Spill - Lou Cheadle and Sofia Buttarazzi

22:28Lou Cheadle:a fun we definitely need to do more of that we did a focus we did when we first started with friends and that was good wasn't it yeah that was around this time of year actually I've seen them

22:37Sofia Buttarazzi:on social and it's always quite sort of lo-fi but I imagine you know with the brand aesthetic that you got you could do it in quite a fun yeah way as long as the results skewed yeah it was too the

22:50Lou Cheadle:first time I sampled it I mean you know it tastes good but the first time I was literally just crapping myself because because also it's quite personal how you make your cup of tea yeah and when somebody makes it for you in a flask like how strong you want it the ratio of milk and also I feel like if you're in a shop you know you get a shot of wine or like a fruity drink or a peppermint tea you sort of it's quite punchy you taste it you know straight away if you like it whereas there's a bit of a sit down and let's be mellow thing to like everyday tea I was thinking oh my god are people gonna like it but we do generally get really good instant response that the thing that made us feel like yeah we're on to something is when we did that we did a consumer a focus group didn't we with a few sort of friends and friends of friends and we just said they have to drink like a yorkshire gold or a twight like something like a good um everyday mainstream tea and we did a taste test didn't we and lou promised that she didn't cheat because you know you can't always trust me seems like we really properly brewed it properly that one was us yeah exactly exactly and um we were like you must brew it for the same amount of time and there was a girl there that drunk like a really popular tea brand and she was like she was convinced she would not be budged from this tea brand wasn't she and then she was like doubt she she guessed it wrong and she was like damn it i'm like i'm actually really gutted and now this is her thing and she's constantly reviewing it for us and stuff so reviews are insane like you know only kind of we were saying about what the most satisfying things are and it's like it's amazing the distribution that we've managed to get already like it's incredible but actually the single reviews that pop up when we get them on the website and there's someone going oh my god this tea tastes incredible yeah it's like for some reason that's so much more valuable isn't it it's like that's the thing that just makes us really happy it's like oh people get it yeah there was one of our first reviews was this but i'll never forget it leanne but she's a customer now she'd written in and said that this tea reminds me i'm quite old and i used to have tea for breakfast and tea for tea i'm northern and she said this tea reminds me of the tea of my childhood didn't she and she says i'm sending some to my mom i'm sending some to my uncle and i'm sending some to my brother and like you've totally taken me back and she told us this story about this tea that used to be made in liverpool mantona tea which we'd never heard of had we i said this is what we used to drink and i've been searching for this tea for this taste of tea and you brought me back and it was just that moment felt like yeah like we're onto something here yeah I think also

25:25Sofia Buttarazzi:I mean I find it really interesting how the taste of tea presumably like has changed over generations and there being a bit of a nostalgia to it and around it at role play we talk about you know helping brands find their role in culture and playing the part and I think what's really nice about spill is there's this really clear role around spilling the tea on the industry but also providing a better tasting fairer more transparent solution what would you say they're like players what informs the design because it's it's really iconic and I've been kind of exploring my head like what makes it so visually appealing do you know what we say we can tell you about the process

