#62 - Jack Rutherford - Crosta Mollica [UK Managing Director]

0:00Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to the Unfounders. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Jack Rutherford, who is the Managing Director for the UK and Ireland at Costa Malica. Now, Costa Malica make incredible Italian produce, all made out in Italy, in a range of sections from fresh to frozen to chilled to ambient. We're talking pizzas, tarolini, pastas, all sorts. And it is all exceptional quality, made with brilliant ingredients and packaged in phenomenal branding. The brand they're building is fantastic, but what's it like actually working there? What is Jack's experience bringing to the table?

0:31What's his background? I really, really enjoyed looking at the difference between fresh and frozen, their views, strategy, growth, how they bring the team together for wine and olive oil nights. Brilliant. I really hope you enjoy this conversation because I absolutely did. And if you haven't already tried it, go out and pick some up. You will not regret it. So without further ado, let's get on with the episode. Are you a founder of the next exciting food and drink round? Are you looking to scale and grow? Well, let me introduce you to Mission Kitchen, London's home for food and drink entrepreneurs and sponsor of The Unfound.

1:02unfounders 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 missionkitchen.org forward slash unfounders

1:32Hello and welcome back to Young Founders. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Jack Rutherford. So Jack, can you please let everyone know where you work and what your role is? Sure. Hi Mitch. I'm Jack Rutherford. I'm the UK Managing Director at Crosta Malika. So for anyone who has never heard of Crosta Malika somehow, has never seen it before, what is Crosta Malika? What do you do? What's the story? Yeah, so Crosta Malika, we are all about bringing the very best of Italian food culture to the UK and to the international markets as well. We celebrate Italy. The business has been going for quite a while now, actually.

2:05So it was founded in 2009. So it's 16 years old. And it's one of those classic businesses that sort of very gradually and then suddenly really accelerated. So our founder, James, was an expert in Italian food, traveled the country sourcing all the very best. Started out by bringing bakery products. So we have pan e pugliese, very typical Italian bread. And then going into things like breadsticks, savory aperitivo snacks, eventually moving into sweet biscuits. of the bakery lines, such as Piedina, and then eventually launching into new product categories, things like pizza, ice creams, desserts.

2:39Anything that's sort of quintessentially Italian, we can do to a high quality. We do. All of our products are made in Italy. You know, they're all like made to artisan standard by typically like multi-generational family businesses that pour this amazing love and care and passion into all of the products. It's a really, really nice business to be part of. We sell across lots of different product categories in the uk and across europe typically found uh you know in children frozen isles of supermarkets these days the lion's share of our business is in pizza um so yeah that's a bit of an overview of us amazing yeah i think i say it as if people haven't heard of it but i'm pretty sure most people listening will have at least tried the products and if not you are absolutely missing out if you haven't tried them i mean for me it was started with the like the tarolini or the tarali the little snacks the fennel seed ones just the perfect aperitivo drink accompaniment to go with it and then obviously the pizzas have just skyrocketed i think the brand um obviously earlier this year there's a big rebrand so it went from costa and malika to costa malika um the brand just stands out on shelf massively so what's that been like over this last year of you kind of being there seeing how that brand evolution's happened and what that turns out on shelf yeah so look i feel really lucky so i joined the business last december which was about uh three or four months before uh the brand refresh or like more than a refresh really like a big shift in the visual identity of the brand happened in the market um like you say we used to be known as cross to amalika we've changed that and i think you know some of the things that we really wanted to achieve with that like typically i think you know the name uh people knew us as like the stripy brand or the brand with the big and whilst that was great to have any kind of recognition i'm sure and was done a great job in building the brand we wanted to put some of our credentials like front and foremost in the pack, made the name more memorable.

