Alice Wainwright and Ben Charalambous: Co-founders of RISE

0:00Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea. What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues.

0:12This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal.

0:25Listen in colour. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world. together with a musician shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guests there, I'm very pleased to say, are Alice and Ben in that order. We've ascertained. That's Alice Wainwright and Ben Charalambas, co-founder of Rise, a B Corp certified coffee subscription club, which we'll be finding out what that is when it's at home, literally at home. Missing their morning coffee trip during the COVID-19 lockdown, Alice and Ben found themselves overwhelmed by the many origins, roast types and brands available online.

0:56Frustrated by the lack of sustainable ethical coffee options on supermarket shelves and finding supermarket beans often stale and bitter, they decided to set up their own business to solve these problems. Entrance stage left, Rise Coffee. The multi-brand coffee subscription club was launched in 2020, bringing sustainably sourced, freshly roasted coffee from two independent roasters every month to your doorstep, with 1 % of all sales going to their Friendly Coffee Fund, what a lovely name, which supports coffee-growing communities. It's so nice to meet you both. Thank you for having us. I love having two for the price of one.

1:29Not that you do two for the price of one and your thing, although I noticed when I went online that if you get four bags, it's better value than if you get one. It is. Which is great. You met on a dating website. Yes, am I allowed to say that? You are, yeah. Excellent, I just did. Just before lockdown. And somehow or other, here we are five years later with this business. How did this cockamamie idea begin? What happened? Yeah, it's a bit of a crazy whirlwind story, really. we met was it two weeks two to three weeks before the first lockdown on dating app got locked down together and within about three months we had a puppy we had a business and we're just enjoying during the start of lockdown really in some ways yeah i think none of us could have imagined when we first met that everything would change so much so quickly and obviously nobody saw a lockdown coming but the business idea really just came out the blue and then once we had the idea it just took car for like a train lead in the station and before we knew it we actually had launched the business and we were in deep with lots to do and when you say it came out the blue at this you know and we all know in life nothing quite comes out the blue you worked in advertising at the time some fine advertising agencies it's my first career um and and ben i think you were a commercial director and property company and all that i mean kind of you know proper jobs yeah yeah how then did this coming out of the blue really happen right at the beginning i'm not getting the right coffee let's go and set up a business I mean really yeah so it sounds slightly I mean that's a big decision to take yeah absolutely I mean we were working really hard but obviously locked down so we're at home all the time and one day we were sat outside our flat on the step looking at all the different deliveries coming and going to all our neighbours across the street and we said oh we'd really love to have a delicious flat white from a lovely cafe in London that we were missing as we walked into work.

3:18So we looked online to find some coffee, a coffee subscription to get coffee to our door. And we were really just overwhelmed by the amount of choice. And we found that coffee in general was quite pretentious and had quite a lot of jargon. And so we went to the supermarket as well and tried all the different coffee that we could find on the shelves there. And we just thought to ourselves, there's nothing that's delivering the variety of specialty coffee that we want that's freshly roasted, that's different each month, that's exciting and sustainably sourced as well. That was a huge thing at the time.

3:49We just couldn't find anything that had any clear information on the packaging and that really spoke to us as sustainably minded consumers. So we thought, why not just set up exactly the business that we're dreaming of, which as you describe is a multi-roastery coffee subscription club. And Ben, just the very first thing, just the very, very first thing you did in order to realize your dream. So first thing we did when we had the idea was set up a kickstart campaign, a crowdfunding campaign, just to see if we had any interest from other people with our idea to sort of validate the idea, I guess.

4:25And that was a month long campaign. We went over our funding target by quite some way, I think about 130 % over. and that kind of gave us the confidence to be like this is actually, you know, we've got a business idea here and people are interested in the product and having that variety and discovery in coffee. So during that time, as we sort of hit our target, we knew that we had to now start planning the launch of the business and creating the website, all the packaging and all these different bits and pieces that come with launching a business. So in that sort of first 30 days or so, we just had so much more to do than we ever even realized.

5:00But the first question was ask the market and that's what they did. And Alice and Ben are sitting here as the founders of the very successful Rise. They deliver coffee to your door and they choose really nice things themselves. That's what they do. And I wonder when you get really big, if you'll be able to do that personally. You have to get professionals in as well, in addition to you. We talked about that first step, Ben, and what you did. You raised the money, you go, right, the market needs it. I then read somewhere that there was a point where one of your rooms was full of the stuff, the coffee, that you were then going to have to distribute.

