that, but then to develop the range and the choices around that. Some things very indulgent, some things healthier. I think the personalisation aspect that you talk about is really important and they've got very iconic design so the artwork style whether it's the seating and the cushions or the effort, they spend way more money than, you see a lot of these brands as they roll out, it's a bit cookie cutter they do the opposite to that so every restaurant is designed individually Gale's is really similar but you've got somebody or a team of people owning and running that business, I would say, for whom those things, they get excited by that.

1:26:28So they think of each restaurant as its own business, own team. Don't just say that's a model, you know, 2.5, roll out another 50 of those. They're building it from the inside out and from the bottom up and they do it. They're fortunate, you know, they're able to invest significant amounts because the business allows that now, but they really worry about the details what are the yeah so so what are sort of the marketing challenges you're facing in Australia right now with them well I think the casual dining type experience in Australia is not as well developed as it is here so if you think about anybody that's grown up in the UK in the last 20-25 years we've had pizza express and we've had a Nando's or a Wagamama the idea of those kind of places not fast food but casually there are restaurants but they are you know they're multi-site restaurants and they've got a clear concept but in australia you have you certainly have all the qsr as they call them the fast food guys so mcdonald's is there it's called mackers by the locals kfc's there looks exactly the same um all of the only native well they have i mean they have um so they have hungry hungry jacks is the australian name for burger king Really?

1:27:41It's not called Burger King? It's the only place in the world where Burger King is not Burger King, it's Hungry Jack's I used to work for Burger King I don't know the full backstory but there was a guy that had the whole franchise for Australia so he took on all of the system benefits the Whopper and the graphics and everything else but did some kind of deal that just said I think he was the original founder of Hungry Jack's so he wanted all the benefits Does it look like Burger King? yeah it's got the same it's got the same colorways in fact it's got the same colorways that you remember so it's got this sort of it's got the colorways that burger king used to have and now has again in the uk remember there was a phase when burking went blue do you remember that blue and red yeah it's a bit like pepsi coke burking mcdonald's but burking was always um the original burking was always um you know the orangey colors yeah and the flames and everything else and then for with a black background what was the sort of like the pun here but what was the beef with mcdonald's like when you're at burking uh was it like griller warfare really yeah flame grilling just tastes better as we always said uh no it's pretty intense really yeah it's pretty intense yeah but i mean they had you know they're they're a bigger business and they're executions but it's mad how well it's like so um the pepsi cola beef yeah it's real and it's i find it crazy about how these but burking used to do these i mean i think at their best they used to do these adverts that were, and they do, you know, when two tribes go to war, big soundtrack, flames versus Ronald.

1:29:13And they've got back to that in recent years. So I think when they're a bit fiery, customers quite like it. So a bit of that competition is quite healthy and playing out in public and having a bit of a, you know, good competitive spirit. It's almost like Ramp and Rivalry, isn't it, in France? Yeah, it is. I mean, McDonald's is a bit more family cutesy, isn't it? Happy Meals and Disney and Blocking's a bit more, a bit grungier. Young adults. Yes. but no the Australian franchisee guy I don't know him or his name but when he did the original deal was adamant that he kind of would pay the franchise for whatever but he would be he'd still call it Hungry Jacks and somehow he got that agreed so today there isn't Burger King there's Hungry Jacks but if you kind of blinked you go that's but I mean it looks the same and it tastes the same and he still has to follow all of the rules but it's called Hungry Jacks and it's a local you know it's treasured by the locals that's all it's ever been known as so you've got that so you've got that set and then you've got the big difference you know local nuance and and culture so in in suburban australia people i mean they do have pubs they call them hotels but they don't have as many pubs as we do pubs hotels yeah so you think you're going you know you say all i want to do is go for a pint i don't know what it goes a hotel but they're all called the hotel so that's crazy so you'll have the you know the black rock hotel and the chelsea hotel and whatever all of these all named after the districts and suburbs where they are some of them are named like our pubs funkier names of animals or history or whatever but most of them have the word hotel names of pubs are so good yeah yeah you can't you can't you can't names of our tube destinations yeah tube tube map and pubs kind of like the best that's basically the best marketing of all time i think yeah i agree brilliant design brilliant it's iconic isn't it yeah um so those so in australia though you have so the pub culture is lesser people go out less than evenings they eat at home more on sunday isn't sunday a massive well the biggest thing the biggest difference i mean look i'm a relative newbie there i've been two and a half years now but they um breakfast and brunch is is like a massive thing whether you're having a business meeting or you're meeting your you know your family or friends or going for breakfast and going for coffee is just how the whole place runs so you have these coffee shops that all of the vast majority do really good food as well they do a through the day sort of brunch menu they shut up shop at three o 'clock in the afternoon in most of these places so they're open early three till three and then you're left with your local chinese restaurant or your fish and chip shop or your italian local hero restaurants oh loads of fish and chips yeah really well we've got waves and surf and fish chips yeah yeah yeah yeah good craft beer more shrimp on the barbie vibe but maybe not yeah yeah that as well yeah that as well but but actually eating at home and entertaining at home is a bigger thing in australian culture so you have people over more often they bring their own drinks it's just a more casual more informal it doesn't always involve the barbecue but it does quite a lot and then people it's a big priority for people is if they've got they kind of save up so they can improve their kitchen indoor outdoor area and they'll prioritize a nice barbecue and that type of lifestyle it's a big thing so they go out less often but it means the casual dining format shall we say or experience is less well developed there so the challenge nando's has is where does it fit in the what's it for and when do i go there and And so the people connect really, really well with the food and the vibe of the brand.