4:26So we've made it much bigger and bolder on the pack, particularly you can probably see something behind me, like the word crosta is much more readable and put our Italian credentials at the front in a much clearer way as well. I think, you know, the packs look amazing. The redesigns work really well. We've got this like really iconic, like watch strap that goes down the pack. The food shots that were taken are really amazing as well. So yeah, that went live back in February, March time. So first hit frozen shelves. and then you know it takes a little bit of time to roll out but um the results have been amazing so i think you know we've obviously done a lot of store visits but they stand out so much more on shelf and then as we measure kind of all of the key metrics that you'd measure at this stage like our prompted awareness figures have grown up have grown significantly through the period in terms of the pre versus post the rebrand so the recognition and the memorability of the name cross there all of the other key metrics that we track as well so you know we are we already had a lead but our lead has increased as we are perceived to be the most premium brand in pizza we are perceived to be the most italian brand in pizza so all the things that we were trying to get onto the front of the pack it's really resonating and landing with shoppers and then i guess most pleasingly for me like our rate of sale is therefore growing as well people are seeing it they're picking it up they're trying it and they're repeating yeah i mean the shelf presence and how they look whether that's in the chilled or in frozen is just stunning like the big activations above i mean you've just done this whole new range of pizzas which are huge and thin crust and yeah i mean seeing them on shelf i'm like wow i'm always the one walking around supermarkets taking photos of brands and products and anytime there's a new crosta product it's always catches my eye so clearly that's an exciting time but what was it about crosta that when you first joined what was it about the brand you were like i could see myself working there well firstly i think as kind of you said before uh about products it always starts with products and it was a product that i was familiar with like same for me the fennel c tarolini was just a product that I've like eaten and loved and also the pizza bases have been a staple in my household for quite a long time so like it was a product that I used I knew it was really high quality I guess I didn't know that much about the brands historically but I just knew that they had really nice products and then it was spoke to so our chairman David Milner and our CEO Tom Syrett two people that I'd worked with previously at Lily's Kitchen they had joined the cross-the business a couple of years ago and I just went for a chat with them and they talked about I guess just seeing from them the like how excited they were at the potential that the brand had how superior they felt the product was the amazing stories we could tell the potential that the brand had and just the growth opportunity that they saw in the business just got me really excited i thought firstly david and tom and other people that i've met from cross turn that i knew like i knew them to be really good people and people that i really trusted and respected i knew that i could work with and secondly hearing from them how excited they were about the potential for Prostamalika just meant that it felt like a really good opportunity we all know that brand is important right but what if i told you it can impact growth and customer acquisition costs by up to 50 against ordinary are a brand agency who help founders marketing departments scaling teams ensure their brand is the most powerful tool for growth from brand strategy tone of voice and visual identity to helping you get retail ready with ongoing brand growth retainers they really are the full circle agency for growing your brand being the team are absolutely fantastic just imagine what they could do for your brand so what are you waiting for see how they can be your grand growth partners against ordinary.com now i've heard david speak on hungry before especially around frozen now obviously with pact we're big on the advocate of kind of primerizing frozen and cross has always been one of our kind of case studies whenever we speak to a buyer we're talking about like look across this kind of change the perception that pizza needs to be this kind of cheap one two three pound opportunity and you can suddenly be putting extra value with high quality ingredients and customers will respond to that from your business uh kind of view and how you're looking at the the market i know before we started recording we were saying like fresh versus frozen i'd love to touch on on that like from a a brand view like what what's your view on like where is the brand going how how does your sales split in the market right now um yeah well look obviously See, we've got quite a complex business in that we operate in multiple different product categories across, I think, about eight categories in the store, all things told.

8:43But the specific question on pizza, which is the chilled versus frozen one, I think, you know, our view is we want to be where the shoppers are. And in the UK market, that's in both chilled and frozen. And we can see the development of those categories happening quite distinctly. as you say there's this massive undercurrent of premiumization happening in frozen at the moment which the likes of Pact off-site as well the likes of Itzu for instance and ourselves are really at the forefront of and I think there is this amazing quality story to tell consumers about frozen food is absolutely like often anyway is the absolute best way to buy a store and then eat products that you find in the supermarket and if you go to anywhere else in Europe as David would have mentioned when he talks about it on Hungary.

