The Explosive Growth of Grenade: From Garage to Global with Juliet Barratt

0:00As an entrepreneurial business, you get an in-bag, you say, yeah, great, and you make it happen. There's never a question as whether it's the right or wrong thing to do. You just do it because you want to do it and you want the business to grow. Juliet Barrett, co-founder of Grenade, the global health and fitness brand that went from kitchen table startup to£200 million exit. The week before the sale, I was absolutely distraught. So I was in tears. And it was this thought that something that you'd worked so hard at, that was so part of you that you'd lived and breathed for 10, 11 years, suddenly wasn't going to be part of you anymore.

0:34It's almost like grieving, that you're grieving something that you've built that is no longer yours. I'm a massive believer in making every day count, because you genuinely don't know how many days you've got left. And even if you have a shit day, it's still a great day, and anything can be turned into a positive. So I'm all for making every day count now. Even if it's the little things, they all matter. You know, we're going to talk about brand and huge success, but what people see isn't always the reality. And I know you did. Grenade wasn't your first business. It wasn't your first venture. So can we talk a little bit about the early days, Julia, and how life actually started in a business context for you?

1:14Yeah, of course. So I had a very sort of traditional background in school, university, and then I actually qualified as a teacher. But I was like the shittiest teacher out there. So I think Cameron Diaz, bad teacher, but not as hot. So I taught geography and PE and we watched a lot of videos. And I think, you know, everyone says about when you start a business, it's like the day you actually start that business. But I actually see teaching as a massive learning curve for me because it taught me what I didn't want to do. And it taught me that having my life ruled by a bell and like lots of structure just didn't work for me.

1:48So I spent a very short time being a rubbish teacher. and then I went to the jam house in Birmingham, got absolutely hammered and met Al and that was really the start of the grenade story. He had a distribution business before so selling other products to gyms and health clubs so I went to work with him or for him rather as he would like to say in that business and I think it was that experience of selling other people's products to gyms and health club we realised that we could do it and I always say better but I don't mean better because that sounds arrogant I mean we could do it differently and that's when we realized that we wanted our own brands and we would market it very differently from what was out there and that was the start of Grenade.

2:31So early days so as you say well I think when we were talking um when we caught up the other week you said something like I know you had like work experience of how many years was it before you started Grenade 15 years 10 years? Yeah so I mean like I said the work experience is like the teaching when you realize what you don't want to do and then it's working for you know selling other people's products to gyms and health clubs and learning about the marketing and what customers want and what they buy and you know what's important to them so yeah that was that sort of 15 years work experience well they say don't you like 10 years to become an overnight success or whatever the number is but so when you and al got together it was a romantic um kind of engagement in the beginning wasn't it really and then how did you know that you could actually tolerate each other to start a business together because it is always difficult when you're in a personal relationship we know we heard from Maxine and Darby about about relationships being mother and daughter but for you and Al you were partners you were romantically together how did you know you could tolerate each other from a business point of view I mean as soon as we met he was taking pictures of girls and that sounds really wrong but they were on a head night or something and so I thought he's either a really nice guy or a complete pervert and it turned out that he was a really nice guy and you know we went on holiday after three weeks got engaged after five weeks got married after nine months so we're get shit done type of people and you know we met we knew it was right we were completely aligned with our values and we knew that we both had very very different skill sets and a lot of people think well you know you were married and you ran the business but actually there was a reason that we should have met and it was to run the business that sounds wrong but you know what i mean but you had different roles so you were more on the marketing side weren't you and i was more sort of sort of over overseeing the the general sort of running of the business yeah right definitely and like you know as maxine said so i could always say you know what maxine and darcy said but you know we had complete trust with each other and we had very different skill sets so i did the sales and the mpdi the demarketing and everything else really and we never ever butted heads on the business we were completely aligned but also we had the respect for each other that we let each other go and do their stuff and then came back together there was never this nitpicking about oh I want to do this in marketing or I want to do that in sales because it just never would have worked so we were completely aligned and trusting each other so let's talk about the brand because really well impactful name and a really powerful brand I mean And most people in the room here, most people here, raise your hand if you'd heard of Grenade as a brand.

5:10Thank God for that. It was a risky question, Juliet, but I thought I'd go there. I'm confident that there was going to be a big hand raise. So you've built a powerful brand that is nationally known now and internationally, actually, isn't it? But in those early days, how did you come up with the name? How did you come up with the concept? Because I think that product's innovation in the early days. You know, a lot of businesses don't get it right at the beginning, but you guys seem to kind of hit on it pretty early on once you decided what you wanted to do. So talk us through the brand journey and the name side of it, if that's all right.

