#58 - Harry Ford & Eve Rodway - HIP POP [Grocery Lead + Brand Manager]

0:28Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to the Unfounders. doubled down on the Manchester Leeds that kind of area how they're expanding further afield even overseas with Albert Heine. I love digging into both Harry and Eve's background Harry leading grocery Eve Lee with the brand side now and their different ways of actually getting to where they are today. There's so much within this they're in this ever-growing team of 20 plus people and I think how they're turning up as a brand is fantastic and I will let them tell the rest of the story so without further ado let's get on with it. Are you a founder of the next exciting food and drink brand are you looking to scale and grow well let me introduce you to mission kitchen london's home food and drink entrepreneurs and sponsor of the unfounders mission kitchen gives you the equipment support and community to take your business to the next level with flexible access to commercial kitchens expert mentorship on site and a network of hundreds of like-minded founders this could be exactly what your business needs to level up if you want to find out more why not book a tour today at mission kitchen.org forward slash unfounders

1:38hello and welcome back to the unfounders today i'm joined by harry and eve so i'll pass over to you guys but can you let everyone know where you work and what your roles are please uh hi i'm harry i'm the grocery sales lead at hip hop i've been in the company since october last year so coming up to first year done here i look after all of the retailers that sit within grocery but then also double a little bit in wholesale and convenience nice and eve amazing so i'm eve from manager at hip-hop being with the business since january i'm essentially in the marketing team and i lead our brand campaigns pr and activations and this is all about kind of making sure hip-hop shows up in a bold as a bold challenger in kind of relevant cultural moments throughout the year brilliant yeah i love hip-hop uh for anyone listening is hip-hop not hip-hop and i'd love to know the backstory so if anyone hasn't heard of it somehow can you give us a feel like how did it start who the founders like what's the story like what makes hip-hop special so hip-hop was founded six years ago um by emma and kenny so essentially emma was working over in the us was kind of really interested in kind of fermented products and drinks etc and kind of came back over she's been lifelong friends with kenny and introduced him to the benefits of gut health products so gut health six years ago was obviously not a big term than it is today but essentially Kenny was having some kind of gut health troubles at this time and yeah Emma introduced him to kind of fermented foods and also kombucha Emma started making it from home so a real kind of organic nice story and kind of when Emma's kind of presenting and talking about the brand story she always kind of says it was kind of built by accident it was a passion project she would make her own kombucha at home and take it to local markets etc so yeah a really organic story kind of literally from Emma's kitchen to a farm orders were flowing and yeah we scaled up really quickly we then grew to our brewery and then earlier this year we have our own kind of production facility so it's been yeah a really organic story but all kind of from the roots of Emma and Kenny kind of really working hard having that grit and determination to kind of yeah bring this forward Kenny's background is kind of within business and Emma's passion within kombucha those combined together makes them really amazing entrepreneurs always their skills really complement each other so um yeah it's actually gone from the station to pans produced every year it's a really humble kind of organic story i mean it's it's brilliant and there's also been a gorgeous rebrand which i absolutely love i love seeing the cans out in the wild i've had plenty of them my in-laws are obsessed with them now i think they had them at pizza express or one of the pizza chains and went oh no this is great like have you heard of this brand i'm like yeah i know the guys so harry from your side i know it's also in the meal deal and in and grocery so what's the what's the growth of hip-hop been like in the year or so that you've been there yeah it's been astonishing i think what's been so good and i think you've pointed to it before it's just how natural it's been with my background you can see certain products a little bit harder to sell either they're just like a cup of essential um or they're something brand new and you've really got to convince people what's been great with hip-hop is people try it buyers and consumers and buy into the story straight away and also the liquid so we've seen since starting about 300 growth in grocery with key listings with sainsbury's waitrose morrison's um ocado everywhere really now in the market you can start to see us in grocery especially so that's where the growth has been driven from and i think the meal deal has really been the catalyst for the next wave of growth people are picking us up throughout the summer and then moving into our four packs and also seeing people moving into our subscription site through our website as well.

5:18There's lifelong fans of hip hop for six years, but also new people emerging all the time there. Amazing. Yeah, no, I think it's so nice to see how the functional beverage category as a whole has grown. And obviously through doing these podcasts, I've spoken to the guys at Goodrays and Tripp and Dash. And it's like being able to get my meal deal and choose a drink. It feels like choosing a favorite friend. I'm like, oh no, I know all these people. But it's so nice to see how it's expanded. and the rebrand it just really stands out on shelf and I know Eve you had some involvement with that side and I'd love to know like from your involvement with hip-hop like some of the activations and things like music festivals and things that you've done like what have been some of your favorite projects and bits that you've worked on?