1:32:29But we've got some work to do, I think, just to give it a role in people's repertoire and people's lives. And what are the occasions and when is it for are not as obvious to Australian customers. And some of the early Nando's that opened in Australia, as I said before, were smaller format stores with more of a takeaway propensity. And they do very, very well. And they're an important part of the future. but you could say they send a slight mixed message to customers is that a place i go for a takeaway is that a place i go to eat out and take my family whereas here nando's is a place you go to you go to nando's and it's a restaurant and you know you know the format and you enjoy the yeah as you say you enjoy the soft drinks and going back and having free refills and you enjoy the generous amount of free peri peri sauce that you can customize and cheese you know how you order it's a thing going for nando it's an experience so that same experience is available in oz but it's less understood so the work is to just and how are you what are some of the ways you're going to try and make that concept more understood well i think i mean just quality of execution so try really getting the delivery of the brand good through you know strong amounts of training and investing in the the team so they can actually deliver that experience well investing more in restaurant design so that the restaurants are bigger they've got more seating they've got some of the signals that we've talked about, like the free refill drinks and the big sauce kind of stations and all that.

1:33:53So creating a more distinctive experience, building more Nando's that look more like that is all part of it. And then there'll be a job to do on top of that around just introducing that to more people. So advertising might be part of it, but I would say it would be the icing on the cake. The effort really is about doing it, again, bottom up, inside out, invest at the restaurant level. But look, I'm a bit part advisor on the sidelines there, but it's a privilege I've always wanted to know just because I've literally been well smashing Nando's since I was 13 I had one on Monday and it's just like it's interwoven into the tapestry of my sort of being Nando's so yeah and I think for some Australians it's it is there but it's not on the scale that it is here yet but that's the opportunity it's very exciting to think that we could replicate some of the UK brand affinity and connection and get that working there it would be a really exciting sort of future for them i think talk to me because you're setting up something that's gonna link or help because one of the things i've always thought fascinating is how close oz is like culturally to the uk but how fucking miles away is versus say the us and so many brands are going going to the us as their sort of first point of call yes and we've talked over beers and stuff before about like how you know it's in a hotel you know hotel yeah i wish some booze the dog and duck hotel yeah yeah the dog and duck hotel some yeah some booze off uh southwark or southwark where it is but um yeah and what you were saying to me mate is like actually it could actually be easier for brands to go to oz because like there's there's only two supermarkets it's like a duopoly so once you actually get in like you're in kind of thing if it's working yeah then actually what's the nuance is like we our banter is very similar much close i think much i mean i'm married to an aussie so i can't get used to the banter but i think the and i feel like it's so much closer than uk america and having again green and blacks and prep both went into the into the us the visual identity of the brand kind of translates really easily but the sort of tone of voice and uh you know to go go more into that well i think i mean most of your listeners will probably know pret as the as the better example but pret's whole marketing style was it wasn't very brash it was very beautiful crazy art on the windows made out of ingredients yeah it wasn't very it wasn't very sell sell sell it was much more it's like a charm offensive with some sort of visual intelligence and humor behind it and it I had a very far enough.

1:36:29So actually, it's a bit Hugh Grant, a bit self-deprecating, but kind of, you know, humble. We really hope you think our coffee is great. We think it's really good too and come and try it. And I'm greeted with, but it's not a hard sell. So you lift that and you take that brand. There's still a massive demand for good fresh food on the go in Washington, D.C. or New York or Chicago, all the places where we were, particularly New York. But the tone of voice of Pratt was a bit too subtle. And the locals found it, in some ways found it sort of underwhelming at times, in that it wasn't quite sort of, rather than we've got really good organic coffee, and we'd write the really good in brackets because we didn't want to be too arrogant and too confident.

