How Grenade’s Al Barratt Fueled a £200M Sports Nutrition Empire

0:00Number one selling chocolate bar in the UK. Who'd have thought that? I became quite obsessed with that because the first time we looked I think we were 15. Which is still bloody good but still wants to be 15.

0:08Alex Chisnall:Al Barratt, the founder of Grenade, who talks about going from selling gym gear to building a 200 million brand with hustle, with clarity and with conviction. That decision to position a protein bar as a chocolate bar, create a chocolate bar that then became like the number one best selling chocolate bar in the UK. Who came up with that idea? Yeah, that'd be me and everyone thought I was mad. I didn't come close to getting fired on that occasion, but I was prepared to resign over it. Welcome to this special bite-sized episode of Screw It, Just Do It from our back catalogue of over 550 past episodes.

0:41Alex Chisnall:If you like what you hear, don't forget to follow the show and grab your free two-day pass to the Festival of Entrepreneurs this October. Just head to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk to claim yours and don't forget to dive into the back catalogue. Want to surround yourself with 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 entrepreneurs? who've already decided to screw it and just do it. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is happening October the 8th and 9th at the NEC Birmingham, and I'm giving away free two-day pass to my listeners. 200-plus speakers, 90-plus sessions, billion-pound entrepreneurs sharing their real stories, not theory, but the actual strategies they use to scale.

1:16Alex Chisnall:Head to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk right now and claim your free pass, because the best networking happens when you're in the room with people who've already decided to screw it and just did it. You know, that day when that happened in March for you, talking about, you know, you might not feel that, you know, you've accomplished that much or people might not want to hear your story. To be sat there getting emails from Richard Brasden congratulating you, that must have been one of those moments, surely. Yeah, so funnily enough... I don't know if you know Richard anyway, but... Well, so funnily enough, again, I was chatting to someone about this yesterday.

1:55So, yeah, that's one of the things that sometimes is, you know, probably a bit of a pinch yourself moment. Because I had an email again a few weeks ago just off Richard. And it was like, I sort of read it and it was like, you know, dear so and so forth. And it was a woman's name. And I was a bit like, you know, has he finally lost the plot? and what he'd done was someone had emailed him asking for an introduction to me um and they were they were sort of fairly well-known um uh female athlete and um they wanted some advice on sort of a supplement brand and whatever and messaged richard and said i know you know al can you do an intro and richard then blind copy me and said look al's in coffee and you know if he wants to sort of talk to you then he didn't want to give my details out and it was like on a Friday night and I just thought people are emailing Richard Branson who is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time yeah he'd be in the world of all time yeah of all time in the world still and has been for 50 years and I'm like people are emailing him for an introduction to me it's normally the way around people are like no no um and and i've had like again some pretty well-known incredible entrepreneurs billionaire entrepreneurs email message me actually and say can you choose Mr Richard i'm like oh i'd really rather not um but uh yeah so that that's a bit weird because again i still sort of think god why would they care what i've got to say um i don't know yeah that that's that's that's probably um probably quite unusual and but like i said i'm still the unqualified gym instructor from birmingham so but then but then your podcast

3:42Alex Chisnall:you know pull the pin you're obviously interested in in other people's stories and what they've and getting them on your show and and you know when you started that was was you know for me when i started my podcast it was i actually want to ask that person a question so normally i'd never to get access to that person so let's just get them on the podcast and you know you build a platform like you have you you have an audit you have a community and it's it's it's there to be used and to share that knowledge with other people so you're right i really enjoyed it i can see you enjoy it yeah yeah i really enjoyed doing pull the pin and generally it always says business brand and banter and it like everything we do i don't take it that seriously and and to be fair we haven't filmed one since July so the last guy we had on was Staz from Through Dark so again you know that was like ticks the military angle for me and the entrepreneurial angle and stuff and he's obviously into his training and stuff so did that one back in July and then because we're filming in my house I've had loads of building work going on so um haven't been able to have the noise you know we haven't been able to film so I've got lots of noise and disruption going on and just like there's no parking for anyone so that's pretty much finished now but that's the only reason we haven't done any for a few months but we have got again quite a few well-known people lined up to do it um and you're right you know it i i love kind of just finding out how people have gone just from sort of nothing to something i just think it's always interesting um and i suppose you know with my own case you know we never got lucky trust me we never got lucky you know some brands do just kind of have a bit of a moment in time and get lucky i'm a massive believer in timing we've had timing on our side because people over the last 10 years have been more interested in health and fitness that's helped us you know if we were doing this in the 70s um you know it would obviously have been a different time so um we've had timing on our side but you know every decision that we've made has been you know long thought out hard fought decision um you know for the most part you know been the right one you know we decided to transition not transition away from sports nutrition but become more of a food brand and and take what we've learned in specialist sports nutrition um and kind of adapt it you know more for a mass market mainstream audience you know a bit like a you know a car manufacturer would do in terms of what they learn on the track you know they adapt and um and modify it for the road the same really we did the same so all that was a conscious decision you know we didn't just get there by accident and i would say we didn't invent the protein bars but we definitely invented good ones And again, we put them in the locations that actually people wanted them.