5:43I mean, everything at that time in 2010, it was like a sporting nutrition product. So everything was sold in very generic white tubs with scientific names like Xenadrin, Zedracut, Hydroxycut. And nobody could remember what they were called when they stepped outside of the gym or the health club. So I think, you know, with any business, there's always a little bit of the founders in all of the products and you know being a bit sort of strange eccentric that had to come through in our products and I was obsessed with paintball so the back of our garage at home looked like some sort of arms dealership and we had a lot of friends in the military and when we used to go on holiday literally used to sit there watching the military channel so you know seeing the grenade shape it just sort of clicked and I hate that light bulb moment because I never think that that really happens but it just felt right and so much you know you as founders as entrepreneurs is so much is about gut feeling and we knew that if we had something that was in a grenade shake container it didn't matter what language you spoke where you were in the world it would translate and people would know what that product was called by the look and feel of it and and the name itself then did you have a think tank did you have a little group session where did the actual name come from then a friend tried one of the products we used to use our friends as guinea pigs and he tried it and he went shit that was like a grenade actually i think he said a word in front of shit but you get the gist um and he was like that was a grenade going off and it just felt right and you know i'm all for that gut feeling and i think maxine said or darcy you can over analyze and overthink and you never fucking do anything so for us it just felt right and we did it and it worked and I think because we completely believed in that and were behind it everything we did was focused on that grenade so we never deviated from that really strong distinctive brand and then the so the very first product then talk us through the the first product and then how the product kind of evolved after that because I know you kept it very tight it wasn't like you produce a huge range of stuff you know you kept it quite tight didn't you yeah who did change the products a little bit over the time, didn't you add it to it?

7:53Yeah. So when we launched, we always wanted to be the Red Bull of sports nutrition. So we wanted one product that was really distinctive that said what it did on the tin. Because again, as we mentioned earlier, people will only buy your product if it works. You know, you might get one sale, but for them to keep buying it and keep buying it, they've got to trust it. They need to like it and they need to feel some sort of effect. So, you know, we started with a caffeine-based product. you could really feel it working, caffeine green tea, bitter orange in it, all those ingredients that gave you a real smack in the face.

8:25And actually, you know, it was a weight loss product. And the one thing that most people in sports nutrition wants to do was to lose weight. So, you know, we really set our stall out. We only ever wanted one product, but because it was in a grenade shaped container, it looked a bit gimmicky. And actually one of the buyers at Holland the Barrett said to us, well, are you going to bring out any other products? Because to have a real credible brand you probably need a range you don't just want a one-hit wonder so then we started to do other sporting nutrition products so um pre-workouts creatines proteins etc but the flagship products of grenade in the early days was that thermodetonator okay and and you know given it was a caffeine-based product because as you were talking i was thinking all right did you ever get any backlash on that at all or any kind of negativity around you know that caffeine kind of hit because now I guess today we're a bit more conscious about caffeine you know caffeine free products and stuff so was there any sort of backlash or push push back at all no never I mean like there was a bit of talk in Europe about caffeine being banned and I think that's why we got one round of investment but you know caffeine for me is life you know if I didn't have coffee I'd be so miserable and you're never going to appeal to anyone so if you know you're talking to the decaf people over there in the green t-shirt then you're never going to appeal to them but you know there are a lot of people in sports nutrition that were taking caffeine-based products yeah and i guess that comes back to what maxine was saying wasn't it about being super clear what's your why who what who is your target customer and then staying true to to kind of that dna really isn't it yeah so so in the early days when you when you you've got a great brand you've got a great product you and Al are working nicely together which is fantastic and what was the office set up or what was the distribution the warehouse set up because it was pretty gritty wasn't it in those early days let's just let's paint a picture for us if that's all right yeah so definitely day one it was a bedroom upstairs and we always use like 3PL um then we moved to a very very small warehouse with no central heating and no lighting so I was a little hermit at the back but everything was very like we always call it hand-to-hand combat you know we had an investment in 2014 at 18 million and there were two staff and four cats that was literally we did everything ourselves and we grew the business organically and that was really really important to us and also we knew where our strengths and our weaknesses were so we started to do some of our own warehouse you know I was unloading pallets on fortlets and like putting them through the back of the unit and all sorts of things like that and then we realized that actually our forte wasn't in warehousing.