5:32you know when you've said yes to something and then you're in it yeah yeah what did that feel like for both of you going okay we've we've now crossed the rubicon i don't know if you'd left your jobs by then but you know right so you know you're double you're multitasking was there a you know just explain the feeling that you had when you're knee-deep in coffee going what have we actually done for the first few months it was just super fun you know it was pure chaos there was so much happening, as you mentioned, working full time. But I think it took maybe six or nine months for us to realize, okay, wow, this is a real business now.

6:06We have some big decisions to make. And as you mentioned, not just one bedroom, the entire flat. We had a one bedroom flat with no garden and a dog. And it was floor to ceiling with coffee and boxes. And as you opened our front door, you just got hit with this amazing smell of freshly roasted coffee. And for a while, it was manageable but it quickly became a point of tension between us both but there's also a few incidents that happened where it became unmanageable where was on a zoom call once in our corporate jobs and ringing the doorbell and there was like two pallets at our front door where we had to unstack i think we had like three minutes you know we're on mute to maybe a client call which obviously sounds terribly unprofessional in hindsight and we had to just quickly get out there unload these pallets a thousand kilos of oat milk things like this happening every day almost and it was unmanageable and it was quite hard so what point did you then go hold on a minute we've got to transition full-time here because that's a moment isn't it when the two of you go there's nice money coming in i enjoy my job you're both really good at what you do i assume because you're both working proper companies and then you go turn it off it was alice basically gave me an ultimatum really in terms of um the next sort of step i guess in in the company not really gave me an ultimatum and gave us an ultimatum because it was unmanageable the living situation with being in a one bedroom flat in Brixton so we had to then look at finding the next step for the business to take it to that next level of professionalism I suppose and so we went looking for storage units and we spent a bit of time in and out of different storage units in Brixton which was by the way a really dark period I mean imagine doing a 14 hour day in your corporate job because we were still working full time for quite a while and then going to a freezing cold pitch black storage unit in the middle of winter packing till 2am and then you know having a few hours sleep and doing the same thing every day and if we wanted to go for a few days away on holiday you know god forbid you know a week away the amount of work we had to do in preparation and amount of time spending so do you remember when you said we are resigning and do you remember why and what pushed you over right at that minute what was the actual final straw it was different for both of us do you want to go with your story first um yes and with myself i was working for one corporate company i moved across to a new new company it wasn't a company that i was enjoying working for it wasn't the environment that i was expecting and things like that so for me it was more of a i guess like a push to sort of say my current corporate world's not working i've got this great business here let's let's sort of take that so you were comfortable moving away from something it kind of made sense and for you Alice?

8:43So I was a lot more well I am a lot more risk averse so I actually went part-time initially and tried to manage but I had quite a senior job so it was still very difficult and I just found that my head wasn't in it you know my headspace was somewhere else so even if I'm in a you know an important meeting I'm still thinking about all the things and all the ideas of the business 24-7 so I went part-time and then actually, unfortunately, my dad got really sick. So around that time, I left the job. And I spent about six months, we both spent about six months with the business sort of on the back foot whilst we looked after my dad in hospital.

9:18And he eventually passed away, which obviously then also was really difficult for the business. But he always said to me, you know, get out of this, this corporate life, like you have a great business, work for yourself, you'll never look back. And off the back of all of that experience, and you know, it was a difficult year. But But from there on, I've worked for the business full-time and definitely haven't looked back. I think having us both full-time in the business, it has just completely... Because this was only the last couple of years then, is it full-time? It was around two and a half years ago.

9:48Yes. And your dad died last... In 2023. 2023. Yes. And then I fell pregnant as well. There's not much going on for Alice. It's a very difficult time, but also juggling motherhood with the business. We've now got into a really good rhythm. and I think what you're alluding to Ben is since giving it 100 % focus we couldn't have imagined the growth that we would have unlocked so for anyone out there that maybe is kind of juggling a side hustle if you are passionate about something I would say 100 % just dive in feet first and go for it. Creativity is in the commitment and these two are living and breathing it.

10:23Alice Wainwright, Ben Chiarad-Umbus are my business shapers they're the founders of Rise bringing you beautiful coffee fresh to your door every day and I'll be doing voiceovers for you in the future. Much more coming up. I won't be. Sorry, just to be clear. That was a joke. Much more from my guest, Alison Benkamp, in a couple of minutes. Right now, though, we're going to hear a taste of from the Mission on Innovation series, which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Leader Kellett invites business founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you, like Alison Benkamp, thinking about starting your very own thing.