6:19And it was bloody hard. You know, imagine trying to get a protein bar on a petrol station. You know, you're dislodging a chocolate bar or, you know, you're fighting it out with the top consumer brands in the world. You know, the Unilevers and Kellogg's and Cadbury, you know, Ferrero and stuff. You know, that that shelf space is very, very, very competitive. so you can imagine if you're going in something's coming out um and you know to get someone to give you a chance was incredibly hard so yeah we didn't do it by accident we really had to had to fight for that and i do know how we did that um and i'm you know i've been ceo for 11 years i'm still still ceo god knows how um but i suppose then because i'm always in the detail of decisions that we make and things that we do there's always a reason behind it um you know when i do interviews and people say, well, how did you do that?

7:11I know the answer was to be fair. A lot of people probably wouldn't know the answer. They just kind of get to where they got to and don't quite know how they've done it. But I think with Grenade, we'd know exactly how we've done it because it's been bloody hard work.

7:21Alex Chisnall:If you're enjoying this conversation and thinking, I need to be around more people like this, then I've got the perfect solution for you. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is where 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 ambitious entrepreneurs come together to learn from the people who've actually done it. It's on October the 8th and 9th at the NEC in Birmingham, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes real entrepreneurs real stories real strategies exactly like what you're hearing right now but live and in person go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk and get your free two-day pass before they're gone clearly that that decision um to position a protein bar as as a chocolate bar create a chocolate bar that then became like the number one best-selling chocolate bar in the UK.

8:10Alex Chisnall:Who made that? Who came up with that idea? Whose decision was that ultimately? Yeah, that would be me and everyone thought I was mad. So what... I bet they did though. I bet they did think you were right.

8:23I didn't come close to getting fired on that occasion.

8:29But I was prepared to resign over it. Were you? To be honest. yeah because we because i didn't sort of get a board approval and did it anyway um because i just believed in it so much and it was only because and again it's i know it's one of those situations where you can just go back and go told you so yeah um but i just believed in it that much and jules was the same you know she'd always backed me to the literally just about to say to you what did you also about that idea yeah she she we'd always back to each other our ideas because you know to be fair we um brand wise i don't think we ever disagreed on anything because it just always felt the right you know we've always tried to do the right thing and the right thing i think you know you'd always agree with and i think it was back into the 2013 time and we could see the sports nutrition stuff was important and we were learning a lot but everywhere that we could be number one we were number one and it was it was great it was a you know it was more than a nice lifestyle business it was it was doing well but it wasn't doing well enough and one of the biggest well the two biggest barriers that we had um actually probably three biggest barriers probably were most people couldn't afford our stuff because a lot of it was 50 60 quid and they knew it was good but just couldn't afford it or didn't have a need for it it's quite specialized all the stores that we could be in we were already in so we were already in you know every holland and barra every tesco we were number one amazon you know i was thinking actually you You know, you don't walk into your local chemists or petrol station and buy a 50 pound weight loss product or a tub of protein.