26:18Lou Cheadle:of this so we Lou and I obviously had a Pinterest board because you know when we weren't working we had late's time and then we did what what the agency said was the best brief they'd ever had design brief they'd ever had because we literally had nothing else to do we kind of knew that we wanted something bold didn't we so we said it has to be bold and it has to not be anything like tea and like cues from i think we probably said cues more like coffee it was kind of also around the time of like grind really taking off and like so we also were toying with like quite a simplistic because we said it needs to look premium and we got the feeling was people have graded their coffee that were graded their beer their chocolate and skincare as well i think we were looking at like beauty pie and stuff weren't we in like those kinds of brands so we'd sort of kind of set them off in a direction of we think this is like got potential to be a real challenger so we want to go down a boulder route and i think we have some neons and then we had that stripped back look and then because we spent this time in rwanda we were also like should it actually be more provenance cues and they come back with like probably 10 or 12 designs some neon some stripped back stuff and then do you remember they'd actually like trace the map of rwanda haven't they amazing yeah and so they'd done these really intricate designs that also nodded to provenance and then this was not finished and it was just an s with spill tea on it and the guy that had just he'd just done it and he was like should i put it in or not and they said i'll just put it in he's like he's like the guy that probably everybody hates because he's he's the bloke that you kind of he drinks like 11 cups of tea a day and like he'd be the bloke that would turn up late probably come for the last five minutes of the meeting throw something on the table and it's the best thing in the room and you could sort of see that he was kind of sat back in his chair and just like oh here you go there's there's a thing that you need wasn't it yeah and it was like yep that's it because they said to us didn't they go back why don't you choose three routes and Lou and I sort of looked at each other on as well as you can on zoom and we were like you like do we need to pick three routes so we were very like it's that and there's just something about it I mean he when they talked us through it they were saying it's very much like this is kind of a love heart kind of juicy apparently cues flavour but Polly the buyer at Waitrose said she thought it looked like a giant shoe so I think people see different things in it but what we love is it's really pared back and we're trying to resist fluttering it and it's got kind of a timelessness to it as well as being quite fun.

28:44Sofia Buttarazzi:If I think about like Bramworld as well I think there's something quite newsworthy about it like I think there's a bit of play like a tabloid going on because it's black and white and then like read for cool pops of information almost like um the sun or like what i think about if i think about that semiotic because it's you're telling a story you want people to take in the information it's got kind of big headlines that draw you in yeah it's quite like bold and primal i think there's something quite interesting about that as a semiotic that i find really captivating and it's quite related to you because you read the paper and it's quite every day I don't know

29:26Lou Cheadle:yeah and that's what we did when we were doing like the business plan and like trying to get all that that's what we did wasn't it we wrote that the bit that's on the back yeah as the summary of what is the business and actually then we've ended up putting the entire thing on the back after quite a lot of debate about whether or not this was a good idea but it was it came from like this is the story that we're trying to tell you and this is the reason why the brand exists but it goes against a lot of packaging that you would look at because most people try to simplify it into three bullet points that everybody can read when they pick it up they're not going to stand in the shop and go hang on let me just read this entire thing but that's what we're asking

30:02Sofia Buttarazzi:them to do with the pack that we've designed even if you don't you go wow this brand's like really taking the time to tell a story it must be like good and well researched and like they must have some level of authenticity and care that I probably don't but I'll buy it and that'll be that'll be great and then you can read it you know at home or you could pick it up one day and get into it you can go to the site and find out more like I think there's so many it's a bit like um like Lucky Saint put all of the writing on the outside and it's almost used as a design tool rather than a story yeah yeah which is quite interesting it is really interesting and along

30:46Lou Cheadle:the journey quite a few people have said that we need to tell the farmer story more on the front or find a way of succinctly talking about it and have suggested things like like around or saying like farmer friendly or something like this and we've just always felt really uncomfortable about that because it just it's really not a simple story or fix and I don't think we really want to necessarily say this is and um we're kind of relying on people to kind of love that s pick it up turn it around take a punt yeah then the taste will do the work yeah yeah i think it's a really

31:20Sofia Buttarazzi:lovely brand and very much enjoy having it about thank you you've now a few years into this spill journey what have been the biggest highs and lowest lows so far i know you spoke about how