5:56Yeah so essentially um kind of came in as the rebrand was kind of fully kind of packaged up ready to go and my role was to launch it into the market and switch over all our touch points marketing etc so it was an absolute I think yeah it wasn't there but I know it was like a big project for our founders we worked with Robot Food as an agency and it was a lot of parts so I don't know what's it's there and well I think essentially what we've landed on is something really simple and something that really appeals to the masses I think potentially the product from its really nice roots was was maybe quite pharma kind of like a bit niche and some people thought it was maybe the IPA or something like this but I think we've really repositioned into kind of printing cans etc which really makes the brand stand out on shelves and really kind of honed in on our brand messaging who are we what are we doing who are we going after I think really kind of solidifying all that work that Alan or our head of marketing led on it was brilliant and kind of I came in and I was like wow it's been aware of hip hop for many years living in Manchester you kind of can't miss it so seeing the new packaging I was like wow this is incredible but it goes well beyond packaging um yeah it's how we it's how we show up and we want to go back to our northern roots a lot in our marketing as well because we really believe that that kind of gives us kind of USP within Taka Petita set as well.

7:14Yeah, essentially the rebrand reaction was brilliant. And we feel like it was a little viral moment for hip hop. Everyone was coming to us. We were at the Lunch Hall show that week. So we were having everyone coming up to us like, wow, you're looking at all the kind of how we speak to our customers. It's obviously a big project, but I think it's really coming into fruition. It's almost really, you know, the results of the fantastic rebrand that kind of the team have worked on. So yeah, loving it. And it's still evolving all the time. Yeah, the festival kind of motivation. So we essentially have a long-standing running partnership with the Warehouse Project.

7:47So for people maybe who don't know, it's a huge kind of music platform in Manchester, but you get DJs from all over the world. You get people coming from America for it. So we are essentially on the bar menu at Warehouse Project, which we really like to be kind of choice for people who may be honest drinking, etc. It's a really good placement there. and on the back of the relationship and the kind of success of the partnership they had Within Shore Live coming up and they essentially offered us kind of pitch we'd never done a festival activation before so it was like a real we've obviously been involved in festivals in Southland it's my turn pitch you know it was you know how do we make this happen it was lots of inspirations but I think what we actually achieved in the end was brilliant with Francesca who kind of leads our events yeah harry was there i think we had you know there was olivia dean sam fender and the fact that we were able to take part in a musical activation manchester it just felt really right and it was great to see kids enjoying the product adults it wasn't a kind of we we always had a queue we sold out on the first day so i think we didn't really know what we were looking for it was fine but i think we'll hopefully be there back next year so yeah lots of wins to take forward but i think it was real success we all know that brand is important right but what What have I told you it can impact growth and customer acquisition costs by up to 50 %?

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9:39You know, we say best enjoyed live, get real. That's our strap lines. That's what we're all about. And the one thing that I was able to get involved in was making sure that we were at Glastonbury through co-op. So we're in the meal deal. And again, over the weekend, we sold out completely. and it was seeing people posting on Instagram and having hip-hops in frame but from complete strangers I said to Emma and Kenny off the back of it I can now partly understand that craze that they have in their eyes when they see someone on the street having a hip-hop they don't know and that feeling it's just I've not had it before from a work experience so yeah it's been amazing to see us pop up in in there and Kendall calling as well yeah I think that is a really proud moment when you see someone picking up a product off the shelf that you've managed to help get there or you see them posting about it completely organically or especially like when it comes to music festivals and things that you love when you see like an artist sharing your products or like in their rider or whatever.

10:34It's like, oh, this is really good to see. And you've kind of alluded already, there seems to be like quite a few people across different functions. Like how big is the hip hop team now? Do you guys have an office? Do you work remotely? What's the setup with the company at the moment? We're still based in Manchester. I think we always will be. We have a grain business in the UK, but also our export business as well. So I can touch on that. But we are about 20 strong now, a little bit more than 20 across brewery and office. We still have the brewing function because we make all of our kombucha starter in-house.

11:09That's something that we've said is never going to change. And we're really passionate about that. And it's interesting to think that the first SCOBY, for anyone that isn't completely familiar with kombucha that is like an alien blob that essentially you put into a fresh batch of a drink and it turns it into kombucha it's like the starter so the first one that emma made is still kind of the mother as they call it of every can you drink whether it be from a sainsbury's or in uh in amsterdam uh through alba heim so yeah we still make all of our kombucha in-house and then we have a manchester office we're marketing and the rest of the functions are based out of.