10:50In this clip, we hear from Ethan Frankel, co-founder and CEO of Prograt, a UK fintech platform aiming to empower Gen Z to earn side income and improve their financial future. The Mishcon Innovation Series. Inspiration from founders of cutting-edge businesses. In association with Jazz Shapers with Mishcon Derea. And what advice would you give to anybody about to embark on an accelerator program? So I'd say be sure that it's a good accelerator program because there's a lot of them out there. A lot of them that you can just end up giving a lot of equity out and get very little in return or a lot of promises.

11:29And that's very dangerous because you don't understand a lot about your business initially and you end up giving 5, 10, 15, 20 % equity, 50 % equity for someone or a company that will promise some sort of help. So be sure that it's a good accelerator. What I mean by this, look at previous companies that have gone through this accelerator program. how many unicorns, how many companies have raced, how many companies have raced within which speed of leaving the accelerator. Speak to some of these companies that have gone to accelerator, not just the companies that the accelerator will put you in front, but try to LinkedIn them, try to reach out.

12:03Some of the founders speak to 5, 10, 20 of these companies. Make your own due diligence before deciding whether this is really worth it. And don't just get excited by the hype of, I'm going to an accelerator, I've got accepted, I need to do it and I need to give up equity. There's a lot of other resources out there that will allow you to retain a bigger chunk of your business. The Mishcon Innovation Series in association with Jazz Shapers with Mishcon Derea. Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM in partnership with Mishcon Derea. It's business, but it's personal. You can enjoy all our former business shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very program again.

12:44And lucky you if you pop Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice. My guests are Alice Wainwright and Ben Charanambas, co-founders of Rise, a B Corp, I should have mentioned, that certified coffee subscription club. What you won't know is that Ben moves a lot. Ben is active. There's a lot of energy here, me talking to Ben and Alice, and Alice is now smiling in that way that a person that lives with Ben can only smile. You have ADHD. That's right. If you say you have it, you are ADHD. I don't know what the people have different variations about this, but you can tell me what you normally say.

13:13Yeah, I usually just say I have ADHD. You have ADHD. I think it's quite clear, obviously, when you meet me, I'm very energetic. There's like a pulse going through the whole time. Yeah, constant movement, I guess. Yeah, that constant movement, Ben, when you were setting up must have been dynamite. It's definitely a superpower. I was actually only 30 when I got diagnosed with ADHD. There was a previous boss that I worked for who, I guess, diagnosed it for me at a time and suggested that I might have ADHD. I went and got tested and went through the process. but the superpower I feel it has is that constant hustle to go in and build the business because you do 10 different things at once Alice always laughs that I'm the only man she's ever met that can multitask for example so it's been a real helping hand in growing a business like ours and give me one downside maybe ask Alice that question Alice, what's the downside for Ben?

14:06taking big uncalculated risks as in he just does Yeah, he sees an opportunity and he goes for it and thinks about the consequences later. I think that's quite male. In my survey of many women that I know in my life, they would say, yeah, that's quite male. But obviously... I would say the calculated, personally. Calculated risk. Calculated bravery. That's what I'm talking about. Bravery is the right word. And also making a lot happen at once, which is fantastic, but also means he's meant to be in five different places at once. Yeah, my diary management is not great. It's not your best skill. So the complementarianism between the two of you, if that is such a word, what are you doing Alice that Ben can't do?

14:42Well I like to think that I am the strategic one and I'm very focused on the bigger picture so obviously when Ben's bringing in all these different opportunities and making stuff happen for me it's about how does this align with the bigger picture you know where are we headed so I think we complement each other really well actually because Ben does make a lot happen very opportunistic just a true entrepreneur in that respect whereas I'm there you know looking at the business case thinking about how it makes sense for us long term I I'm here comes a name drop it was because it was a very proud moment I interviewed Jodie Foster the actor many many years ago for something we did at Michigan Under Air and I asked her a question which was has have your roles that you've played changed you and she said I'm really pleased you asked that question because the answer is yes and people don't often ask me that question, but of course they have.

15:31What's changed you about being an entrepreneur that wasn't there before? That's a great question. I think for me, it's given me a freedom and a deep realization that life can be great. So I guess before, you know, you might look at going to work as just something you have to do. Whereas now the fact that we can wake up each day and we're able to do really whatever we want, that feeling of freedom just brings me just so much joy, I guess. And for you, Ben? For me, I feel like when I was working in these corporate roles, I didn't really enjoy. I felt almost trapped, I guess. I think with having Rise now and us two together running the business as a couple, as well as just business partners.