1:37:20And the Americans would go, you know, you bunch of losers. You need to have really fantastic coffee, not really good. So the immediacy and the more kind of up and at it, I mean, you see that in the not so great shades of American kind of confidence and attitude. But the, yeah, the brashness factor, I think, meant that that tone of voice didn't travel as automatically. Whereas the Aussies and ourselves are on a very similar page, I think, in terms of both markets appreciate really good design, really good food quality and quite humorous low-key marketing very frequently we've all got lots of mates mate yeah and uh you know they shorten every word and we don't and things like that but they've got i think i think the two are i think the two are similar and the australian grocery trade is you're right there's two two major players they're woolworths and coles who between them have i think 80 plus market share so if you can get a brand into the australian market you can get into sort of 2 000 plus grocery stores across those two and you don't need a giant team to do that what you do need is people that kind of can turn it on and make it happen locally but you don't need to build a big infrastructure to do it and yet it's a bit like getting another tesco or samsbury in the uk so but with this because this is what i was speaking to georgie about um who's your business partner she was over yeah georgie georgie scott yeah yeah she's brilliant but she was saying that you know we're having a good old chinwag about how like and i think i think people and i i was like around saying sort of thing the same is like the uk grocery market is literally the best in the world and it's like and and like the buyers all go out go over to coles a lot of the buyers they'll go over to buy and stuff like that and also we've got from a challenge brand perspective it's like we're fortunate in the sense that like if you don't get into one you've got another four or five to knock on the doors true true and but whereas in like in oz it's like you've basically got two and they're like there isn't really a selfridges there's like this is what arum's saying to me there's not really like this like big indie market is there apparently i don't know like you i've it's just what i think i think there are some great indies but it's very fragmented and it's very different you know you need different wholesale partners in different states to do it so you can do it but it's a lot more hard yards and it's grassroots type development so if you want to do something to get scale of distribution at any pace then the two the two big retailers or one of the two is an important step probably for a grocery brand to get one of them on board you know pretty early in the journey but you're seeing I mean there are other there are other retailers I mean Costco's building a good you know developing business there so there's other routes in outside of Coles and Woolworths but they are you know they're pretty they're pretty dominant but yeah george's experience i mean she's worked in fmcg all of her life she's actually worked in the uk she's an aussie but she spent most of her life in sydney but she was part of the team that took brands like oakley and fever tree which were um i guess not non-australian brands into the australian market and helped sort of develop them from a trade point of view and just checking that the the right formats the right marketing messaging in both of those cases the brands translated really smoothly so it's more about trade execution and both of those brands have gone on to build successful footprints in australia and there's lots of other uk brand i mean a brand like the spice tailor has done really really well in australia one of the things with australian grocery my observations and as i say well different as in you know two big chains rather than five six with changes you've highlighted i I think there are less manufacturing and supply options for the retailers.

1:41:11So private label isn't as developed as it is here. It's becoming stronger and stronger. But you think of the success that people like Tesco and Sainsbury and Asda have had here, it's been because there's been amazing kind of UK food and drink manufacturing that has been able to bring innovation to the table and develop all of those very comprehensive private label ranges. So there's less innovation. but australia is a really kind of hot scene in terms of cool brands emerging you know like in beauty and like brands like asop coming through and things like that but we'll chase it melbourne's the best place he's ever been to it's great but most but most of the innovation isn't in the grocery stores it's in the hotels or the coffee shops or the restaurants or the fashion places or the beauty places beautiful looking brands really stylish got a real so it's a hotbed of innovation there but when it gets into packaged goods format fmcg it's kind of a bit behind here So there's less.

1:42:02But the big multinationals, most of them have an operation in Australia. But, you know, it's not the biggest part of the world. So they don't tend to put huge investment into the market. So they're not building these amazing factories and facilities because the market's almost perhaps not big enough to justify that versus doing bigger things in Europe, Asia or America. So Australia's it's an option, but it's not a must do for some of those multinationals, whereas most of those multinationals are very active in the UK. so as a result of that you know the challenger brands seen here there's just so many more challenger brands because there's it's easier there are more options to get a product produced that you can either build your own manufacturing or you can tap into you know a third-party supplier to do that it's not impossible to do that in australia but it's like there's less supply side choices i would say if you're a uk brand going over there's less competition i think there is i think there is less competition i think there is less competition but then you but you've got to work through the practicalities of you know can you produce your product locally because ideally you would do that if you can i believe that's what yeah that's what they're doing the guys at dash yeah jack and alex are doing that um i think they found they've got a team over there they've got a team there i think the so they wanted to do local manufacturing because it was part of their sustainability footprint and everything else so you can understand the decision to do that um manufacturing is more expensive in australia labor costs are higher just wages are higher just economically so uh the cost of producing a product in australia would be higher than here if you looked at it like for like so whilst you think you're saving money by making locally the actual cost of making it is higher in most cases yeah so that's one thought for a brand you know i mean little moons has now gone into australia i don't know whether they're making making the moches in australia or whether they're shipping them from here frozen i mean is the shipping not extortionate or is it it's expensive but it's a possible it's a possible route it's a possible route and there's lots of food and drink in australia that's coming in from outside of australia from from the sort of asia pack region a lot of it so you've got to work through it's working through what's the right can the brand translate to the local market and then if so what's the right operating model to run the brand in the Australian market?