11:48We have seen, though, that there's been a massive uptake in London. And so we do have a fair few people now working for hip hop from London and making sure that we have a voice down there because we know how important that is as a market in itself. And I've touched on our export business. We were really lucky quite early on to find a great partner in Benelux that actually kind of works on our behalf. so it's not just like we sell in the product and and they're a distributor they also do marketing for us um out there they really know their customer and so we've seen massive growth this year through alboha in particular so we're now in alboha to go which is every transport stock across the netherlands you can now find hip-hop and it does about five times the right sell as if we're doing like a normal alboha store so they're also part of our hip-hop family as well for sure no i love that i think it's it's good if you can find the right partners to act for you overseas i think that's an area that we've kind of discussed and we're looking at with pact but again it's you need to do it right like you can't just expect to sell in a can in another country if you haven't got the people on the ground doing it as if they're the brand yeah totally yeah um i'd love to now dig back into both your careers i i mean we're talking about a lot about hip-hop um i actually had a delivery this morning from zach taylor who used to be from the production side at hip hop with his new brand stiff tea he sent me some of his new uh stiff tea with the hard kombuchas which i think is a really fun concept especially the pickle one um yeah when we look at like the the team and history i think it's always fascinating to go back to like where you've come from and how you've got into the industry from i don't know who wants to go first here but um like when you were younger when you go when i grow up this is what i want to do i'm pretty sure neither of you thought i'm gonna go and work for a kombucha brand so i'd love to know like what your background was and how you went from education to where you are now.

13:38So I don't know who wants to lead that one first, but yeah, I'd love to know your journey today. Yeah, sure. I'm happy to go first. I mean, I've had to say a fair few times just with my previous job. So when I grew up, I definitely didn't think I was going to be working for a kombucha brand. I've always been more on the creative side. So I always thought I wanted to go into marketing. but at the same time like all of my previous jobs like from 14 um to about 18 was all really led on like a sales point of view so I was quite confused like afflicted internally I went to a couple of universities open days Manchester was my favorite and I remember getting in the car my dad was like I don't think you should go to uni you're gonna go for the wrong reasons because I'd literally been pointing out to him every club every like music event that um I'd heard of wanted to go to and there's very little education so i decided very quickly that apprenticeship degree would probably be the best thing for me back in 2018 they weren't really taught about apprenticeship degrees anyway um so i had to kind of do the hard yards myself find it uh apply to mainly all like all the big corporations that you can think of like unilever nestle um and then a lot of like the fuel ones but i really love like the structure of the nestle apprenticeship degree it covered all aspects of FMCG from channels all the way to like the visions and then you also got a degree in Sheffield Hallam.

14:58Yeah I just turned 18 moved down to London and did that so I did that apprenticeship degree for three years and decided to focus in on sales in wholesale. I had a really good mentor Jason Stocker who is renowned in the industry for supporting young people coming through Nestle but also he's been in wholesale for 30 years so it was you know it's an opportunity i couldn't miss so i worked on those accounts thought i was probably going to be in nestle for for quite a while and then going back to your first question of you know what do you want to be when you grow up i used to always say i want to be a dad and i found out in 2023 i was going to become a dad so raised a few questions you know am i doing the exact thing that i want to be doing am i really passionate about what i'd be doing and also is the thing i'm doing something i'm willing to like take away time from like my baby i found actually my passion i'd probably come to the end of the road uh in that's in uh at nestle at least matt taylor who was actually also in the apprenticeship degree about three years uh above me he'd already moved to hip-hop and before moving he said look i'm moving to this amazing company in lanchester you're gonna be close to your family also i think this is like a really good fit for your personality uh like the startup i said no no i'm happy at Nestle.

16:09Anyway, he called me again and said, are you sure? I was like, yeah, no, I'll come. I'll come. So in the space of three months, I moved house, moved job and had a baby, which was nuts. I'm glad I got a ball over and done with it at the same time. So yeah, now this is my first experience of sales within grocery, but I've had a category experience through Nestle doing range reviews from one stars to all the way up to three stars in Morrison. So I understood that background. And And then in my head, you know, selling is selling. It's all about the conversations you can have and what you can unlock from that.

16:42And that's what I love. I love speaking to people. So, yeah, I've absolutely enjoyed everything up until now at hip hop. And what I love is that my role every week evolves. So it's completely different from what it was a year ago. Is there, before we go over to you, Eve, Harry, was there anything like from within Nestle in terms of your training? because if it's like an apprenticeship degree, I imagine there was really good like structures and trainings. And like you said, you had great people to learn from. I've had a mix of people on the podcast now, some who have gone the complete challenger route and just kind of stumbled their way up kind of like myself.

17:15And then others who have gone into that more like Pepsi, Unilever, Nestle world, had that training and gone, you know what? I'm ready to do that again, but for a smaller brand. So is there any like particular lessons or things that you really think, well, yeah, that's really helped shape like what I do now? Yeah, definitely. So firstly, the structure of the apprenticeship was six month rotations through supply chain, finance, marketing and sales. So just from that, you get a great understanding of very young age, what definitely suits you and what doesn't. They also have really good processes to learn your insights, understand yourself, how you work in a corporate environment.