31:34Lou Cheadle:like the reviews are still yeah i think they they're still the like regular highs aren't they it's lots of like and when you get the approval of some of the big distribution you know waitrose ocado selfridges they're the ones that go okay well you're endorsing this product yeah feels really good probably the best bit is like going to rwanda and sitting with the farmers and having the conversations with the farmers and we were talking about like you know the smallholders and like even though I've worked in the tea industry for a very long time I haven't actually sat with smallholder farmers and said what's your day like like what's it like growing tea what are your ambitions like you've currently got a quarter of an acre how much would you produce off that what are the highs and lows for you of like running this little business and like sitting and talking with them and understanding so much more about an industry that we've both worked in for a really long time it's like actually understanding the day-to-day of it yeah it was actually quite moving actually like the second visit was really fun because we had a photographer with us and we did all that remember how quiet it was when we first went into lawrence house yeah and i don't think i'd quite realized because i was just like an excited puppy because i'd never been to an african country and never seen tea and so i was just she kept waving at people yeah i was embarrassing but I was just really enthusiastic I don't think I quite realized that people don't go and see the farmers and we were with um the selling team and they came with us didn't they to the farmer homes and they hadn't been either and there was a moment at the end where they said to us this has been really good I don't think I'd realized how rare that was and also hadn't really prepared myself for obviously I know we can't speak the language but actually walking into this really simple room and not having our translator and starting that conversation it was really quiet and at the beginning wasn't it and then we sort of found our common ground and he started taking the mickey out of brits for he was like do you grow your potatoes in pots and we were like excuse me and he said well i've heard that in the uk people grow potatoes in pots and where do you grow your potatoes and we were like we go to the supermarket and he was like why haven't you got a pot or a piece of you know and you thought then you started to find that common ground and it was just it was really good wasn't it I think talking about like supply chain and impact is quite tricky and there's all sorts of complexities and I think people talk a lot about farmers not getting enough and that kind of thing and it can sort of like skew your perspective to sort of kind of feeling a bit sorry for people which isn't really the right sentiment and I think one of the things that really struck us was how commercial everybody was and they were very clear that they'd made this decision to start growing tea they grow other crops as well and there was an opportunity supported by the cooperative the scheme that the farmers that we source from are a part of sets them up to become smallholder tea farmers if they have the land for it so they provide them with a loan and all the stuff that they need to get started and so these farmers have taken a punt on tea based on what neighbours have done and their projections haven't they and they're very clear about what it should be yielding what they need to do for it to yield more and like the second lucy had said to us we said oh you know what are your hopes or what are your challenges and she said well more people need to enjoy this tea so that we can sell more of it and you know and actually get a better price for you need to go and get yourselves some more customers she was very much like you're doing a job for me and that is to go and sell this tea in your country okay so crack on that is the instruction get out of my living room and go and sell some more tea it's quite nice to be able to

35:19Sofia Buttarazzi:do some of the exploring to go on some of the adventures yeah and try and close and try and

35:24Lou Cheadle:close that gap a little bit between where off he comes from and us yeah and i think a lot of people

35:30Sofia Buttarazzi:are looking for that and brands can help play that role and introduce those stories into people's lives you know you only have to go to local markets or fairs and see how much people enjoy that interaction yeah as well like it's not just you know where it's from it's also the participation and and then like what it signals and what the values are associated with it yeah yeah for sure i think especially now as things are getting tighter it's interesting to see where the cuts are being made amongst brands and I think it's really important that people still go out and create those stories and tell them to people rather than just following what everyone else is doing.

36:15Lou Cheadle:Yeah.

36:16Sofia Buttarazzi:What's the like wildest dreams aspirations for spill and what happens if you're successful like what does the British Capa ritual look like in five to ten years?

36:30Lou Cheadle:This question is the kind of question that makes you realise that you've got your head in the weeds a bit actually why are we doing this but i think that's just it's hard to articulate probably but just for tea to actually be valued it's a funny one because tea is important to people they just don't really think about it very much but people have got a lot of opinions about

36:53Sofia Buttarazzi:how their tea should be made and how long you leave it in be the one bag or two and that was