1:44:18Do you need your own company there or can you do it completely through a distributor? Who's going to manufacture the product or are you going to ship it over from your existing manufacturing here? How do you price it in the market? Do you launch with both of the big retailers at the same time if you can or do you work with one first, establish it, then roll it out? So yeah, so the business we've set up, we've got two businesses, one called Backpack Adventures, which is about UK challenger brands that want to go to Australia and it's about sitting on their side of the table we're not a distributor, we're not a marketing agency, but we will almost kind of join the team and sort of be part of the development of a business plan for the Australian market.

1:44:57And then we've got another side to our consultancy business called Founder and Future, which is about working with founder-led brands or brands that have received investment from private equity firms or bigger trade acquirers that are trying to work out how do you grow the business without losing that sort of founder sizzle, which is, I'd like to think that's my specialist. lifetime subjects i've i'm well just how do how do brands scale without losing all that kind of original founder flair and you know i've been fortunate to i have been a founder but i'm more of a someone that works with founders to help so talk me through that uh that process because yeah you know i like maybe yeah talk me through how how do brands scale without losing the founders sizzle because well it's it's it's hard it's hard and i've just heard so many horror stories but it's going wrong and then like i've heard stories of like the founder once it gets sold the founders basically out the door like what's your perspective on the founder sizzle well i think part of the magic of founders is their instinct and intuition isn't it and they've got that you know they've done something in the first they've created a brand or a business in the first place because they really believe in something and they're passionate about it and they they're on a mission almost so they can run on instinct a lot of the time and you know hopefully along the journey they hire some capable people to work alongside them that professionalizes that process and uses data and insights to to kind of make you know make even better decisions but if they leave the building say the business has been sold or or they're no or required then there's a massive there's a massive vacuum sometimes because they've been the person that's always been the sort of fountain of knowledge that everybody's gone to to make a decision so you can end up quite quickly turning into you think you're getting all the benefits of being part of a corporate or having more investment but you lose all the agility of the founder mindset and the founder thinking so everyone you know better quality people on paper joining those businesses but they're they're not used to running on instinct they're used to running on process and And they used to, you know, things being very, very sort of process oriented rather than just gut feel and judgment.

1:47:11So what we think the opportunity is, is to try and, you know, help codify almost that founder spirit right down in a way that's useful. Like what's the playbook really and what really matters about a brand so that the brand can thrive whether the founder's there or not. Sometimes great if the founder could continue in some guys. How would you do that with, say, Julian or maybe another? well I just think you you spend you spend time with the founders but not just the founders the people in the team and you just try and work out what is it you look back over the history of a brand what's worked what's not when's it gone when's it really clicked and worked and why was that examples of activation or initiatives or decisions that have allowed the business to fly and then you try and highlight some moments and you go this is actually where you've kind of broken the brand here you've gone off you've gone off course and here's why well I think when you you know, you might have a brand that's got a trailblazing spirit.

1:48:04So its whole ethos around MPD and innovation is around bringing new things to the market. You know, Causton Press Rebar. And then you go, another team comes and looks at it and they're charged with what's the next flavor or innovation for this brand. And their start point is not kind of what's exciting in the kitchen and what's the food trend, but is more what are the biggest flavors in the market. so why don't we launch an orange because or a lemon because they're big categories now i'm not saying those are bad things but they're predictable things and they're also probably what every other brand in the mind are doing so the person that comes up and says you know it's the daring factor and the sort of you know the more pioneering spirit to do to do new things are off i think is often what gets lost and brands just become too sensible almost because they've done too much homework too much research and they just turn into a they morph into being a big company how do you keep the systems that sort of put a ring fence that sizzle because i get what you're saying completely but it's like that's such what i think i think i think a lot of the good brands put in place you know they they empower the management team first and foremost because people running the business need to do this not not keep you know rehiring the founder every three years when it goes wrong which i mean it's a starbucks with schultz who keeps going back and all that so i I think maintaining the founder spirit isn't necessarily about retaining the founder, but there are quite smart ways of, you can put in place kind of advisory boards and things like that that are slightly detached.

