#69 - Henry Mills - All Dressed Up Dressings [General Manager]

0:00Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to Young Founders. Today I'm joined by the brilliant Henry Mills, who is the general manager at All Dressed Up. Now All Dressed Up make absolutely delicious salad dressings from your spicy harissa to your everyday house to tahini and lime and so many more. They are all natural, there's no additives, no nasties, and they are made by a chef who is super passionate about making all these things as delicious as you would make them at home. The brand is gorgeous, they're building a fantastic story. It was Henry's background, the reason why I wanted to get him on here, because he's worked for some fantastic brands like Mindful Chef, Seedlet, Vitacoco.

0:34What are those lessons and learnings that he can share with you to unpick through his career as to what they're now going to do taking that into All Dressed Up? There's so much within this. Henry is absolutely fantastic. I really, really enjoyed this one. So without further ado, let's get on with the episode. 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 attainers.

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1:32hello and welcome back to unfounders today i'm joined by the brilliant henry mills so henry can you let everyone know where you work and what your role is please hi everyone thanks mitch yeah i'm henry mills i'm the general manager of all dressed up when we make you know very tasty all natural flavor first salad dressings amazing i am personally a big fan we love them as household I think I've got the harissa, the house dressing already in the fridge. We've had the tahini one fairly recently, which is probably one of my favorites. But for those who have never heard of the brand, don't know the brand story, how did you get involved in dressings?

2:04Who's the founder? What's the business? What makes you guys special? Yeah, so nothing happens without Tess. So Tess is the founder. And actually, as I was saying before we came on, when I saw on my email the word podcast, I didn't reply to it because I assumed it would be for her. So I'm very grateful to be here and a big fan of what you're doing, Rich. But yeah, Tess is the one that started the business. So she's very much the founder of it. And Tess comes from a family of foodies and essentially was working for Simply Cook. And she was a development chef there. And I think just over the weekend, she made up some of her mom's signature salad dressings and put them on the table.

2:40Didn't really tell anyone. You know, everyone around the table was like, wow, these are amazing. And she later revealed that it was herself that made them. And I think her boyfriend encouraged her to be like, you know, there's definitely something here. seems a bit of a gap for something that's using great ingredients that's a bit healthier space for a sort of more exciting founder-led brand so she sold them into a couple of delis they sold really well did before she knew it it was in whole foods and really quickly the business started taking off and for me i just thought it was amazing because she was doing this alongside her full-time job and i don't know about you but i've seen people that have started side hustles and they're kind of on their laptop basically doing their other job whilst pretending to do their normal job, obviously on the company's Wi-Fi, whereas Tess was in the kitchen, like cutting onions.

3:25Yet all of these amazing successes were happening. And so I just thought, wow, that's incredible. And we were in the same office because I was working for Mindful Chef and she was working for Simply Cook, both of which had been invested in by Nestle. So that's how I met Tess. And I guess over about a six month period, saw the traction within the business. And I just thought it was incredible what she'd been able to achieve without any funding, without a team alongside her full-time job and that's kind of how her and I met but she's very much the creator the founder like she's an amazing chef has created some brilliant products and um yeah that's how we that's how we make each other but she's very much the one to credit for for the brand and the quality of the product amazing yeah no I think first time I tried it was like wow it's really good and I think it's it seems like it's having a bit of a moment like everyone is looking at what's in my food what's in this and there's lots of areas like we before recording touched on like bowl bean and their success and kind of premiumizing these categories where it's kind of like it's just you go to it it's like you know what you're getting in that category is there's lots of own label and there's lots of major players in there but no one was really challenging it and i think that's what all just up have done really well for those who haven't seen it or want to now go and go actually where can i find it like what are some of your success stories in terms of retail listings or partnerships yes i mean it's all happened quite quickly i mean tess quit her job and raised some money back in like may of this year so i think and you should be doing it on the side for probably like the prior year before that but as i say very much like as a side hustle so it's all moved forward really quickly we're in we're in about 250 brilliant independents farm shops and delis which which is like such an amazing channel in terms of partnering with fantastic people on the ground who are so passionate about food and passionate about your product we then went into whole foods and were the number one selling dressing there which is awesome and you know we've had some discussions about ranging it in the fridge next to salads or arranging it in the in the ambient aisle all that exciting stuff and then we went on to Ocado and then more recently we've just launched into Waitrose and co-op on the sort of brands new and apiary scheme and today we launch into booths so it's been a really fast journey and I think like going back to what you said it's not a category I think I'd sort of spent a huge amount of time thinking about but there seems to be a gap for a premium disruptive brand like alongside your kind of more classic more traditional brands when when we talk to retailers you know you mentioned Bowlbeam but we put up you know Bowlbeam you know Gymkhana, Surreal, Dashwater and we're like this is what we're trying to do you know like we think there's something there and like luckily so far it's gone all right but as I say it's super early days and we're refreshing the data daily to see how our rate of sales is growing in Waitrose and you know all that kind of stuff but it's been super fun and exciting but as I say very much at the start of the journey.