17:52I would have loved to go to uni and then come out and have a job at 21. But I actually think that I needed to mature a lot earlier. going into a business at 18. I was very shell-shocked at actually how businesses operate, and especially the scale of Nestle and what it takes to kind of succeed there. So it was massively motivating. I wouldn't have changed that. And then probably finally, I've heard a lot of people say that moving from Challenger to big FMCG and vice versa is quite difficult. And on a CV, it looks quite difficult. I was lucky, I think, to do it at the age that I am. But also, like I said earlier, Matt Taylor identified that I have more of a challenger personality than Big FMCG.

18:35I'm the first to admit that I'm probably Slade Finance's worst nightmare when it comes to like Excel reporting and, you know, being ordered and structured in the way they've created and succeeded. But what that brings in hip hop is that I don't look for a structure. I kind of create the one that is best fit for that week. But we all know in this room that, you know, something can come up on a Tuesday and your whole month has changed. And I think that's what has really helped me with the apprenticeship is this adaptability, be able to lift and shift every six months in something completely different, brand new team, build those connections and kind of start excelling from there.

19:12So that's why I think an apprenticeship degree is the best route I could have taken. That's fantastic. And now, Eve, over to you. So what was your background? And from a young age, what were you like? I want to do this when I grow up. I just wanted to be on the West End when I was growing up. I really was passionate about performing arts and kind of that was, I did an A-level mix of performing arts history and business. That was, yeah, that was the dream. I kind of realised that I needed to have a bit of a back-up plan. yeah I ended up going to um Liverpool Guamawks University to study business and public relations yeah I thought this was brilliant because I feel like PR marketing you can still bring that creativity that kind of on stage persona kind of definitely through TikTok you can bring that forward and a lot so that's something that yeah that's how I kind of blend it together I guess in my day-to-day but my first kind of part of the working world was Airbus UK in their communications department so as part of my degree I did an industrial placement there so that was incredible I think it was you know a huge global organization and I think it was absolutely brilliant and this was a really varied role I looked after kind of social media profiles we did a lot in the local community which was brilliant community had a different sense of the word in that kind of context because that was looking after local community groups but I feel like that is community something that I now carry forward in my role day to day so I think it's really nice to have that first kind of instance there at Airbus and also got to take part in kind of a plane launch which was a really unique experience yeah that was that was great essentially then moved back that was in Bristol moved back up to Manchester it was um 2020 um and was applying for up to graduate schemes and luckily managed to secure one before lockdown at the Hutt Group so the Hutt Group was actually founded in Northwich which is the town where I'm from so you know lots of brands like my protein look fantastic I'm sure a lot more people are aware of them now um but I kind of my role there was a PR executive across their hotel and spas and luckily my role was secured in February um September luckily they managed to keep our roles kind of secured but obviously starting my role which was supposed to be doing a lot of PR marketing for hotels and spas they were all close needs a kind of agile and flexible and kind of from my first name to work on some of internal cons um and then my friend works for glossy box and they had a goodie bag that she was able to bring home and i saw this brand called love raw and i was like wow like that looks cool you know really really dynamic packaging vegan kinder bueno i was like i've never tried vegan products i thought this was super cool i had a little look into them and yeah they were based in manchester I was like no and this brand is based around the corner and so I was able through my role group I was able to delve into the world of kind of socials influencer etc followed Love on LinkedIn and they posted a role which was influencer and brand partnerships exec and I was like what this is so crazy because I've only been following them for a couple of months and I was like this role sounds perfect I'm kind of ready for a change wow it would be so cool to work in a team of 20 and a kind of really a brand with really humble beginnings um and yeah actually got the role at Love Raw stayed there for three years and I had lots of firsts during my time there so we I launched our ambassador program I launched our influencer events and our influencer kind of set up um and yeah really varied I loved the way that when we had like say a product launch we were planning our campaign we'd get all of our channels in line in a small marketing team of four and then on the day of launch we'd get our Shopify kind of on the screen in the office and we'd just see it's you know it's my market in our version but it was I just thought that was so exciting because you could literally see the impact of the work that you did the week before on this day and Love Raw built such like a wonderful community and literally we could have lots and jokes with them we'd make like fake product launches and people would run to our pages so yeah absolutely loved my time at Love Raw and was kind of definitely wanted to stay in the challenger brand space so was really um kind of was really looking for the next step I did London did I did think about it for a short time there's so many challenger brands down there that I admire but I think yeah I've got family roots in Manchester and kind of really passionate about this city and so essentially Graham who was our old CEO also worked at Love Raw and I was kind of like hip-hop been on my radar for some time you know what's the situation at hip-hop and kind of made touch with rayon it didn't work out in the first place i went to boohoo for a short period which was good had to kind of go to a similar level of the hot group to boohoo but it really showed me that challenge your brand is where my heart lies so yeah i was really lucky to be able to join the marketing team in january straight away i was like i'm so excited to just get my teeth stuck into this you know this it's different um drinks industry I have a lot to learn still but the fact that it was kind of a similar kind of team setup the kind of yeah the marketing team like was a bit of a different structure so getting my head around that and kind of how we do campaigns I've been really glad to be able to kind of set up a kind of campaign process for the team but but yeah I'm absolutely loving it and kind of really grateful for Emma and Kenny for the opportunity to be able to also work at another great challenger brand in Manchester so that was my story no brilliant like i i absolutely loved love raw man of and rimi and like that whole like the team and what they built i remember it's just one of the best vegan chocolates on the market um yeah i was really sad to kind of hear all the news of like administration and everything that was happening recently this year but i'm always like oh where can i find it um they'll be at lunch they'll be at the lunch show with their new owners so yeah what's this space they're coming back yeah i'm definitely texting him after this uh podcast because i suddenly went oh yeah I haven't seen them for a while and then I yeah I was doing some digging earlier today and I was like oh okay great they are so yeah I think it's as you said from the content and social side I think that was so much fun and their big mascot running around yeah I met met some great people and I think that's even when we first met um moving that into kind of the world of hip-hop and what you do now you've already like done these festivals and been involved in different things but like how is uh kind of your vision and your role within hip-hop like what are you trying to do to kind of accelerate the brand forward now?