1:49:33They are detached from the day-to-day running of the business, but they're people who have got a really good grasp, and it might involve the founder, and it's giving those people a voice and giving them the chance to contribute, not get in the way of the day-to-day operations. Is there an example where you've done that? We did it at Green and Blacks. We did it at Green and Blacks. So when Cadbury bought Green and Blacks, they were, it's fair to say, the time i think they were very very nervous from the ceo down to the guy who was the mna director that bought the business that whilst they could bring lots of scale and power to it they could also really screw it up if they weren't careful because they kind of knew that their machine there was less high touch it's very good at doing what it did so they um they kept the business independent rather like coca-cola kept innocent independent and innocent still is green and Blacks was run as a separate business for about four years after Cabri acquired it then it then it moved into the mothership but during those four years they ran an advisory board that had Craig Sams who was one of the original founders of Green and Blacks myself and William who you know as well who was our chairman we were on that group the CEO of Green and Blacks who had been appointed by Cabri was there and the and the finance director and then somebody from kind of cabri cabri group but it was a kind of wasn't the board of the company that had full control over everything but it was um it was a forum to allow people to contribute and um hopefully encourage and breed some good behaviors but also if they saw things that they thought you're really veering off with this it was a chance to kind of intervene or at least provide that point of view and then at the end of the day the company is owned by the new owners so someone in the company has to decide whether they're up for they're certainly up for hearing that feedback but are they up for actually acting upon that feedback that's clearly the new owner's choice or the investor's choice yeah but this is a massive this is a massive challenge for i mean you think people that invest in businesses usually they're investing there's usually a founder involved at that point you know that's something like libby at piper when they're looking at how do we we think this business is really interesting they usually think this founder's got some special skills as well so So those are the kind of businesses they want to invest in.

1:51:45But how does that business kind of grow up, really, and go to the next stage? So there's this whole area of how do you get the best out of... I think getting the best out of the founders is not just doing things like they all used to be done and going back in a nostalgic way, because businesses need to be future-focused, fresh, relevant. It is like, how do you optimise that tension between the sort of founder instinct and then the future? Yeah, because Libby invests in Flatiron, the state. place i went for lunch with charlie who's the founder yeah yeah and his he was he's a fucking genius like in like and see he came up with the little ice creams at the end yeah great he was the one who discovered yeah that this flat iron was almost underrated or massively undervalued yet absolutely delicious piece of um meat and then also he was like well fuck this i'm gonna call every single is it arbitoire which is where the fucking cows are abattoir yeah um and just relentlessly call them.

1:52:44And I'm going to cut out all the middlemen, all the butchers, go straight to the source. And I think for 10, maybe five, six years, which now sounds, with all the inflation going on, I think it was a£10 steak. That's right. Which is absolute genius. The genius of when you sit down, there was automatically like truffle popcorn and flavoured water. Again, it's all this stuff we've been talking about today, like that experience. but like how how how you build that without him how you keep that there without him being there every day it's like i don't know how you do like what would you say how would you keep if that's genius how do you put it in code well it's a bit like i mean in the way that mechanisms like uh b corp have been helpful i think in that they started to get companies to at least rather than just think about mathematical decisions they're thinking about impact decisions when they're making putting together business plans or budgets there's another lens on things and i think the founder lens is similar so just how do you just inject that thinking you know what would what would the founders answer you know be to that what was their what was their original there's something that they would be dissatisfied with that led them to start the business in in the first place what's the cause they're agitating for and just checking that there's that counterbalance to the probably very good common sense of the new professional more professional team who get ever more sensible thinking they're doing a good job and they are doing a good job but sometimes by getting ever more sensible they knock all the edges off the brand that made it so look this is not easy stuff this but it's about how do you bring the you know not the voice of the past just because you want to kind of keep the founder involved but how do you bring that sort of i mean most fans i know uh i mean they're never happy really i mean there's they're just constantly agitating there's a new thing that they're i mean julian at itsy ex-prat julie i mean it there's always something it's just constant he's not happy if he's not sort of unhappy and trying to fix something and move it forward and improve it and do it differently and do it better it's that kind of mindset i think in corporate life that doesn't always not saying people don't have some of those attributes and skills but those skills are not valued as highly i don't think you know and i just think maybe i could that could be like that would be a business model for me absolutely i'm just thinking that i've like done all these interviews like hire me for it i'm sorry maybe we should work together mark i'm just think about that because i've always i've always thought like about and perry's always said this to me he's like you've got all these i've always thought how do i've so many of these people i'm just like you do yeah yeah i've always tried to understand their magic then i listen back to the episode then i write notes but you're it's the curiosity that you've you know you've got and you want to keep finding out more and more and you you link it up and things you've read and things you've heard from this business or that business and you're you're just so curious that's the skill that's a big part of a founder is the curiosity yeah constant constant curiosity constant slight sort of insecurity and it's not working even when it's working well feeling like you're a phone call away from some bad news on you know without always right metalness sort of like well i don't definitely that's what it feels like it's kind of it's you've got to have great resilience determination but you've just so i think that's i think that's exciting because i mean i've worked with i've worked with some brilliant founders worked with private equity worked for some big corporates seen brands not all brands go off the rails when they get investment or get bought, you know, some of the challenger brands do very, very well under new ownership but there are What are the hero stories?