6:02Yeah I think it was literally this morning I saw Tessa's post saying these kind of things about like yeah number one selling in whole food and refreshing rate of sale and i'm pretty sure we have almost the same deck for waitress saying like hey look you're doing it in all these other great categories but what about frozen like there's that space of fact like come on yeah exactly but no i think part of what um i was excited to speak to you about is looking back through your career and how you got to where you are today you've got a incredible hit list of challenger brands from all areas of the market from duppy chef ita coco seed lip mindful chef like all of these standalone brands are phenomenal and i think they're all so very different so i'd love to kind of work through that journey with you like growing up what were you like okay i'm going to be doing this when i'm older for you what what was your motivation or excitement going okay when i grow up i think i want to do this yeah i mean when i wanted to grow up i wanted to play cricket for the west indies if i'm honest that was the dream so you know maybe there's still hope they're not playing very well at the moment but no i mean to be honest with you when i finished uni i mean i don't know if it was the same for yourself but you sort of studied these quite random degrees i mean And I did history at Leeds and then did a year abroad in Spain as part of that, which was great.

7:09So I sort of came out with a history degree and could speak pretty good Spanish. But, you know, that didn't really help me too much with what I wanted to do. You know, like I was sort of trying to work it out and, you know, tech was taking off and all these kind of different areas. But I didn't really understand any of it. So to be honest with you, I just wanted to get in a high growth company because I sort of thought if you get into a company and grow within it, at least, you know, you might learn something and be in a good environment. So I literally just Googled the fastest growing companies in the UK at the time.

7:37And it was when Vitacoco was taking off. So I don't know if you remember that time, but like that was when sort of coconut water was sort of bursting on the scene as this sort of almost like new superfood. And they'd done a genius deal with Rihanna where she was like the face of it. So it was just, and you know, on every convenience, you know, a store or window in Shoreditch, there was a picture of her and I think in the pineapple dress holding the Vitacoco tropical. So it was just having this like moment. and so I applied for a job there you know grinding the streets field sales 101 in East London which was it was tough but I guess I hadn't got a clue I didn't really I was never very foodie to be honest with you and like people still laugh at that given I was kind of running food at Mindful Chef I wouldn't call myself as a foodie but I just got involved in these fast-growing brands and like it was so cool being seeing something grow and then getting into like the data behind why it was like starting to learn about marketing and like what makes people buy things and like connecting with like the you know like creating a movement behind something that was really interesting in terms of like you know coconut water what the hell is that to suddenly oh madonna's drinking coconut water it's all over london fashion week etc so i just kind of fell into it because i wanted to be in a fast environment but then really got interested in like how how these things like particularly like new categories grow but also just being involved in almost like a bit of a family energized type environment within like the office which vitacoco created amazingly and then sort of went from there but it wasn't definitely a big strategic plan and I definitely don't want you to think that I'm a food genius because I'm definitely not but um it just happened that way with Vita Coco and then the rest of the opportunities kind of came along on the back of that amazing from like kind of working through it Vita Coco into Seedlet it's kind of still drinks world but Seedlet at the time I think it's starting to grow in popularity it was still kind of early days in that alcohol-free movement I mean Ben absolutely incredible person like love what he's doing and what was it about that move from vitacoco into seed lip you're like oh this is interesting like that's that's a step for me i think i want to do yeah i mean i think it was terrible at the time but what was great about vitacoco is like how quickly it started struggling when like innocent backed by coke and naked coconut water backed by pepsico came out and suddenly you know it was on half price every every other promo period and our sales you know really struggled and our margins got really squeezed because everything was being bought on deal i think it was cool because i think previously you know we got maybe a bit sucked up in it as like a young kid i was like oh we're geniuses you know like we're creating all this we've got the magic touch and then very quickly like started going south and you know you learned the importance of like brand building and how much to promote all that stuff but obviously i think i was managing as to morrison's at the time and i was like reporting terrible numbers as this all happened and i think like that was kind of going on the decline a bit just as the time when i got a message from emma who was running seed lip saying like look this is taking off we've seen what you've done at vitacoco it's kind of not a million miles away obviously like a slightly different category um do you want to have a chat and i i just remember thinking like i just had a feeling in my gut really when i met ben and i saw what was happening i was like you know a lot of the heavy work had been done here in terms of like brand building and pr and events and trade shows and winning all the fantastic independent bars and restaurants, but no one had really taken it into the retailers and really like harnessed all that brand awareness to drive some big volumes.