9:29You'll see that the frozen section is far more premium than it is here in the UK. Consumers are much more used to buying premium product there. So that's really fun. Our frozen business is doing really well. Pizza business in frozen is growing by about 45 % year on year. And we're seeing loads of traction there. We're really lucky in this market that we have this amazing premium prepared meals section in the supermarkets in chilled and kind of not just in pizza, but across all of ready meals, which has been driven by the likes of premium and private label predominantly over the years have really pushed the boundary and you know everything from kind of people like mns who probably historically set the benchmark on with waitrose for that and then you see today the likes of tesco finance things we taste the difference they've got amazing propositions here supplemented by brands like charlie biggums that created actually really high quality meal solutions um and so there's this massive opportunity in meal solutions for premium pizza as well in chilled so there are just two really big opportunities for pizza in this market and we are growing really quickly in both of them we see them both developing sort of independently and what's interesting is when you break down the cross shop between the two it's really low so we see something like a 14 cross shop between children frozen pizza which is remarkable and the truth is it's the people shop the categories in completely different ways for completely different missions and like a very simplified version of why would be effectively you would shop chill pizza if you're looking for something tonight or maybe tomorrow and you know you're walking into maybe a supermarket or a convenience store and you're going down the chilled meal solution and thinking i need something for later and you're more typically going to shop frozen as a planned purchase something to put in the freezer that you might then have on friday or saturday night or something you know it's a category that massively overtrades online as part of planned purchase so even though they kind of like have very comparable products the mission use case is really different so we're excited about both No, that's a great answer.

11:23Yeah. As you know, we're drumming that bass for Frozen and keeping pushing and getting people into the aisle. We very much know the online play is really strong, but it's like how are we getting consumers into the actual store and having brands like yourselves in there is another really good anchor to be like, oh, well, I'm here. What else is in the sector? so aside from the obviously the sales number flying and everything else like let's get into the the secret sauce of costa as a business like what happens behind the team like obviously you're sat in a lovely office in the backdrops perfect very on brand love it um but for kind of day-to-day working what's the setup like how big is the team now is there is there anything in the way that you work as a business that we can kind of pull some nuggets of wisdom out yeah no yeah no we are seeing loads of success and yeah it'd be right to try and mind that and i think we do have kind of like you know i have sort of like pinch me moments where i'm like oh god like we are really flying i think we just found out this week that we just passed through 100 million pounds of rsv in the uk in the past 52 weeks for instance and you think right like what can we learn from this which is great i think i think like the answer is of course that there is no secret source right i'm sure that's like maybe the answer that you're expecting and i'd say the codes for success that we see here i'd say are broadly comparable to like codes of success in any other food and drink business or in fact like any other business across any industry which is like we just try and focus on having multiple points of competitive advantage versus a comparable competitor set and then really delving deep on them i'd say there are four things that we probably focus on as a business in a team which is products brand innovation and people and they're like a couple of those i'd even call out as like being superpowers and the way that we focus on them and we pursue them like product being probably the number one and i'd say i've talked a little bit about some of the products that we have already but we are really product obsessed and we try and live that all the time i've not been in a business quite like this where like the whole management team i'd say either formally or informally are stood around a table just looking at product every single week like you know we're looking at our products we're looking at first productions talking about making the most minor adjustments to improve product quality.

13:29We're anything that launched in the market. We're product benchmarking. We are like all over products all the time. We do pizza safaris. Like if we go anywhere as a business, we make sure we get out into trade. We see what's going on on menus. We try what's going on at the cutting edge. We're across everything that's happening in the London pizza scene. You know, we've been to Naples, Venice, Rome to understand like all of it. But it's really like the commitment in the business to understanding and being experts with product is like second to none for me. So that's probably one of the sort of things I would pull out.

14:01I think from a brand perspective, again, the brand has so much potential. And the thing that we focus on, I suppose, is our unfair advantage, which is that everything we do is authentically Italian. And we try and live that internally, which is fun as part of like building our culture. It's one of our values to, you know, is to hype up and live our Italian-ness. I've been taking advantage of the Italian lessons that we offer as a team and the Duolingo. We have things like we have a wine club or an olive oil club every month where we get wines in from Italy. And Stefano, one of the members of our team, talks about like the amazing stories behind them.