1:56:12What are the hero stories of brands that have been Fevertree? Well Fevertree floated, Fevertree is a bit different, so I mean Fevertree yeah, two great founders very, very clear positioning and purpose for the business. you know what they worked in one Charles work for gins didn't he before and worked out that rather than launching the 75th brand to be a premium gin why wouldn't you be the best tonic that all the 75 gins wanted to be partnering with that was a brilliant bit of you know they all want to hang out and then they got to in fact it's good example that's a good that business is a good example of so that it's become you know famous now if three quarters of your drink is the mixer mixer the best you know you choose the best tonic but that that was an ad line that was created by an agency called brave back in the day um as before they were really doing any advertising but that's actually that's a whole expression of that brand that guy governed all of their initiatives so that's when i say about getting the creative skills in early they didn't get that creative agency in because they were doing an ad campaign maybe they wanted a couple of ads for but they got top talent in early and out of that came almost a genius line that's lasted forever and gone you know gone gone global yeah they however i mean they floated so they've got a different set of pressures now so they've not got the their style's not being cramped by corporate ownership but it's being because there's the pressure of being on the stock market and having to satisfy the city and deal with that which i would imagine preoccupies most of their time they're still doing very well but any variation in their business performance versus is what they said at the last update to the city just gets punished severely you're just constantly under the spotlight so you have less freedom than you do under when you're in private ownership so i think that that models that model's really really tough but you look at i mean someone like the vc firms like piper and like active that have backed backed many many brands over time and there's a series of case studies of success and perry's been involved in designing a lot of them of brands where, you know, with some investment and some smart help, the original founder idea has really kicked on.

1:58:21I mean, Pret's a good example of that. I mean, Pret went through a few different ownership stages, but, you know, it was between 2011, I think, and 2017, it was around about those timelines. It was backed by Bridgepoint, a big private equity firm who were fantastic for Pret. They gave it greater resources intensity. Some super smart people joined our board and were they the people that were you know telling us what to do on the marketing i mean they'd have a view but not really but they were really good on things like bringing discipline and analytics to the business planning process and choosing better sites and using more data in the business they were they brought some smart intelligence that made better logic logic and magic you know found a future wheels it's these tension points and how do you flush them all out so because what you're trying to do is not go all sensible and not go all founder crazy it's just how do you get this constant you want you want positive tension all the time and you want but if sometimes it you can see how businesses end up with a room of people who don't like the tension they're all so sensible that they don't confront the tricky things that and it's out of these kind of tensions that the brand magic often often comes so look that's what we're sorry that's what we're going to be going to be doing the um the other thing i wanted to ask you that's good is like the when you got the green and blacks exit like was that what what talk me through that period was that when you first made a good bit of dough basically was green and blacks is that the it was my it was my first time working for i mean i had a kind of life working for United Biscuits and then I worked for Burger King then got persuaded by William Kendall to come and join Greener Blacks.

2:00:08How did you meet William? I met him through they decided they wanted a marketing director or head of marketing role. How old were you? I was uh how old was I I was like 28 or something like that. Fucking hell that's so young. But I was at Burger King I had a 22 million pounds marketing budget and I was part of a big team and a big global brand. And then I met William on a motorway services on a Saturday morning. Oh, really? What was the motorway services? Oh, somewhere up there. Was it a little chef or something like that? It was a bad version of a little chef. And I was checking out the Burger King because I still work for Burger King there.

2:00:41Actually, we were in one of those sort of dodgy hotels that's next to a motorway service area. It's the only place we could find for a coffee. And just as we sat down for a coffee, there was a wedding reception. We found ourselves in the middle of a wedding reception during my first meeting with him and first interview. and yeah he owned and run or been part of the one of the owners of Covent Garden Soup Company and they he and his business partner had sold that business bought into Green and Blacks and Whole Earth they were both companies were together at that time Whole Earth Peanut Butters and yeah yeah I was marketing director of that for a while yeah and then part of the Green and Blacks journey was actually to divest of Whole Earth and just focus on Green and Blacks so Fasan and who were until recently with the owners of Whole Earth bought that.