25:23Essentially, we believe we're really well positioned to be kind of the mainstream pop of choice. We've got our sodas and kombuchas that the taste, you know, is incredible, real fruit, real flavour, no artificial sweeteners. I think the taste really stands up for itself. I feel like it's so easy as a college brand to say, our taste is amazing. But genuinely, I feel like it's really stand on its own two fears. It's brilliant. We want to get hands in hand, liquid on lips, and also kind of just really define our kind of northern tone to the brand um as i kind of said before this is a real like unique selling point for us and it goes back to the six years ago where emma was making kombucha in our kitchen we want to still get that kind of essence of the brand obvious to consumers when we speak to them but yeah i can come up to like what we've got coming up next if if that's of interest yeah yeah going to yeah i'm always i'm always trying to tease out mpd and other things yeah i'd love to know what's what's coming this is your lucky day mitch because i was at the production line yesterday and picked up the first time with our pumpkin spice soda amazing on londay it'll be the 22nd of september so a little bit and after this episode comes if you want to buy it but you know pumpkin spice lattes are everywhere right now there is a lot of sugar in them and we believe that like a real good way that hip-hop can get involved in this cultural moment is to make our soda version so it's really sweet it's got kind of cinnamon it's also got it's not kind of the sugar or anything it's got like vanilla to kind of balance out the spice but yeah we're really excited for this launch it's kind of a bit of a PR stunt but will be kind of on our um yeah on our website and it's available to buy for Monday but yeah we're really excited we're popping it up a lot of freshers events next week so we believe students kind of love the pumpkin spice flavor um and then we've got kind of a staff celebration coming up um because we want to do yeah more staff kind of content because we believe that they're all kind of greatest so there's a lot to come there's a lot to come from this launch but recently it's always meant to happen we've also got a winter wellness campaign coming up really soon so this is our first kind of on-packed co-branded promotion which harry's been involved in and we're super excited to try something different within grocery and but this will also come across online as well so essentially um our winter wellness campaign is all about kind of sustainable habits so not kind of that january reset that everyone tries to do and then two weeks in it's like i give up we want to start from when we started from september the first so a real sustainable resale obviously as farry said the brand is all about real people and kind of not not faking anything and our products are exactly the same we just want the changes to be sustainable for people and our drinks are kind of there as a great kind of course for that as part of it we're linking up with class packs and so there will be kind of a qr on packs which will enable people to get free ClassPass credits or sign up for a free month of ClassPass free trial.

28:14They usually only do two weeks. So some of the kind of studios that they've got on there are kind of really great city centre studios that it's quite expensive to get a class. Yeah, we're super excited for this to launch, but that's a little teaser into the world of Hip Hop right now and what we're planning for. But I'm sure Harry might have stuff to add as well. Yeah, I was going to say, Harry, how's that been when you have like a new SKU, if it's like a limited run or all that, like navigating the operations and logistics and even like buying from the retailer like how is that to navigate when is this actually going live so this is obviously coming out like first week in October so if you're listening now are people able to get hold of it yeah for sure so pumpkin spice soda we're driving that especially through like our DTC website we've got like I said a massive following of subscribers but also people that are mailing lists so that's where we trial all these new fun flavors and then for the class pass i want to say before i go any further i had not heard a class pass before we started talking about it and these girls at hip-hop are constantly going to gym going to like spin classes all these things i'm just a very traditional just go in the morning to the gym with some weights and then go home i then looked online and for the points that you get you can go to like cryotherapy chambers and stuff like that we're very aware that there's like a high presence of hip-hop in Waitrose, M &S.