10:03They're just that is not there that, you know, frankly, they're never going to be there. And again, we were looking at this sort of rising on the go health and nutrition and stuff like that. And I was kind of as a consumer, I was sick of going around petrol stations and because I'm quite disorganised with my food. and like you know wanting something pretty healthy and just seeing shitty sandwiches you know energy drinks yeah like sugary energy drinks um you know the best thing you could find was like crap sushi or something and just um you know just loads of like really salty nuts and pasties and just cakes and stuff like that don't this bridge's obsession is with fucking cakes um you know you go and there's cakes everywhere everywhere um and it was like it's all you could really fine and I just thought if there was something there that was kind of tasted really good um and was just you know high protein low carb I'd buy it um and it was just that simple I was looking at the protein bar market and it hadn't really evolved into the 30 years and I thought actually we could make a better one um and and we did it took two years and between 2013 and 2015 I sort of did it in secret really um so the key team at Grenade knew but our investors at time again were fantastic they kind of backed a sports nutrition business and there's me you know when they invested in 2013 going oh we're going to go and be the number one sports brand in the world and then you know a year later going ah we're not going to do that because we're going to do this and it was that classic entrepreneurial thing i think of just like you know chasing rabbits yeah um and and i think they just thought oh god here we go uh and you know don't blame them and i remember then you know giving them some one of these protein bars and again they weren't the typical consumer and they were like and i was like you know this this is like this tastes like a mars bar and they were like yeah it does but you know we said if we wanted the sports nutrition thing so i just like i said they didn't secret ordered 50 000 bars quite prepared to pay for them myself if it didn't go well and we sold them in two hours two hours for the next six weeks yeah we were out of stock and then pretty much for the next three years we're out of stock um and then we just we just doubled down and and again that's what got us our first petrol station um and then you know we got these bars and this petrol station and they just flew and it was like so all of a sudden then this and this was the deliberate move we had white space ahead of us yeah a lot of brands don't have white space ahead of them and they don't realize it and ours was like well we're in all these stores we now need more stores you know if we're going to be in i mean at their peak and they're all gone now there were 60 gnc stores in the uk sports nutrition stores i now don't think there's one there might be one at most it's probably zero i don't think there's a single gnc store in the uk um and even like tesco nutricenters there were 25 then it was going to go to 300 and i think now it's zero and it's only because this stuff's gone so mainstream it doesn't need a specialty shop anymore because you can exactly walk into a normal sort of you know grocery store and buy a lot of this stuff um because it's become so big online so yeah but there were 10 000 petrol stations so we thought okay if we can get one petrol station we can get 10 000 petrol stations and again it's how we met the likes of motion that owns euro garages um and stuff as an incredible entrepreneur um and again just sort of built these relationships and you know we've um we've we've met people and i think you know with certainly with sort of Jules and myself you know we've gone out and done the hand-to-hand combat and people have liked us they've wanted to back us and support us um and I learned that you know if people sort of like you they'll listen to you but if they trust you they'll do business with you and I think that and everything we said we do you know we did and we did it well and then it was a matter of like right you know now it's box ticking we're going to go and start getting all these petrol stations and all of a sudden then we had you know convenience stores and all this white space ahead of us and then like now you know we've got we've got Cadbury to help us so yeah you know there's still a lot of work to do but yeah you're right you know number one selling chocolate bar in the UK who'd have thought that no I became quite obsessed with that because the first time we looked I think we were 15th which is still bloody good but who wants to be 15th no gotta be number one that

14:12Alex Chisnall:conversation just proves something you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So here's my challenge. Upgrade your network. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is happening October the 8th and 9th, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes to get in the room with 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 entrepreneurs who are actually building something. This is where the risk takers, the game changers, and the people who've decided to screw it and just do it come for inspiration, education, and connection. Don't just listen to their success stories. Go meet the people living them. Grab your free pass now because the biggest risk isn't taking a chance, it's missing the opportunity entirely.

14:50Alex Chisnall:So I hope you enjoyed that bite-sized episode with Al Barrett. A few things I want to flag up here. One is conviction and chaos. So Al's journey definitely wasn't the straight line and that makes it even more relatable for me. Product-led growth. So when the product's as good as Grenade's is, it makes the marketing a lot easier and Grenade absolutely nailed the balance between the two. Build to exit. So look, I loved his transparency here around what it took to scale and ultimately sell without losing your head.