2:01:22So we sold the Whole Earth brand and used the money from that to put into more marketing for Green and Blacks. That's how we really funded the growth of Green and Blacks and just focused on that. So no, I was kind of headhunted really. Met William, thought he was very interesting, gone very well. And then I said no, because I've got a proper job in a big company and this sounds like wild, wild west crazy. and he told me my salary would go down as well and there was no company car all the things I felt I'd worked hard for was just like you don't get any of that and I think he threatened to buy me a oyster card or something like that for my for my public transport travel because that was a good look for an organic foods company and anyway he'd spotted something I think in me that was frustrated by the corporate machine which was well just how slow it was and how nobody made a decision and everybody was sort of incentivized to i don't know just not stick their neck out really i mean i think that's one of the big challenges with brand development in corporates is if you really believe in something and you stick your neck out on a new product launch or a new direction for the brand if it goes really really well there's not much in it for you but if it goes wrong it's kind of career threatening and you've screwed up your career so the risk reward ratio is all wrong so that's why basically everyone's too scared to get their full up to make could take a route most of my mates work in i mean i've worked for big companies i'm i'm very positive about big companies but they are designed to stop you doing stuff rather than to liberate and there is there's not enough incentive for risk taking in big companies because they're too they're already successful and they're just concerned about screwing it up i get it i get it i hadn't thought it from that angle yeah but you're not you're not encouraged it's quite career threatening if you go out on a limb and be entrepreneurial and it backfires but this is This is where the founder sizzle thing could be another little good consultancy business.

2:03:16Absolutely. I mean, look, there's some great big companies. One of the things that annoys me about the challenger brands world is when everyone's so rude about big companies. There's some brilliant people in them. They've got great systems, great products. They employ thousands of people. But often they're not very entrepreneurial. That is their... That's why they're quite... I'll hand up on that one. I've said a few things. But that's why they're quite fun to take on sometimes, because they're a bit vulnerable in that area. So anyway, cut long story short, then my frustration, I had a particular trip to, it was to the States with Burger King, and to some kind of group conference thing.

2:03:54And it was an exciting trip, but it was just like, oh, God, this is so corporate. It was even more corporate when it's the US. And then by the time I got home, I had another phone call from William saying, have you rethought your... So he basically stalked me for about three or four months, and then I eventually said yes. So that's the first time I worked for a more entrepreneurial, privately owned business. And yeah, I went from 22 million marketing budget to about, you know, 20 grand marketing budget. And you're also in charge of the reception and the Christmas party, because that's part of marketing.

2:04:25Where were you guys based? We're based in Waterloo, just off the cut. And we made the chocolate in Italy. Where's the cut? The cut is by the... The cut is just by Waterloo Station. Yeah. And it's the road we've met there. It's where the Young Vic Theatre's on. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That runs up between Waterloo up to Southwark Tube. Oh, by the Ring Pub? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was our... I've actually done a podcast on that Ring Pub. Oh, that's great, yeah. Great history. It's an old boxing ring, isn't it? Yeah, because they had, like, I did... Many a good Green and Blacks strategy decision was taken in the ring.