29:32So there's something for absolutely everybody on ClassPass, especially when you put in your postcode. It's super surprising how much comes through. So really, really excited about that. And when we've taken this to the trade, they said it's one of the first of its kind in terms of this type of activation in October time. I know there's a lot of obviously sober October and that's across BWS as a category, but we've wanted to kind of bring it out of that and make it so that people can make small changes now so it's easier in january it's not to say that we won't have big things coming in january because we do um that's still tbc but for now with class pass what we're trying to do is make sure that everybody's feeling as good as they can about themselves and if it's something as small as you know book yourself in for a spa afternoon or um going to you know barry's boot camp um there's something for everyone there and so selling it into the trade has been really really exciting and that's where we want to now level up in 2026 i think our distribution has been massively growing in 2025 but rightfully all of our fellow functional brands are doing the same it's now how can we all stand out uh from the crowd how do we become the the the gap that mixes as seen in the market and you know uh an adult soft category that is dying as people kind of blur the lines between is you know cbd a functional drink or is it an adult soft is it a mixer you know all of that category work is something that i've started to really get into for 2026 and beyond and part of that and what makes it easier is having you know even the team creating the incentives like this that are so on brand but also so relevant for our for our consumers yeah no i think it like i said when my uh in-laws picked out from pizza express or whichever pizza chain it was it's easy yeah so when they're at zizis and they kind of sent me this photo like oh have you tried this it's delicious they've then become a subscriber and like i go around theirs and they've got the cans of that oh what flavor do you want so like they're fully bought in but from my view it's like i wouldn't see them as like your typical consumer like they they don't drink alcohol and they were like it's an absolutely delicious soda it's better for me than a coca-cola or something else so actually that's why they've made the switch but in my view it's like i wouldn't have seen them as a typical consumer but i'd love to know if you have any insight on who your consumers are or like how you find these people or are you just trying to tick a box for as many people as possible because it does kind of fit that need state yeah eve will definitely be the best to answer that with the insights that her and the team are doing but i can just say for myself what has been really interesting is my personal journey with both alcohol and also like soft drinks and sweeteners so i've always liked what like spencer Matthews does with Clean Co and moderation it's like you don't have to say that you're sober you could say that you're sober curious or you moderate I choose about the time where I'm gonna go sober just because I know that it's better for me and I'll choose certain times or events which we go yeah to know I'll have a drink of that so a stag do in October being one of them and a trip to Cork with the boys I definitely cannot go sober too but I find that hip-hop is a really good alternative to having a drink and not wanting like an alcohol-free drink that's one side of it but also on the flip side this is why i think we've got so many different types of consumers i'm hypersensitive now to sweeteners we've when i moved into hip-hop i didn't drink diet sore zeros anyway but tasting aspartame and some of our competitors that use it instead of sugar there's loads of health benefits to not having any sugar in your product so we choose to be real and our version of real is having as low sugar as naturally possible we don't add any the only sugar we had is for the kombucha itself to eat that's my preference now when i have a soft drink so if i don't want a coke when i'm on the night out i definitely won't have a zero or a diet i'd go for like a lime and soda or if it pops behind that or one of our great um i don't want to say competitors but people in in our space i'll always go for them show them the love because i think that's where we're growing is people that either don't want to drink or they just want to try something that's really really tasty yeah we we call them partners in mission when i was at hura that was our phrase that we still use to this day it's like you're kind of raising that category and i think it's it's really integral in especially in the functional drink space i think it's like you're still educating you're still trying to get consumers into the category so whoever does that great if you've been that entry gateway for people then they're gonna go okay i might try this brand now i might try that brand now they'll find their favorites for whatever reason that is and that's obviously then the job of people like eve to go okay this is why you should love us as a brand and this is what we're doing so i don't know if eve if you wanted to add any any more onto that um from uh from what you guys are doing and also where can people find you so i've obviously said around like from my view is obviously seeing zz's and my in-laws trying it was great but we've mentioned grocery like are there any other kind of key partnerships or places that