14:35And we really try and like feed what is already like a real passion for Italian food and culture in the business. Like we're a business of foodies ultimately as well. So we make sure we kind of we really amp that up. which is a kind of i suppose that combination of real passion for products and brand really helps the other things i talked about so like we're good at innovation we innovate at pace uh and high quality we have exceptional people and i think on the people front like you asked how big team is uh we're about 45 people we're actually we're relatively small still for a business that's delivering the scale of growth that we have but you know i suppose every business would say this but I do believe it to be true here is like we really do have exceptional people who are really committed and who deliver amazing results.

15:20I guess if I was going to try and like give some kind of like the some of the secret formula what I would say is there's probably like a lot of businesses certainly that I've been part of or that you see across the industry that have those things like great products amazing brand great innovation really good people. The bit that I've learned the most from this business is so David our chairman he talks a lot about like the accelerators of strategy being focus and effort. And so they're the two things that we sort of like multiply all that by, which is we make really strategic decisions about what we are and aren't going to focus on, which makes a massive difference.

15:54So like two years ago, we said, you know, we love all the products that we make. We're really proud of all of them. We want to keep selling all of them and we're going to continue to do that. But we're going to put the lion's share of our resources of business behind growing pizza because we see that as somewhere where we have a really superior product and there's a big opportunity for us to drive a lot of growth and so we focused on doing that and we focused the team's effort on doing it and that's been really successful and then effort being the other multiplier and I guess what I would say is I don't mean that to come across as like we want to be the team that puts in the most hours and the most effort of everyone in the industry of course we want everyone to work hard and we work hard like everybody does but it's kind of I say we sometimes talk about what we do as a business in like a series of sort of 100 meter sprints where we say, right, the next 100 meter sprint is we want all of our effort focused on these specific things.

16:45And, you know, I'll always be talking to the team about, you know, the next three months is two things that we have to deliver. And it might be like amazing brand engagement days of our customers. It might be building out the innovation opportunity. It might be grappling with like a really big category problem that we have at the moment that we're trying to get to the bottom of and just making sure that we're continually focusing our effort on the big things and not the stuff that becomes the clogs of the inbox and comes day to day and doesn't add a load of value yeah no that's i'm sure so many people are nodding away like i was through the whole of that being like yeah that makes absolute sense there's always so much especially in a challenger when you're like oh we're growing we can do all of this and we could go this and we could go in this direction but i think it's it's like no actually let's take a step back before before we start running like let's focus where we should be running which direction because you can run very fast and very far in the wrong direction and not make much progress so actually thinking that as a team and structuring it i think it's a really smart move um now digging right the way back like thinking back to when you were younger like how what did you want to be when you grew up i think that's always a fun one to dig into and then how have you got to where you are today because i imagine back when you were a child you're not thinking like yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna look after this huge italian brand yeah fun question i think like i would describe myself as probably having definitely not having any kind of master plan when I was younger.

18:03Like, I guess when I was like 10, I wanted to be a footballer or a cricketer or something. And then like pretty quickly, I think my dad probably told me that that wasn't going to happen. And so, I don't know. I never really knew who I wanted to be. I think I was always kind of naturally curious and like I was very interested in school and like I enjoyed it. And so sort of, I've always just sort of pursued things that I've found of interest without having a strict plan. So I studied modern languages at university, which I really enjoyed, but had no intention necessarily of becoming an interpreter or a teacher.