37:00Lou Cheadle:from our focus group that we did it was just we've got so many funny anecdotes about people getting fussed about the temperature and all that sort of stuff but there's something about i suppose it's undervalued because it is there all the time and actually for it to be something that you choose more proactively and i think we'd like to see that transparency on pharma payments being a norm you know in the same way that like tony's have the open chain and actually wouldn't that'd be brilliant if you could certify that this is transparent from start to finish yeah and you've seen it you've seen it within coffee and you've seen it within chocolate but tea hasn't really seen that and actually yeah it's so ingrained in what we do you know so many people are drinking so much tea yeah I suppose if we can get both of those things like an industry change and a movement people thinking well actually there's a better tasting tea why don't I buy that instead yeah like those two things if they then change 10 of the market moves towards that that's significant yeah and then the the other thing is like the loose tea i was saying yesterday i was like lots of people are buying loose tea and within the last many decades in the tea industry people don't buy loose tea i was like actually people are buying our loose tea and that is really exciting from a kind of people are stopping and they're going i'm going to take this much more seriously i'm going to make a proper cup of tea with loose tea and i'm going to take time over it and i'm going to enjoy it and yeah actually from a packaging perspective like it's great that we can put things in tea bags and we can make it convenient for everybody and that is what we've done but if we can get that percentage of people drinking loose tea up that also helps yeah and you're like because i was just i'm saying ed's got a mocha pot behind his head there and that's you know that ritual of coffee because people think loose tea is messy but it's no more messy than like a maca or a french press where you just have to empty the thing and wash it you know but it's just such a mindset thing because tea is just so commoditized but i'd also like we quite often talk about matcha don't we and how that's you know really taken off and people talk about polyphenols and like flavonoids and that sort of stuff and it's all the same plant you know and i think chai chai latte is i mean chai literally means tea but quite often you go for a chai latte and it's a spiced syrup and has no tea in it yeah so just kind of that actually if people were actively choosing the tea normal tea black tea in the same way that they are say a matcha or a latte or coffee just that like more intentionality around it would be great in search of a the better

39:36Sofia Buttarazzi:british brew yeah are you sticking mainly to like cool products or have you got dreams of other ones

39:41Lou Cheadle:I think it's going to be difficult just to do one. There's definitely other things that we can do with like Rwandan tea. I'm really bad at like, oh, what should I do now? What shiny new thing should I do now? So I'm really trying to be like, this is the core product and let's focus on that. It's just timing, isn't it? Because I think, you know that thing of, I love Hyatt denim and their philosophy of do one thing well. and there's something really like in an ideal world wouldn't it be cool if you could just have the simplest business ever that just sources tea from one place and but already we're finding that in food service people want our tea but of course they want a range and it's so much simpler for them to buy a range and our existing customers are saying they want like a decaf or an ale grey and stuff so we we're just quite keen to for the everyday to kind of establish itself a bit

40:31Sofia Buttarazzi:I think there's such a big drum to be banged just for your every day. But I know that I've had that conversation with many founders and they don't enjoy it particularly. They want to go and make the shiny new thing. But I think that's, you know, it's hard to bang the drum for just on one product. And also it means breaking through, like, it's not just about the product and sourcing it and getting into retail. it's then actually doing a comms job and a marketing job and like that's all often kind of big and scary I would say sometimes or requires quite a lot of just like pig-headed determination just to keep telling the story and get people get it in hands get people to say what you want to say to their friends when they come over yeah I find there's a lot of brands in that space who just need to tell people like what it is yeah and what it does yeah and say it loudly with a bit of emotion yeah yeah it is interesting what you say about the commas job

41:39Lou Cheadle:actually because our newsletter and comms i quite often say to lou it's like oh my god when you've only got one product it's like quite hard to think of what you're going to say each week but at the same time it probably has done us a favor because it's meant that we've had to step a little bit beyond the product and kind of more into the philosophy of it and broaden what we talk to our consumers about I guess so I guess it's forcing us to understand our customer a bit better and other things that they're interested in and produce some hopefully more interesting content but at the same time it would be quite nice to go and here's RL Grey you know you know the benefit