16:21Engaged. Engaged, sorry. She's got a ring. She's got the ring, yeah. just means that we can really express ourselves with our business in any ways that we choose to and we can enjoy those winning moments together which is really nice and I feel like you just have a lot more creativity to do what you think is the right thing to do with your own business and that doesn't really often come in some other roles that you might often work in so this kind of unlocks me in a way Yeah, I've never seen you so happy for sure two brilliant explanations of what it means to be an entrepreneur there you go how did you work out what was good and what wasn't is it purely your own your own decision i mean or are you reading lots of reviews and how does it work in terms of just deciding what goes into the packages every month yeah ultimately we have the final decision as to what makes it into the box and we have a few steps that we go through to choose the right coffee so we blind taste all of the coffees that get sent to us.

17:22So roasters from all over the country will send us samples of different roasts and different coffees. And they know about you now. Yeah, I mean, we get sent coffee. Our house is full of coffee from roasters who want to feature inside the box, which is great. So we do blind cupping taste sessions where we try all the coffee side by side, not knowing which roaster it's from. We also have a taste test panel of customers where we send coffees that we like to and they get to try and leave some feedback on a form so we really get our community involved in the decision making process as well and being b corp we do have a pretty strict sustainability criteria that roasters have to meet as well so once that form's been completed we can then assess their coffee as part of the feature in the box so it's really based on taste and their sustainability credentials really and your own sense of what's good alice has it developed you know i think of sommeliers obviously coffee tasters are the same.

18:16Is it just better the more you taste because the notes come out more and you've got the ability to make distinctions between one coffee and another? Yeah, definitely. I mean, as the years have gone on now, I think we can taste something blind. We might guess, you know, the origin or sometimes even the farm. This is definitely Arabica. This is a Robusta. I mean, I know nothing. An Ethiopian geisha. But I would say that one of the reasons why I think our coffee club is popular and it's successful is because we appreciate that not everybody wants to taste something that is really unusual and has really distinctive tasting notes.

18:49So we try and also include what we call like a crowd pleaser, you know, something that's versatile that could be drunk with milk or even with sugar, which is sacrilege in the world of specialty coffee. But we appreciate that, you know, not everybody wants to drink coffee a certain way. So we try and include, you know, real variety, but also some great coffees that are the type of coffee you might have in a good cafe in London. But you mix it up intentionally, Ben. So you do, You'll have a crowd pleaser, but you'll also have some esoteric, they've only got, you know, three beans were made on the edges of a fjord in Norway.

19:21That's right, yeah. Maybe not quite to that level of... And separated with cow dung. No cow dung. The one that tastes are great. But yeah, we ultimately try and ensure that there's the crowd pleases in there that we know everyone will really enjoy. And then something that's a little bit different, they may not have tried before. We've got some coffees coming up, for example, that are a bit more fruity, more natural processed. So it gives a base of customers something different to try that they might not have come across themselves. So it's really all about discovery, about experience, trying something new, whilst also making sure that everyone does enjoy the coffee every month.

19:54And how have you got away from the pretentious thing? We started, Alison, you said, you know, there was a lot of pretentious stuff out there. I just want to have great coffee. Is it through language? Is it, I mean, how is it managed that bit? Yeah, so one of the main things that we do each month is include a booklet all about the coffee. and we have a very strict no jargon policy with that. So we try to use everyday language to describe the coffee and talk about the farmers, where it's come from, obviously the roasters as well. So that's one thing we do. And even with our branding, you know, we're bright pink and yellow and we hope we stand out from the majority of coffee brands.

20:28Yes, it doesn't look pretentious actually. It looks quite normal. And modern, hopefully, and fun and exciting. You know, we wanted our brand name Rise to be reflective of the fact you jump out of bed in the morning and have a great coffee, full of energy. Jump's a big word. Well, yeah. Hopefully with Rise Coffee, you do jump out. But I mean, I must say, without the coffee, and I normally have two doubles before 11 o 'clock. Oh, wow. Yeah, two doubles. I think I would be even more grumpy than I am. Stay with me for my final chat with Alice and Ben. They're the founders of Rise. They're the people that bring you special coffee and crowd pleasers too.