2:04:58Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our board room was so small, we obviously accidentally had to spill over to the ring. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, talk about that exit period. Well, that exit was, I mean, so I joined and quite quickly the business wanted to raise money and it ran a process to do some fundraising and actually managed to raise money from Cadbury. So they put money, they only bought 5 % of the business, put some money in, said actually, you know, they thought what we were doing was interesting. they'd try and be a supportive sort of investor in the background but they were just interested to watch and look at a more you know look at look at a brand that was slightly it was in their category but it was a it was more dark chocolate more premium and it was organic and ethical gave them an inside track on a developing niche really and they were great as an investor had a guy called mark reckitt who represented them on the boards he'd come wreck it yeah he was a sort of finance director eminent it's funny for the name reckitt yeah to be in finance oh he's a he's a lovely guy and I think he I mean he's his favorite his favorite day of the month when he got to come to Green and Black's board because it was all so you know chaotic compared to his normal life and he could taste the chocolate and have a view and pretend to be a marketing person so it was it was good fun for them but then that led to yeah it did eventually it led to um them acquiring the full company in 2005 I think it I think it was um so yeah that was the first time I got a kind of paycheck and it was but it was more the recognition I think and it helped I mean it just my profile kind of was was good at great I mean I was it I was allowed to sort of represent the brand and I wasn't the founder of the brand there was a husband and wife team that had started it originally but it felt like my baby and I was able to sort of yeah go and speak at conferences and about it and tell the story of it and yeah it's a very it's a very special time then I stayed for another three years after that but so that's how that kicks that so that's my founder future kind of thing because i've lived i've lived through the because i didn't want to leave great so the exit i got a bit of got a bit of money it was good helped me kind of move from a one-bed flat to a two-bed flat type level and gives you some choices but it wasn't a you know life-changing amount of money but it was what i did i found it quite a tough time though because actually some of my peers at green and blacks kind of gradually left because they wanted to go on and do you know something else and I so I found myself almost feeling ever more like the you know the last remaining sort of voice of the founder in an ever more sensible world and I'd worked in big companies so it didn't freak me out I knew what they were good and bad at and the brand kept growing we did really well and we took it to America and worked with the Cadbury business in or the yeah their group kind of operation in in the US to get into places like Whole Foods and it was quite a nice business that was building there but then craft then craft bought cabri so we went from being a small little separate division of cabri to suddenly it all got consumed and a lot of the cabri people that when did craft buy cabri this must have been about it must have been about 2008 nine something like that i think round about that time but it was a hostile takeover bid and all of a sudden so all of our kind of all of the corporate people we'd been dealing with at cabri who were quite fond of green and blacks but we used to still think they were quite corporate and we were trying to get them to go a bit more rogue and see things our way suddenly they all got a bit marginalized because craft came in and consumed cabri and then green and blacks eventually kind of just became a brand within a portfolio and was no longer run as an independent but how did you get that brand ready to exit because that's my one of the things i've talked about at length is the difference between product market fit and brand exit fit yeah and it's like and you've seen this quite a few times the brand and it's like well you need to show good growth yeah that's the first thing and ideally you need to show that you can take the brand somewhere you know to a segment of the category or the market that the bigger players struggle to go to naturally with their own brands so green and blacks was yes it was a niche it was premium chocolate it was higher cocoa dark chocolate small part of the market but the brand was like super credible in that space so do something you know around the ankles really rather than going straight sort of for the because the big companies don't need to buy a sort of version of themselves really they need to invest in things that allow them to travel to new more future-proof segments if you like in a market they understand but with a brand proposition that has the authenticity and credibility to perhaps you know stretch those places in a way that their existing portfolio would struggle to do that so yeah so you know you have a clear proposition you need to show that there's growth ahead not just that you've had all the growth you know you need to leave something on the table that's important for an exit strategy like any deal really both parties have got to feel that they've been a bit screwed you know there's everybody wanting a bit more but it's got to be you've got to leave something ahead for the new owners to kind of believe there's if you've maxed out all the growth that's a pretty unexciting investment so how do you rather than be too greedy and grab it all how do you you know sell while you're on the way up rather than waiting for it to sort of fizzle out i think is is it is important because someone wants to invest in something that's growing that they believe they can grow even faster or carry on growing um and i do think increasingly the to get exit ready as well it's you know being able to convince whoever is investing in you that um the brand proposition is crystal clear and well understood so that you can almost hand it over and someone can run with it so that's where the likes of me struggle slightly hence why founder and futures come into being because it's about getting all of the sort of crazy marketing founder types it's about getting the kind of our sort of secret sauce out of our heads and down onto paper as best we can so that these brands not not not like boring guidelines but that you just feel that you are actually able to articulate it really clearly and that actually it's it's a much bigger thing than the people who've been involved and it should be able to thrive without you helpful if they might want you to be involved with it i think again we're linking this back to this seth going because it's so fresh in my mind but what he does is he's very good at he kind of does that sizzle but what he will do at the end of his book he's got 12 questions and one of the things or 12 principles and one of the things is you're not stuck in traffic you are traffic which is quite a big heady thing basically what he's saying is never forget you're part of this system and we're so self-obsessed that we're like oh my god I'm stuck in traffic it's like mate you are traffic it's like a quite a weird but it unhinges your thinking from these guardrails of kind of um not monotony but just like just trained ways of doing things yeah and it's just kind of like again rory southern that's that's basically what he does is the opposite of a good idea is a good idea um you know and i i think there's just ways these little sort of questions that you can i think questions are what founders are so good at as you said like question everything i think the sizzles actually what questions would julian ask what questions yeah i don't know that's i think founders are good at bigger picture longer term thinking as well they're not well i mean we're everyone's different but i just think a lot of the really good founders are thinking about how do you build something that's enduring and that you know will be really fit for the future rather than just is it going to hit the targets in 18 months time so they apply a longer they definitely have a longer-term perspective, I think, on decision-making.

2:12:22I mean, Nando's is a big business. It's privately owned, totally different behaviors to a business that's in the city, thinking about how it hits its targets next quarter. It doesn't mean they're any less commercial. In fact, they're really on the detail, but they're thinking about investments with a longer-term perspective. And actually, they want in 10 years' time that business to be even stronger, but fit for the next generation to kind of take it on. So I think that screens out some of the really crappy decisions that often happen on brands that are a bit short-term and opportunistic. Mate, let's wrap that up.

2:12:52We've been going for ages, but we could talk about this for another two and a half hours. As always, just an absolute joy to sit with you, mate. Your genius is the way you can link everything together. It's marketing is everything. The mental availability, it's been an absolute joy. Yeah, well, good to see you. And yeah, well done on the continued hungry machine. Thank you, mate. All right, good to see you. Thank you so, so much for listening to the podcast. I really, really do appreciate it. If you liked that episode, only if you liked it, please do give it five stars, subscribe, tell all your friends, families, foes, next door, but one, cat, dog, whatever.

2:13:30Please tell everyone about this podcast. It means the world to me. And I really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of Challenger Food and Drink Brands. Please do hit me up on LinkedIn, search Dan Pope, and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much