you're popping up at whether that's qsr or takeaways cafes like where where can people get hold of it and how how you show up as a brand there yeah definitely like harry's done an amazing job within grocery so we are in the sainsbury's meal deal we're now in the waitress meal deal as a couple of weeks ago um kind of in morrison to cardo so yeah that's in like the grocery front as you say cvz's we're in a lot of independence we're in kind of cafes etc um yeah i'm a mississippi harry that's exactly right yeah so we have a really dedicated our home team that's actually growing as we speak we have boxed off manchester that was our priority and and the north so any independent was shown love and and is shown love and and hopefully you'll find a hip hop in there um that's also for leeds york newcastle and we've now got a dedicated team with some partners with obviously lbc clf bid food uh listing this year that's really really helped to step on our presence in the out of home channel we've got a lot in the works but you'll probably know as well like the tenders for these things are very different to grocery you know that you're talking you know three-year tenders so we have um active conversations with a lot of different people hopefully 2026 uh we see a bit of an explosion in that area yeah for sure i think in terms of like i know you mentioned about cluster segments before so i just don't want to touch on that but yeah basically when i started i had a marketing was like well it's everyone everyone drinks pot so there was a huge there was a huge opportunity to go after but i feel like within marketing if you're trying to go after everyone all the time like we just wanted to refocus our efforts a little bit so we've got kind of three up segments which I don't mind sharing so we've got ROGs so it's people like Emma and Penny starts with maybe gut health problems or generally just gut health is huge right now and people really are starting to care about getting kind of 30 pounds a week there's so much more awareness of it so essentially people who are interested in that kind of space we've also got wellness trend seekers so people who just want balance people who are looking kind of at trip etc interested in kind of the benefits of different drinks and not kind of potentially picking up a drink on the shelf like a smoothie which might have a lot of sugar I think people are really starting to look at brands their ingredients lists etc so you know it's a really exciting time that wellness trend seekers might also pick up a hip-hop um and also progressive families so it's really interesting what you said about kind of your parents much because we think people want yeah people want to look after kind of their kids but also like older people are now wanting to look after their health as well and we've also got people who are yeah wanting to go sober curious so yeah we believe we've got kind of something for everyone within our range so I don't think we've got specifically said our range but we have our kombucha our sodas which have kind of high fiber and then we've got our CBD kombucha which it's got kind of good coverage across grocery but I think definitely in the next few months we want to really dial up kind of our CBD drinks because I think maybe some people don't know that we do them so it's kind of going to be a little bit tricky in terms of what you can and can't say about cbd i think asa regulations i'm sure there's people listening to the podcast who would emphasize there's a lot going on so you want to make sure that we're yeah kind of things for everyone but yeah we believe that there's something for everyone within the range in terms of our cherries and berries it's amazing for kids but then you've got a ginger and turmeric which is great for kind of maybe older palates more um more mature yeah we believe kind of that yeah there's something for everyone to try but yeah that's it brilliant and then on that what what's your go-to i mean i'm sure it changes day in day out depends in which retailer or what you've got at home but uh i saw you sipping one at the start of the podcast so uh what are you rocking today what's your favorite eve and and harry if if there's like one product you're like you need to go out and try this what would it be i think the pink grapefruit is is incredible i've never had a grapefruit flavored drink before joining hip-hop i don't know why i don't have anything but when I first tried this I was like this was pops um hip hop and then I think in terms of kombucha like the apple and elderflower it's a great kind of dupe for maybe an appetizer appetizer etc so I think anyone who likes it that's a kind of I don't know if you agree how we find our apple and elderflower is a really good gateway into kombucha because it might not taste like maybe classic kombuchas do it's really accessible someone who's maybe never had a kombucha but yeah good flavors to choose from yeah my my favorite is berries and cherry soda when ryan mercer our in-house wizard who creates all of our products and is an unbelievable human being he brought the first batch and when he opened the can i said it smelled like you know when you walk into a cinema and you smell like the pick-a-mix it's literally that and and i've now had multiple people at trade shows but also buyers say the exact same thing that's my favorite and then strawberry and pineapple kombucha is actually my favorite uh kombucha To Eve's point, you can't really taste the tea in the background.