18:32I think when it got to around the time where you start thinking about a career, I kind of always found it difficult to visualize what a career in something like accountancy or law or consultancy would look like. And it never really had much of an appeal. In actual fact, I had a friend who I played football with who'd done the Sainsbury's Graduate Training Scheme from the first year of it. And he just sort of said, hey, look, if you thought about this, it's really interesting. you know you're interested in food and drink like you might find this good and you rotate around a lot of different parts of the business you're going to store but then you'll work on different multiple different commercial functions you'll build up a knowledge of different parts of the industry see how suppliers work see what you know a massive organization works like and it'll just be a really good grounding in like basic commercial skills and I kind of thought hey it sounds really interesting and I'd always had like a vague idea that I would want to do something more like business focus or business related and food and drink just felt like a really tangible industry to go and work in um and so i guess without ever having much of a plan that's kind of how i got into it so starting in uh sainsbury's graduate buying i see it was ready to drink and bacon and gammon so two obviously very different roles but i'd love to this is what september 2011 ish time ready to drink at that time it's going to be so different to ready to drink now like anytime you walked down a fixture in the supermarket i think it's fascinating to think back to 10 15 20 years ago like what was in that section so can you remember like in in the ready to drink section for example like what kind of products or brands were around at the time and have any stood the test of time yeah i remember it well it's one of those things when you're a buyer and like i loved being a buyer it's such an interesting and fun job like you know you cast three numbers inside out so i can almost remember like the weekly revenue numbers and like what the top numbers were and everything it's like ingrained in the back of your head it was a really challenging time for ready to drink actually it was in what we thought at the time was like terminal decline for the category um so it was before any of the kind of premiumization came through there was like it was a long time before moth cocktails for instance uh the biggest sellers were you know wkd 70 cl bottles manify 70 cl obviously the things like reef and bacardi brisa and everything was still sort of there but they'd been in long-term decline and it was a category that just had really low engagement penetration losses no significant innovation with the exception of it was right at the start of where premixed cans started to become like the real motor of the whole trade and companies like Diageo were really investing in that and we had the sort of three for five pound deal across the Gordons and Smirnoff Tins and that started to really kind of bring people back into that category to lift it up but yeah it was it was fun actually I really enjoyed that that job I still have friends now who still joke about how I used to turn up at Monday morning say I was every week and say yeah RTDs are in decline again it was like the line It's kind of a lesson because if you'd asked me then, I would have sort of said like this category will be gone in 10 years time, right?

21:26Because of the way that it was going. But really all it took was like some, you know, really smart innovation to come in and the category can take off again straight away. Yeah, I love that. I think everything is cyclical. Like you go through it, you look at fashion, you look at music. Like there's always this thing that's like, okay, this is really trendy right now. And then suddenly it disappears. And then a few years later, it's back. Yeah, it must be amazing kind of thinking back to that time. and now seeing the category and like the whole section in the supermarkets and and everything else and from there then what was what was your journey kind of moving to to where you are and like take us back through your career history you started in the graduate scheme obviously really enjoyed that like what what was the next step for you yeah so i rotated across a few different things at sainsbury's so like i say you go out to store i did three buying roles i did actually arrange planning role as well and it's kind of interesting you you know you don't realize that at the time but you're acquiring all these different skills that will then be like really useful or at least context is going to be really useful for the future and again i didn't have a great plan and as i sort of said i've always just pursued stuff that i found to be interesting and like i've got natural curiosity for so having done a couple of roles in the business and spirits team i got offered a job to go over to diageo where i did a couple of roles there one in innovation commercialization which is a sort of like a go between between like the marketing teams and the in-market sales teams about like bringing innovation concepts through and launch them in market.

22:45Loved that job. I was working on the Guinness brand, which is obviously like, you know, if you could choose a brand to work on as like a 25, 26 year old, like man, like, you know, in the UK, like I don't think there'd be many higher. It was like a, such a privilege to go and see how they approach brand building as well. Like absolutely phenomenal. And then I got an opportunity to move into the sales team in Diageo. So I was the senior national account manager on Tesco for two and a half years. And again, in terms of an opportunity to really develop commercial skills, working in a highly commercial category with the biggest retailer in the country in a market leading positional spirits was just like, it was an amazing experience.

23:23Loved it. I learned so much. I really enjoyed working with Tesco. And then from there, I guess I kind of went down a slightly different route. So having worked in two massive organizations, I got the opportunity to move over to work at Lily's Kitchen. That was through an ex-boss of mine, this former sales director at Diageo had gone over to do some consulting work there and had got in touch to say, hey, look, these guys, I think it'd be a really good opportunity for you and it could be a good accelerator for your career. And that was kind of my first opportunity to move into, I guess, a challenger brand role.