11:07We could get someone to do that much better for us. Our forte was in new product development and marketing. So we focused everything on that. Yeah, so obviously it got slightly more glamorous as you get bigger and got more successful. And with the team, was there a point that you knew that you were scaling up? Because there's been a lot of talk over the last couple of days about the difference, the evolution of a business starting, scaling exiting you've done all of that right um but was there a point where you went right okay actually what has got us here is not going to get us to the next level because i think that's often a tipping point for a lot of founders a lot of businesses you know when do you make the change and what does that change actually mean what does scaling up really mean yeah i mean i think some businesses there are two ways of looking at it you either get grassroots people in that are doers but aren't going to actually add direction and strategy etc etc or you're getting those people that come in really high up but actually can't help with the day-to-day and are probably a big expense so i think for us the turning point is in 2014 when we got investment from grow point capital and alan and i really didn't give a shit about the numbers and i know that sounds a bit sort of not negligent but you know we're about growing the brands if we were firm believers that if we focused on the brand then the sales would come whereas the investors obviously they had an invested interest to put money in and they wanted us to have an FD in the business so I think having somebody in that could do something that you couldn't do or weren't particularly interested in actually frees you up to do what you do love and what you are really good at doing.

12:50So that first role that CFO, that FD, that sort of slightly more corporate role shall we say and which was needed at the time but the selection of that key individual was was quite an interesting way wasn't it that you actually brought him into the business so maybe just share a little bit around that there's aligned with getting the finance and the funding that you have as well yeah his point so obviously grow point putting money and wanted an ft in so they did the recruitment process for us and then we're at body power at the nec i think it was 2010 2011 and this guy six foot eight came walking over to the booth and he said oh I've been shortlisted for the finance job and he looked so out of his comfort zone so this guy come from like bathroom city or bathroom world you still take the piss out of him now for is and he looked really really uncomfortable but actually Tom I mean he's the CEO now he was not only a phenomenal FD but he was really commercially savvy and he loved the business so I think the combination of those three things he was bloody brilliant at numbers he really gave a shit about the business and people liked him and he was really commercially savvy that's helped him grow into that much wider role yeah and now he's running the shop right yeah which is incredible so and and what do you think um in terms of the other key roles so obviously that's one one really important role but again it's like who do you employ when you're scaling which roles do you go for you know so so obviously as you're building that team to give you the foundations to scale julia what were the other key roles that you needed to bring in um and and kind of how did you go about that after you've got that first big role sorted yeah i mean i think as we started to sell internationally that international international role was really important but you know one of the early roles that we bought him was a guy that helped with production and i remember him coming to an interview with us um i think i had to give him his bus fare or something because he's like straight out of like university or college and he was just in a production role so he was a real sort of data geek he loved numbers great attention to detail and he's now the head of production so he's been in with the business like 12 15 years because he's grown into that role and I think you know you employ people to start off with with a right cultural fit because you like them and you hope that they grow into the role that you need them to be but also we were very good at picking people that actually couldn't move forward and so we brought in people that had the experience had the black book of contacts that could come in and hit the ground running but one of the challenges that we faced is culture was so important to us at grenade like al and i were still integral to the business in their seven o 'clock until seven o 'clock at night so we needed to bring on people that got the grenade story and actually realized that we started in some shitty warehouse in solely hull and we weren't going to offer avocado on toast for breakfast.

15:42So it was really, really important to get that balance of skill set versus cultural fit. Yeah, and of course the distribution went crazy, right? So you're 80 countries, I think, maybe even more now, actually. But that international element, so it started in the UK, started here locally in the Midlands. But when you went international, was that a frightening decision? Was it just happened naturally? you know how did you tackle going from UK centric to to kind of international because that's a big leap isn't it to make yeah I mean I don't really think it's tackling it I think it's you just do it because we got inbounds from the US relatively early and from Europe and you know as an entrepreneurial business you get an inbound you say yeah great and you make it happen so it's never there's never a question as whether it's the right or wrong thing to do you just do it because you want to do it and you want the business to grow i think when it came to 2017 we had a couple of our second round of private equity i think they made us be a bit more strategic and actually do a bit of market research as to that particular territory realize if the price was big enough and if it is worth our time investing in that but you know as an entrepreneurial business early days if we got an inbound we made it happen yeah okay so it was the opportunities came and then you just Yeah, we didn't say no to anything.

17:03It just wasn't in our DNA. Yeah. And were there any of those decisions, opportunities that you said yes to, that with hindsight you wish you hadn't said yes to? I think hindsight's one of the thing. I could sit here and go, yes, there were no decisions that we made, but way too early to go into the US because we didn't have the infrastructure in place. You know, we weren't spending enough on marketing. You know, this was the day whenever we did like magazine adverts, every page was like$12 ,500. And, you know, that was such a big investment to us. Whereas for the other US brands that we were competing with, it was just a drop in the ocean.