39:14It's a real good entry point. And actually, when we speak to the likes of Morrisons and when we're speaking to OneStop, people that have coverage of the UK that is probably the most representative of the total population. These are the two SKUs that I think are going to become our front runners in the long run if I was to be betting on any given product. Amazing. And I'm just wary of time. So there's a few more questions. this is one I like to ask everyone about when times didn't go so right so it can be at hip-hop it can be at previous roles I just like love to know like when you think of a tough day at the office or a really tough day at work like what's the first one to come to mind and how do you get through that I don't know if Eve you want to take that one first we've already talked a little bit on Withenshaw so I feel like when I was thinking about this question that that comes to mind it was brilliant in the end but kind of leading up to it on the week of Withenshaw I came down with COVID.

40:06I was like, I've literally been planning this for months. And Frankie kind of, you know, as a challenger brand, true style, there's other things that came up within that week where we maybe could have been setting off. But like, you always drag for a political post. Frankie and I came there at one o 'clock on Friday. The festival started at four and we needed to set up our pitch. I feel like this is one of the things that just comes to you in a challenger brand and you kind of just embrace it. We didn't have any kind of vehicle to, we had branded fridges, which were the other side of the festival from where our pitch was we had no way to transport them so it's kind of like I was flagging down a man with a van on site who definitely should do other things but I feel like sometimes when you're kind of in this finish and you just kind of work with what you've got and you you work it out and we managed to set everything off kind of literally I think that's the easiest time we leave ourselves a little more time I feel like after that it just felt like a true challenge a day we were kind of building kind of like pumps garden umbrellas everything doing it all and yeah obviously the team came to help kind of just before but I feel like that was a day that at the start we were like I'm really glad it came together and you know thanks to Frankie for a really hard work on that one as well yeah no events are rare to get super smooth it's rare you hear someone like oh yeah we had zero problems so anyone who's managing that time after time like fair play to you but what about you Harry what's the the first one that comes to mind for you I think definitely uh belts of like imposter syndrome um it's starting really really young in the largest fmcg company in the world that used to always come up in each of my roles in different ways and it normally then led to potential like self-sabotage so going over that has been a really good thing in hip-hop because there's definitely been opportunities for that to kind of spike given the fact that like now i'm looking after total grocery and i've never never done that before but i found ways to combat it by having like stackable achievements and starting I had the week really really strong and I think that kind of is a curveball you gotta remember it's a curveball that you didn't plan that so any way that you react to it you know you're learning from it if you do well or not there's going to be a thousand ways you could have reacted to something but I remember back being like in supply chain espresso and failing to send stock for like two weeks to a boutique in Birmingham and just thinking like I am gonna get fired like straight straight away like how am I going to tell my parents that I've like put a lease down or like a rental lease for a year down near Gatwick airport and I don't have a job but in in true normal fashion be able to rectify it within the day and learn from it but yeah that's probably that the hardest hardest day and then hardest thing I had to get over yeah definitely I still have it even now I'm like oh yeah like I'm doing doing all this stuff and obviously like Pat's just gone into Tesco and like oh I've never actually like worked with Tesco myself like do I know what i'm doing i'm like yeah that's fine like we'll work it out final question coming over to you guys is the music one so this is one i ask every guest and it is what song comes to mind when you think about your your working career and why oh if it's working career we had a laugh about this because uh we were going through the questions and uh and he was like oh yeah harry and you thought when i was like yeah straight away like girls just want to have fun but we're talking about uh i mean that's it's great give me give me the context in in hip-hop context the whole premise of the song is obviously about like sneaking out like you're a teenager like going against like your parents and stuff like that i'm really trying to express yourself and genuinely think that hip-hop is that type of person in the total drinks world and i think people are really recognizing that like we have gone from a product that looked a bit like a craft beer to a design that a thing will stand the test of time for at least five to ten years with the new products and how we go about our marketing very guerrilla how we go about our conversations with retailers i've never experienced buying from from grocery but going in there just ourselves just getting understanding the layer of the land and also it's just an absolute banger of the song like i drink yeah love it eve anything to add or is that a community of like that's what we're saying so I've been thinking I think I've been thinking about this it's just like straight away I was like I don't know I feel like songs can have different meanings for different people but one that comes to mind for kind of general challenger brand world I feel is like you've got a role with it from Oasis I feel like it's really poignant because we were able to activate within Manchester and with the Oasis kind of coming into Manchester we were kind of all over the streets with hip-hop with our bucket hats we had a kind of Oasis pop-up shop just by our office so I feel like when I was thinking about kind of this summer and kind of just rolling with it generally working in a challenger brand you do have to build up resilience things can go wrong you have to think on your feet every day so I think just got to roll with it and enjoy the process so yeah that was mine can we go with that?

44:56you have them both there's two of you it's allowed I'll let it slide but no both great suggestions love the Oasis tie-in as well keeping it up north and for anyone listening that wants to get hold of either of you or get hold of the product like is LinkedIn the best place? The website, like where would you direct people? Yeah, definitely LinkedIn. I think all of us are really active. Eve does a phenomenal job of making sure that all of us are posting everything we're doing. Always open on LinkedIn for a chat. Brilliant. No, that's fantastic. Yeah, I've really enjoyed this. As I said, I am a huge fan, as are my in-laws who are regular subscribers.

45:29And I'll be seeing you guys next week at lunch. This will come out the week after lunch. So hopefully some of you listening have seen all of us at lunch. But yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. thank you so much for your time Mitch and everyone go get packed from the 300 Tesco stores that they're in please do yeah we need that pull through but no amazing love this and to everyone listening thank you so much we will see you on the next episode goodbye