23:52And I had some trepidation. I think like the normal stuff that people would feel about this, which is it always kind of felt like a risk going from this like really big organization that had all these structures and support networks that you'd be building up over like your career to date to moving into something much smaller but look at the people that I met in advance of joining there the people like Tom and David and the more I got to know about the business the more I felt like it was really exciting and something that I wanted to do and something that could be a real accelerator for my career so I went over there to Lily's Kitchen as head of sales and then I was made sales director and we went on a really strong growth journey for a couple of years the business then sold to Nestle Purina during that time which was a really interesting experience and I worked on after the transition to Purina for a year before leaving Lily's.

24:38Amazing yeah I mean it must be quite an interesting journey kind of going from the the buyer route first to then a brand as big as Diageo and then going to Lily's Kitchen. What was some of like the major differences in in ways of workings or learnings between Sainsbury's to Diageo to Lily's and is there any kind of key lessons along the way that you're like okay this is one consistent or one truth that's still with me today? They were totally different, right? They're all completely different. And actually, the thing that I would say is they're less different than you might expect in the sense that I've also worked now.

25:10I worked obviously at CrossFit Leaker and I worked at this plant-based meat alternative company as well. And kind of even within like a challenger brand sphere, what I would say is each business is so completely different and has its own idiosyncrasies and has its own cadences and has its own ways of working that, you know, to me, I would say it doesn't necessarily feel like it feels worlds apart working in any of these businesses. and there's not necessarily a thread that says like big businesses, small businesses, more different. Like, yeah, it's more different in that there are more people, the support networks are different.

25:38You have more support functions in Sainsbury's and Diageo and it's all the cliche things like it's slower to launch things, it's harder to get things done, you have less ownership. To a degree, that's all true. You move into these smaller environments and actually the first thing you realize is that you are empowered and expected to go and drive outcomes immediately, which is scary and threading in equal measure and it's something that I definitely really thrive on. But everywhere I've worked, like you work with great people who are really committed, who you can learn loads from. That stuff doesn't change.

26:07I think from being in a commercial role to a brand after being a buyer, buyers must love them working with you because you're like, look, I've done your role. I know what you're looking for, all your metrics or things like that. Like here's it laid out on a plate. Like that must be a nice insight to be coming to those conversations with. I think maybe. I hope so, certainly. I hope it means that you can bring like more meaningful and relevant things to buyers. I would say though, it does change a lot as well. I've not been a buyer for 10 years. And so the requirement is absolutely still there for me to understand what is important and relevant to each individual customer now as well.

26:39And I think sometimes as brands, we're at risk of assuming that, you know, it's like a one size fits all strategy for different retailers as well. And it's not. And like the job is constantly trying to understand and work out like, how am I going to support my clients on this specific problem? Like, what is the specific thing that Sainsbury's are trying to achieve at the moment? And I guess you can't rest on the laurels of I've done the job. It's definitely not enough. It's like, I need to understand specifically what you're trying to achieve right now so that I can help you do it. Yeah. No, I think when we first met, I was still at Hura and you were commercial director at this.