10:56So I just went on feeling really, because I thought it was also kind of, I could see what we needed to do and there was no one that was doing it within Seedlit really. So I just went on gut and it was not like that different in terms of like with coconut water. So I don't know how nerdy you want me to get on this, but I imagine quite nerdy. It's like, you know, the whole story was trying to show why it should be ranged within chilled juice instead of right in the back where no one goes and then just hammering home the incrementality data to get it more space and get it on the feature space and all that stuff and like seedlet was exactly the same you know where the hell does it sit and you know should it be non-alc should we put it next to gin like all of those and then it was just once we just built the case studies within a few retailers it was selling unbelievably well and like the incrementality story was amazing and also the margins on non-alc without duty were awesome so it was just a it just felt like the right opportunity i got a good feeling of ben and the category and what needed to be done i could kind of see what needed to happen and that it was quite similar to what we'd done before so i just went in and it was it was so fun i mean selling seedlet when at the start of the non-alcoholic boom was just awesome and all the retailers were coming to us and they were putting it on space and it was just fantastic so like that was a great experience and then you know same thing happened diagio brought out gordon zero zero and tankery zero zero at half the price so it was it was a cool kind of experience because i didn't feel i didn't have the same highs and lows as i did when i was more of a kid i was like okay right we know what we need to do now we need to invest in brown and to get behind mpd we need to decide how much we're going to promote and all this stuff and it was just um a very similar journey but i guess from a higher starting position and then at the end of that there was like the exit to diageo which was quite interesting as well so yeah it was i just felt like the right opportunity and it didn't feel that different to what i was doing and vitacoco at the time was slightly having to reposition itself on the back of all the competitors coming out.

12:45Yeah, I've had some great conversations with like Giles and Dan on Hungry talking through that period of time and actually then reformulating going, no, actually, we need to stop discounting all the time. There's a reason people keep coming back to us. We do this one thing very well. Let's just scrap that and start again. And I think what they've managed to do, I mean, look now, they seem to be one of the only ones that are still around and still doing really well. It seems to sort of an organic skew came out the other day and I was like, like super interesting they're still that staple so i think it's another great brand like from the difference between the team at vitacoco to then the team at seed lip like size difference and and all these things was there anything that when you were going into seed lip you're like right we need to do this we need to build this out because over the years you were there you kind of grew in the ranks and i imagine the team expanded as well as the awareness because i remember first time i saw seed lip i think it was like pizza express or something like probably six years ago or something like that first time and i was like oh this is very interesting like i'm not actually drinking today so i'll i'll give it a try and that first experience the way they serve it i think it's getting those things right is really important because then it's like oh where can i buy it um and that's obviously when your role would come in yeah sorry i mean what do you mean what was the difference between the two and yeah so and any lessons i learned it or like contrast so like vitacoco how big was the team when you were there going to seed lip i imagine much smaller by the time you you left vitacoco and it's being bought out yeah i mean to be honest with you it was pretty similar in terms of like the teams just the major difference was obviously within vitacoco the yield team was all in like the independent you know convenience stores or stores whereas i in seedlet those is you know the on-premise essentially all the bars and restaurants and that was like a completely crazy world to me because like i'm just i'm quite commercial i was like guys there's no volume coming through and there's about 200 people like what's going on not actually 200 people but i was like this is absolute madness like you know we've got tesco over here that's giving us loads like why don't we and i had to learn a lot about the value of the on-premise and building the brand like similar to the example you said within within pizza express but that was interesting i mean the thing about seed lip is vitacoco was big i think there was maybe 30 or 40 people going and it was a well-oiled machine in terms of like you had a lot of youngsters that knew what they were doing and were really talented.