21:02I'm pleased to say I like a bit of mass market as well. Final chat coming up with them, as I mentioned. We've got some Emma Jean Thackeray for you too that's in just a moment don't go anywhere jazz shapers on jazz fm in partnership with mishkondorea it's business but it's personal alice wainwright and ben charolumbus are my business shapers just for a few more minutes you talked at the beginning about you know couldn't find the coffee that was right for you it was a bit pretentious and also there was this point about sustainability and values you lovely people have set up the friendly coffee fund just in your own words describe what that is very briefly ben so the fund essentially is a project that we've set up in uganda it's our first project out there and in 2023 we were looking at ways that we can give back to the coffee industry and to the farmers who produce the beans that we we buy and there are lots of great organizations out there that you can you know give one percent of your revenue to and they use the money in really great ways but we just didn't find anything that really did anything in coffee specifically or to help the farmers that produce the coffee and about 80 % of coffee is produced by smallholder farmers they have very small amount of land to produce the beans and a large quantity of those farmers I think it's about 44 % live in poverty or below the poverty line so when we came back from Uganda we decided to set up our own fund our own project and we give back 1 % of all of our revenue to that project.

22:31And currently we've got over 100 children in full-time education in Uganda. So we help pay for their school fees, pay for their books, equipment, transport to school, things like that. And we're looking to expand that fund to help pay for sanitation in the school, kitchen equipment. And then eventually over the next couple of years, we want to launch two to three new projects in other coffee growing communities. And so that's really what drives us with this business really and the purpose up behind it. And we're on WhatsApp with the farmers. We're on WhatsApp with the local community. They send us messages and show us the school reports.

23:04And it really is the driving force behind why we do Rise. I should probably mention that when we were in western Uganda in the mountains, we were on a coffee farm when a small boy was following us for about half a day. So eventually we asked the person we were with, who is this boy, you know, why is he following us? And it turned out that he was an orphan that had been thrown out of school for not paying his school fees. and it was at that moment that we started learning a bit more about the challenge of child labour in coffee and pretty much as soon as we came back from that trip we realised okay we want to set up a fund and we want to give back initially especially to this cause of child labour in coffee.

23:44And are others doing similar things in the industry? Have people sort of said can we get involved? Because that obviously what you need is it's brilliant that you're doing this but the scale thing right that's the next step i imagine yeah absolutely we are obviously limited by giving one percent from from rise so we have spoken to a few other roasters um who would like to get on board really for us though we want to create a foundation so an established charity that gives back the money directly um that way it's easier for other roasters to come on board and be a part of that that foundation at the moment it sort of sits within rise as something that we do um ourselves so as part of our plans for next year we would like to convert that fund into a formal foundation independent with the people on the board and then we can galvanise the support because we've had so many customers offer to give directly and we do a bit of that at the moment but as you say we're sort of limited and there is so much opportunity and so much to do that we'd be foolish not to just turn it into something bigger and better well you've answered part one of my questions that obviously is going to get big you're going to be doing amazing things over the next few years.

24:50What's going to happen in the next three to five years for the business? What do you want to make happen? So we've got lots of exciting plans for the business. I mean, obviously growing is number one. So, you know, at the moment we've got thousands of customers across the UK, which is fantastic, but we want to be the number one coffee subscription club. So a bit like how many households have a wine subscription or a beer subscription, we don't see why they couldn't have a rice coffee box subscription as well. So that's number one focus really for us. But we also have a retail product, a specialty coffee advent calendar that's sold in John Lewis and some other retailers.

25:25And that's given us ideas for lots of other retail products and gifts because we think that's quite an underserved area, gifting in specialty coffee. And finally, we've got some plans for a yearly event, which I don't want to say too much about, where we can bring all our lovely coffee drinkers, our customers together, and also plans for physical spaces. Amazing. Well, you don't sound like you're going to be busy at all. It's lovely to meet you both. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Just before I let you go, what's your song choice? I'm saying it to both of you, but one of you will answer.

25:59And why have you chosen it? So our song choice is Stan Getz, the girl from Ipanema. And the reason why we chose this song is we actually went on a trip to Bergen in Norway and stayed in this beautiful hotel where they played 24-7 jazz, even in your bedroom. and this song was definitely on repeat and stuck in our heads ever since. Stan Getz, The Girl from Ipanema, the song choice of my business shapers today, Alice and Ben. They talked about the pivotal moment when they had to decide, are we going to go from this being a side hustle and a part-time gig to a full-time gig? And once they did that, everything changed.

26:38They talked about the feeling of freedom that they got and the sense of liberation and the ability to express themselves once they had made that choice and once they became the founders of their own business. And finally, the importance of values to them and their business and their focus on looking at the issues around child labour and the coffee industry. Really great stuff. That's it from Jazz Shapers. Have a lovely weekend. Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You'll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive.

27:14To find out more, just search Jazz Shapers on iTunes or your favourite podcast platform, or head over to mishcon.com forward slash Jazz Shapers.