27:09And obviously that was during this plant-based boom of everything's looking at plant-based alternatives and plant-based meat. And then obviously in the three or so years you were there, how did that change for you from a working perspective? because obviously the market massively was starting to shift like from our perspective as Hura trying to come in it's like well we've already got brands we don't need any more and so we kind of almost had the door slammed on our face before we even got going but you guys were already in there early I'd love to know any reflections on your time at this because I mean as a brand it was it built a phenomenal business in the plant-based space even to this day they're still innovating they're doing like the veg led stuff so yeah I'd love you to touch on your time there yeah amazing business for amazing people would be like the first thing that I'd definitely say and yeah as you've already heard i said it was incredibly volatile times for working in plant-based right everything changed so quickly it was an enormous learning experience for me as well but yeah like when i joined that business the category you know through sort of 2019 to 2021 had gone through this enormous penetration boom where they'd been actually like really big step forwards in the product qualities as well which attracted a load of new consumers into the category all of the customers had massively expanded the space that was available to the category as well and there was this whole influx of new brands and products that come in and the hope was that this was going to continue and that the growth numbers were going to continue to come through and it would really make a big shift in how people were consuming protein obviously it then felt overnight like there was a bit of an about turn and the rug was pulled from beneath the feet of the category to a degree where penetration dried up it was hit by like a multitude of factors really cost of living concerns about nutrition and upf also kind of a big factor there and also like in honesty a lot of underperforming products like bad product coming into the category as well that didn't really deliver for consumers so it's it's normalized it was a really really interesting experience so you know from your perspective you would say this were what established brand in the category which we were but it never felt like we were therefore you know safe with all of our listings at all times you know through that period you know we worked really really hard to try and develop that that proposition and made loads of progress I'm really proud of the work that we've done or we did in that brand in really difficult circumstances at times as well from the wider macro trends we continue to gain stocking points bring new products to market but yeah it was it wasn't easy that's a very uh unstructured answer I'm afraid yeah I mean I don't think anyone would expect structure in a time when there was so much going on all over the place um with not only the industry but perceptions towards as you said processed food and all of that and I think I find it really interesting how we both kind of fall into brands again leading more of the whole food and the natural and just celebrating if you want something good just have have a great quality pizza yes it's not going to be the best on nutrition versus something that's slightly healthier but actually we're using olive oil we're using this and that and it's like if people want a pizza you want a good pizza like i the the upf argument when it comes towards plant-based really frustrates me because i'm like if i want a burger i'm choosing not to eat animals i just want a good tasting burger that delivers on the taste texture experience like i don't care necessarily the nutrition like i'm gonna slather it in sauce that's the way that i want a burger to me the fact that it's not from an animal is the most important part not the fact that it's not low fat and blah blah like just just give me something that tastes good i think with what cross to do actually you're getting a lot of good nutrition because the ingredients are such high quality anyway yeah i don't know if you have a similar view because i know another side that i'd love to touch on is i know we had kids around the same time and now you're md at one of the fastest growing italian brands in the country if not wider like how is it like juggling being a dad and being an md what's that like for you yeah um well i i wouldn't restrict it to being a dad and being a manager director like it'd be exactly the same for you for you if anybody like you're doing it whilst running a podcast at the same time right which is a crazy thing to add into the mix if you ask me but i'd say anybody not even just in food and drink in any industry who is like working whilst also having a young family will tell you that it's difficult to juggle it all right and that there are times where it's pretty tough what i would say is i think when we're so lucky that we're doing it now um i would say that you know we have so much more agency as to how and when and where we work versus even 10 years ago uh the world has completely changed and yeah yeah even if i'm in the office a lot or traveling quite a bit you know i'm still working from home and available to do bed and bath and the nursery grown far more often than I would have been able to do like even like 10 years ago it's not every day I'm not going to like make out like it is but it's a lot and that's great and and I love that I think I don't know I always say like we for me and maybe this is a personal thing we can get a bit lost in the the time spent at home time spent at work dichotomy and for me it's always been about like making sure that you're balancing your energy as well as well as your time right and making sure that you're delivering you know because if you have lots of time for one thing but no energy to give to it and you know you're not going to be your best self and present in those moments and so i guess it's always just trying to make sure that you're getting that balance right and uh you know for me that's a balance of making sure i'm getting my work done making sure i'm looking after myself eating res if he healthily making sure i'm making time for exercise occasionally probably you know having a cup of beers with my pizza on a friday so that i'm balancing and getting into that equilibrium almost like flow state of being able to like be a great dad and be great at work all the time and so i try not to get too weighed down on the time spend because i know that i'm fortunate to a degree but try and focus on like just being present having great energy when i'm there yeah that's really well said and exactly my approach as well it's like that quality time and start the things like okay first thing in the morning we're going to have that time together or i've been away non-stop trade shows and anuga and everything over the last week so saturday i literally had a day of just me and her and it was the the best thing it's like i needed this this time again just to to reconnect and have that moment so i think it's really important to any parents out there like just give yourself that break and go give give your work and your your family and your home life the same love and attention i think that's a really important message final couple of questions just because i'm wary of time this one i like to ask everyone about a time when it was a tough day at the office this could be in any of your roles just a time when you're like that was a really tough day but this is how we got through it and this is what i learned from it yeah i think in any roles but particularly actually commercial roles i've done over the years like you go through the full gamut of uh tough or tough days all the time over the past 10 years but probably over the past five or six years in particular i'd say anyone who's doing these roles will have experienced like some of the like really challenging external conditions that we've been through like around like regulatory changes around hyperinflation around cost of living and it's felt like there's just been challenge after challenge and so i really feel like i like we've all had like all of the kinds of difficult days all the time and like i don't know if i would focus on one but be that you know having difficult conversations with customers uh say like you know ones where you feel like you haven't done a particularly good job of it perhaps uh or like having conversations where you might be defending some parts of your range which hasn't gone particularly well as well you know like things appear all the time or you've let customers down from a stock perspective like we've basically done it all over the past six years.