14:57You know, I'm sure people like Joe Ben and Hugh Thomas and John McManus, Jack and Kiff and Harry, sorry, from Surreal and Ember. So like there was a lot of youngsters. And then there was also like, I guess, sort of the adults, which worked well. So you sort of had like a senior head within sales and marketing and finance. And the two supported all these kind of young, hungry people. I think that worked well, given the business size that it had. Like I think the business was loosely profitable. Resilat was really interesting because it was super like over staff because that was like the model in terms of you know we were incentivized by getting to a volume target and like our investors were happy for us to have really big losses because of the importance of particularly like the on trade and like building the brand so that i found that quite strange because we were focused on volume and like revenue growth versus like too much in the bottom line but that was you know genius management by by ben and emma because that's that's what what needed to happen at the time but the team at seal it was massive because we'd had the Distill Ventures or Diageo via Distill Ventures investment.

15:55Therefore, the business plan was all signed up to these big losses because they were creating a big category. Therefore, it was worth it. So I guess in answer to your question, they massively overinvested, I guess at a time maybe in the world where that was more normal than it is today. And so that was a bit interesting, particularly in the off trade and in marketing and events where like, I was sort of like, this is we're overinvesting here. But you know, it was definitely the right decision. I was wrong but that that would have been the main difference i guess because they didn't have the same investor pressures that like vitacoco maybe had but i don't actually know the detail of that so that could be completely wrong yeah i mean i think what seedlip did really well it was almost like building that category by their partners and i think i mean ben's gone on to do the same with like silver and yeah season and all these other things we're just going like we're going high-end restaurants we're going to great chefs we're going to people where they're already used to serving a certain caliber of food and drink like let's make sure they have the best drinks menu with the best non-hark options and i think nailing that so then eventually people are like well i really enjoyed that where can i buy it it's yeah that long long tail of like build the category build that brand and own that space yeah and ben was amazing at that as well because he was also so like repetitive about the serve you serve it you know it's not a gin but you serve it like a gin you serve in this glassware this is what it is and like he kept he must have said you know what to drink when you're not drinking you know how to serve it so many times in his life but it's interesting when you go back to like brand messaging it's like it doesn't get old and just like repeating it and repeating it repeating it and like where it is on the menu and that it's served with fever tree and that you get the ice right and the garnish right all this stuff that is like so fine detail but like so key especially if you're creating something new he was amazing at that and that's why they invested so hard on building the category and the education piece because at the beginning people be like why am I paying six quid for a seed lip and tonic or why am I paying 26 pounds for us for a bottle of this and actually by the end there was no you know people completely bought into it because of I guess like there was so much work done on the education and what the actual concept and category were I think it's paved the way for other brands like you look at Mother Root or Bativa or like other other amazing spirits now in this space of like playing in non-alc where you need brands like CDIP to kind of pay that way so I think it's it's great to have played your part in that journey and all testament to you and everyone else that was involved in those periods because as you said Ben and Emma what what they've done is fantastic and I think I'm loving all the all his updates about silver and how he's getting into all the barks and it's absolutely fascinating area for me yeah he's cool guy though and from from there then how how did the mindful chef move happen um again because looking kind of through your time at mindful chef it was like non-recipe box now to me like mindful chef straight away is like well that's the recipe box so it's an interesting like way to go in and be like right okay this is gonna be you yeah i mean to be honest at the end of seed lip like there was the diageo acquisition happened which was obviously pretty cool for a number of reasons and it felt very like you know we i now know the diageo guys much better but it felt like this pretty crazy thing from the outside that this was happening and i remember we would report into like the md of the uk or something and i remember like we were going through the integration things were sort of changing a bit and like he was like so why did you guys do this and i you know in terms of like a decision we've made i was like i just felt right he was like and he like laughed he's like what do you mean i was like well it just felt like the right thing to