42:16Sofia Buttarazzi:of having like big boring competitors is there's actually quite a lot to play off just in like conversations about how you make your tea how long you do it for are you one bag or two like there's quite a there's a very rich it's everyone's own for the people that love everyday tea there's a ritual to it yeah yeah and I think that could be such a like fun space to play on with the right level of like art direction the light right level of kind of humor yeah yeah so think if you're always telling a fairness story people will get bored people will you know that's the reassurance piece for a bigger part of the market whereas actually the it tastes a bit better than what you've got yeah and it's like way better in terms of its credentials and independence and all the rest of it they'll go right i'll have me some of that yeah i'll get it in my kitchen i'll give it the go yeah once they've got that then they keep buying yeah they need the what's the benefit for

43:17Lou Cheadle:me bit don't they oh it's going to taste better okay i'll try it and then underneath that are the layers of oh that's nice yeah oh that's reassuring but you can then take it or leave it

43:28Sofia Buttarazzi:yeah and i see similarities to spill in the honey project because you could buy it just for taste yeah you could buy it for the story or you could buy it for the aesthetic yeah so there's quite a lot of reasons why you might pick it up in the first place and then other reasons why you might stick around yeah exactly finally what's next and like what are you most excited for you know this

43:54Lou Cheadle:year yeah for me some of what you just touched on there Ed it's just the two of us so we've very much been pushing out some messages that we want to push out we've got some lovely photography from our friend who came to Rwanda with us and the good thing about the simplistic design is it's quite easy for us to put stuff together on Canva, but there is a limit to what we can do. So I'm really excited about being able to take someone out there and get some video and actually then start to engage a bit more with consumers and start to build. Because I think we've got a really good newsletter community where people will write back and that sort of stuff.

44:29Lou Cheadle:And it's kind of steady and slow and considered and lovely. But I know that there are so many conversations and just some fun to be had around tea. and I'd love us to be able to like get our heads like above the water to like really get into that because I think the brand has got potential to really really resonate with people and for people to like to really love it and want feel involved so yeah I'm really looking forward to that era. Anybody who started a business would know like the first year is like a massive roller coaster and it's like actually we're kind of out the other side of the first year and into our second year yeah and we've got distribution and like actually we've got customers who come to the website and they order regularly and like they sign up for a subscription it's like oh you're convinced and it's like it feels like this year we've actually got a business and like we're into we're into it now and it's meaningful and like going back to rwanda and being able to say to the farmers that we're actually got customers whereas before it was kind of you're still very much at the idea stage aren't you so it's like i've got these big dreams but actually you haven't got the movement to make it feel like a proper business whereas i think we're out the other side of it and there's people listening to what we're saying and reading the newsletters and and it feels great timing

45:47Sofia Buttarazzi:there's definitely room for more joy in your kitchen there's definitely room for that like upgraded you know everyday luxury piece yeah you don't have to go on holiday you don't have to buy these other things but you can just have a better cup of tea every day and I think that becomes when you kind of apply that to Britain and kind of macro stuff going on I feel like there's just such a great opportunity for Spill to go and kind of own that narrative and do it in your own way

46:17Lou Cheadle:that's interesting actually that you say that because I haven't actually really thought about that an awful lot but when we were at Teepees we had that didn't we where actually there was a crash there was the crash but it did pretty well because it was that small luxury and we used to talk a lot about how these little luxuries managed to ride those waves they do really well when times

46:37Sofia Buttarazzi:are tight because people think that at a macro level they just like spend less but actually it's just that they're spending switches yeah so like your waitrose shopper still goes to waitrose and buys the speciality thing but they go and buy their champagne a little or they they're buying their basics there and then topping up somewhere else and i think people kind of switch things in their mind and they're doing like a hundred different calculations on what to spend yeah which kind of gets missed i think in the headline sometimes but thank you both so much for coming on

47:14Lou Cheadle:the podcast thanks thanks for having us thanks ed that's our first podcast you know yeah this is a thank you

47:23Sofia Buttarazzi:that was Lou and Sophia founders of Spill as always I've been your host Ed Little and if you are feeling particularly generous of spirit reviews go a long way to helping this podcast grow so please head over to Spotify or Apple and leave one people doing things on a mission to celebrate and inspire the entrepreneurs of tomorrow Time