17:37They had a two million, two, three million pound marketing budget. We just didn't have that. And actually we pulled out of the US and then we went back in a few years later when we had a team on the ground over there. Well, that is a brave decision to decide to pull out and go, actually, we're too early. It's not quite the right time. But interestingly, you went back in when you'd kind of sorted it out and got your head around it. And it was it was the right time then, wasn't it? Yeah, definitely. But actually, we thought having the US would be the trade, the exit. But the, you know, Mondelez that bought it in 2021, don't give a shit about the US.

18:10So actually, what we thought was the prize wasn't actually relevant. Yeah. So when, so we're in 2017, we're growing massively at this stage. And the exit happened in 2020. We've won the Mondelez. Mondelez. Thank you. I put my teeth back in. I've got new teeth everyone I've had new teeth done anyway sorry slack side yeah so so when you were doing making the decision as to when to sell and who to sell to was that a really difficult decision because we've heard a lot over the last few days about businesses that have sold businesses that never plan to sell and they want to you know create a legacy of family um etc but you did decide to sell how did you know it was the right time and then we'll come back to the right choice of person to sell to i mean it's the right time i don't know whether there is ever a right time it's just the time and you know we had a couple of rounds of private equity 2014 2017 so i think that had almost got us over that initial oh shit i'm selling some of the business so we obviously weren't majority shareholders by that particular point so some of the pain had been taken away but when Alan and I set up Grenade and when we started to do carb killer bars in 2015 we always said that we wanted to sell to Cadbury's and obviously Mondelez bought Cadbury's like 10 years ago or whatever so it just felt like the natural fit and some founders do make not the error but maybe you know they wish they'd have sold earlier and you know it just felt right it was that gut feeling and there was a protein bar in the US that was like really really popular and they had a 600 million dollar valuation they decided not to sell it was called quest bars and then stuff started to go wrong and the taste profile wasn't right and consumers walked away and suddenly that 600 million valuation wasn't there anymore and I bet they wish they'd have sold then so we never wanted to be in that position where we thought shit we should have done that yeah it's a tricky one isn't it because you're never going to really know you know did you did you sell too early did you sell too late should you know but i think probably that going on around the same time can get me the confidence i know this sounds really really stupid but you know you could put your house on the market for a million and a half but people only spend a million quid on it so it's only worth what someone's going to buy what someone's going to spend on it and you know for us having it go to the right owner was more important than another couple of years and maybe a five million ten million or whatever it went to the right hope yeah so let's talk about that let's talk about the right owner and and what did the right owner look i know you had this vision of wanting to sell to carberries but what was the sort of criteria if you like that you had in mind in terms it was going to be important for you to to let go if you like and sell your baby yeah i mean like i said you know we weren't majority shareholders so pretty much the process was out of our control you know we were completely on board with it but it wasn't our decision um i think because they could add additional value so obviously with the manufacturing montalee's own oreo which we always wanted to do an oreo bar so we thought where there would be some mpd and in a weird way it was a birmingham based office so it was really important to us that all the staff that worked to the business would carry on working for the business so it was a pretty easy transition and they're all kept on so it's things like that that were important.

21:36Well, yeah, because I guess the team wanted to make sure that everyone was looked after in the right way is important because it is your legacy, it is your brand. The people today still say, oh, Juliet, co-founder of Grenade. Even now, these years later, it's still very much you and you and Al, isn't it, in terms of the business identity? Yeah, I mean, I think Maxine said, you know, the business outgrows the founders and that's the way it should be. But, you know, those guys that are at the business and they still are there now, a lot of them, they were like family. I know it sounds a bit crap and cheesy, but we genuinely cared about them and they helped us on that journey.

22:11So we would never have sold to anyone that was just going to sack them all and put them in an office in London or, you know, in Europe. Yeah. And in 2020, you decided to fully exit. Al stayed in for a while. What was it like? And we've spoken about this privately, but I think it's a really interesting insight. what was it like that day when you know the money's landed in the bank you're free you've moved on what's the feeling take us through sort of how the emotional side of it julia and that sort of final exit well i laugh now but i know i've been quoted in saying it was like root canal and i know that you shouldn't think about selling your business and getting a shitload of money in the bank is like sort of having horrendous dental stuff but you know for me the week before the sale I was absolutely distraught so I was in tears and it was this thought that something that you'd work so hard at that was so part of you that you'd lived and breathed for you know 10 11 years suddenly wasn't going to be part of you anymore and it should have been a bit easier because like I said you know we'd gone through a couple of sale processes before that but this was really final and there was no going back so I was absolutely distraught the day that it happened I had to go to my lawyers at like one o 'clock in the morning and then it happens like Saturday evening early Sunday morning and I remember John our lawyer phoning me up because Jules have you looked in your bank is the money there and I haven't even looked and I know that sounds like it didn't matter but it was so final it was it's almost like grieving that you're grieving something that you built that is no longer yours god that sounds so pathetic but it's really true No, I mean, does anyone sort of have that feeling?