34:17And I think working in challenger brands in particular, you are more exposed to some of these issues sometimes and things do go wrong quite considerably. Less so at the moment, like Touchwood, we're doing a really good job of keeping customers happy and just seems to be a slightly more stable market. But whenever these things happen, I think, I like to think I'm a relatively resilient person who looks forward and doesn't dwell too much on any of the kind of issues. I'm a big believer in the idea that, you know, when things are good, you should never get too up. And when things are down, you should never get too down.

34:48And you just kind of keep driving forward and trying to find solutions. And so when I'm with the team and things haven't gone well, like we just are solutions focused. And we just think about the next thing all the time. We'll reflect at the right moment on how we could have done a better job on having a better forecasting. So we didn't let customers down for first order or how we could have got ahead of some of the key objections that were coming down the line around waste or rape sale or any of these things. We'll reflect on that stuff. but I'm very much a believer in just focus on finding the solutions and move forward.

35:16Yeah, no, I think that's really well said. There is going to be problems day to day or things going wrong and it's just how you learn, how you move on from them, I think is the key message. Because yeah, especially with challenges, you're going to have the highest highs and the lowest lows. So I think it's just getting used to that. Like, okay, what's the standard feel like and how do we keep moving forward? So yeah, I love that. This is the song question. So I know you said this was actually the hardest out of everything we were going through. what's the song you're going to land on for your experience in the working world yeah mitch this is a deeply unserious question as such warrants an unserious answer i knew you're gonna ask me this so i asked my wife and she suggested uh espresso by sabrina carpenter as a sort of homage to the the fuel behind uh most of what i do day to day which is of course coffee so not for love of the song but you know i don't feel anything great about the song uh you know the inspiration behind it it's meaningful and it's very italian as well very on brand exactly exactly no i've absolutely loved this i mean there's so much more we could dig into i love the fact that you do the the team wine and olive oil tastings again very on brand um whatever's happening behind the scenes that you've kind of given us some some hints of you're building a phenomenal business together and i'm excited to see how the brand continues to grow and grow over time because it is just an absolutely stunning brand the quality is amazing the products are great and and we're big fans in this household and the team at PAX.

36:36Like Alex is always like, oh, have you tried this? Have you seen this? So yeah, we're going to be championing and celebrating you guys as you grow as well. For anyone who wants to get hold of you or find out more about Custom Leaker, where is the best place to do that? Yeah, LinkedIn would be a great place. So just send me a message. I'm rather happy to ramble on further. Apologies if it's been slightly rambling so far. But if anyone has got any questions about anything, absolutely get in touch. And thank you, Mitch, very much for the opportunity to come on. Likewise, as I said to you before, big fan of packed my freezer's full of it at the moment so keep up the good work there you go we got you perfect like have your pizza get your veg on the side have some fruits of a dessert job done there you go everything you need but no really love this thank you so much and to everyone listening we will see you on the next episode goodbye