23:56Yeah, okay, there's lots of nods and shakes, yeah, and hands raised. So I think it is, we've got to be honest, haven't we, and we're human beings with emotions and all of that. So obviously, you know, since then you're doing some really cool stuff. What advice would you give, with hindsight, either to yourself or to other people that are in this phase of exiting and planning for that next phase? Can you plan for it or do you just have to go with the flow? What are your thoughts on life post-exit, really? It's so weird. When people sell businesses, they almost think that exiting is this, like, you've succeeded, you've won.

24:33And I think unless you've really thought about stuff after the business, it comes as a bit of a shock. And whether it's worse because I haven't got children or whatever, I'd never really thought about life post-Brenade. I always thought that I'd go again, and that's not off the table but you know so many brands do you know founders do go again and now they get a second album and that I never wanted something that wasn't as special as the first one and I never wanted to do something that didn't mean as much to me as Grenade so it took a little bit of time to actually find that purpose again yeah and you know I'm really good at filling my time like I go on amazing holidays and I'm a bit weird like Maxine and like just a really really spontaneous and will do crazy stuff um but it doesn't give you a purpose and i think that's something that takes longer to to actually find yeah i because i guess uh there's a piece around identity isn't there hey you know that you've started this thing it's your dna your values are all embedded in in grenade so it's all we all know logically it's not who we are is what we do but still there's a bit around personal identity it's almost like who am i i think i was talking to pico and outside no pizza at the back there we were saying well who who's jewels now you know post exit so finding yourself again right yeah and i think when you're in a business you're constantly having to prove yourself whether it's to investors or you're having to hit numbers or you're having to be someone for the staff when you're not in that anymore you don't actually have to prove yourself and it takes a little bit of time to realize do you know what i'm all right and I don't have to put on a show and I can just be me and I'm in such a fortunate position that I have a wonderful life and I'm massively grateful for everything and I know Grenade has given me all of those opportunities and let's face it you know the Grenade journey was pretty fucking amazing anyway you know we went on wonderful holidays friends were we worked with friends you know we built a phenomenal grounds we had some amazing experiences so you know I'm just in a really really fortunate position and grenade has enabled me to be in this position I'm eternally grateful yeah yeah and what did you learn about yourself through this mad journey that you've been on what's some of the some of the things that sort of revealed themselves about yourself almost through that entire journey of starting scaling exiting and kind of where you are now what are some what's what's behind I mean I'm not a very reflective person if I'm honest with you I'm more of a get shit done side the girl um but I think I realized that I'm actually quite a good all-rounder and I'll give anything a go from driving thoughtless to doing spreadsheets to, you know, branding or whatever.

27:13I've realised that being in a team is better than being on your own and there's definitely power and strength in being surrounded by good people and also how important having the right people around you in life and in businesses and that one bad egg can really have a negative impact on the business or you as a person. But one final question in terms of life now then, Jules, What are you up to today and all the stuff you've got going on? Yeah, so I do non-exec chairperson roles for like some other food grounds and consumer goods, which is amazing. And working with founders that I like, which I think is really important to help them on that growth journey.

27:49Al and I have still got businesses together. So, you know, that's quite passive investments now, but that's good fun. And, you know, somebody said to me this morning, you know, what's not your purpose, but, you know, what drives you and what are you passionate about? and I think you know I'm a massive believer in making everyday counts because you genuinely don't know how many days you've got left and even if you have a shit day it's still a great day and anything can be turned into a positive so I just I know it sounds really really cheesy and I apologize but I'm all for making everyday count now even it's the little things they all matter yeah great I mean great advice ought to all of us right yeah let's make it count we only got one life so yeah and you know my parking space at work was angry bird um and you know it's still my iphone name and everyone goes oh that's you isn't it and i think that you know when you're in the business you know everything matters so much you care so much about it whereas now i'm sort of in that position that if something doesn't go right i'll deal with it and nothing makes me angry anymore i would like to give a massive round applause to juliet thank you if this conversation resonated with you, don't just sit there, act on it.

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