do we just brought out a can he's like oh where's can i see the business plan i was like why we've not got one we just we just brought out account like what's the big deal and i just remember thinking like that was like the penny dropping moment where i was like okay this this is a bit different and like i'm definitely not saying the way that we were doing it was right but i'd never been asked before why we'd made a decision and i remember sort of slightly being laughed out the room with this guy who's obviously like a way bigger business leader you know than i am but i just remember thinking like okay this is this is going to change now and this is what happens after an acquisition and you know people tell you that stuff as you're going up but you're kind of like a bit green to it and you maybe naively think that you know the whole Diageo brand team are going to drop Guinness and you know focus on Seedmen which you know maybe doesn't quite happen so I guess I was finding the integration a bit like jailing and then I got a message from Kit Gamble's brother Mike who runs Days and he I think he knows Giles Humphreys from one of the founders of Mindful Chef he's like are they looking for someone to take them into retail like would you be interested and um my my wife had also worked with giles she's got a branding and tone of voice company and he was like oh she's he's a great guy it's a great business like you should talk to him and uh so i went in there to take them into retail initially and um that felt like a bit more growing up you know my chef's probably a 50 60 million pound business at the time and pretty established but they kept the culture really like giles was a really entrepreneurial guy and it was really fun and it was sort of like look here you go we've got some ready meals take it wherever you want and he's he keeps it really simple he's like we've got a massive brand we should be in retail that will drive brand awareness off you go and that was really cool but essentially i just thought it was a great opportunity because it would have been quite hard to kind of scale seed lip and to some extent vitacoco because it was small and didn't have big budgets and didn't have necessarily the brand awareness whereas like mindful chefs big brand it was like off we go so i just thought it was a great opportunity and i really like giles i thought we just got on really well he's also not an overly detailed person and i was he was like this will be fun come we'll support you you know let me know what you need and it i just thought it was a cool opportunity yeah love it i think for for me like when i was a hura um we obviously did plant-based meat and meeting mindful chef for the first time and coming in and showing them because this was at the stage where meat alternatives was still kind of having that boom and everyone's like looking at them but Hura by far had some of the best ingredients like soy olive oil water spice great everyone gets on board try it cook it there's still a bit of people in the room that I don't really get it but just like going in the office and that whole experience for me like this was me kind of very green into the food service or even just kind of working with a brand like Mindful Chef I just remember like going to the office be like wow everyone's so friendly everyone really seems to love what they do here and the office was fantastic so I think it's I had that experience not working with them but trying to like get the product in there which eventually we did it was brilliant nice but for you like you obviously climbed the ranks in there what was it within mindful chef that really you love from like you said they kept the culture lean and is there any kind of tangible examples of like this is what they did particularly well yeah i mean for me it was more like i like the manager i i liked i loved working with ben brunson but he's almost like a sort of jesus style founder like we're great mates and he's really cool but he's almost like a sort of left field scientist type that is an inventor and as i say like we're really good mates you know we hang out sometimes but and that was an amazing experience but i found these guys like unbelievably relatable you know the three founders didn't seem a million miles away from you know like you and me i guess yet they created this incredible brand and for me it was just about the way that they kept things at this sort of quite startupy quite humble it's quite funny like that it seemed like a bit of a joke even though it obviously wasn't and it for me that was what I really liked about it in terms of the way that I guess particularly when I was going to work there particularly Giles was and as I got to know the others I just loved the the autonomy and the culture that came from them because it still kind of felt like we were in the back of their garage or that we were lucky to be here there was never any of this sort of helicopter management from those three or really intense I think I'm really important type um vibe which I think can come quite quickly if you have a bit of success.

23:14So it was more like for me how they kept the culture really friendly, but still high achieving. And I guess they were very deferential to me in terms of what I was going to do. So I was more just really interested in the opportunity and the culture. I can't really put my, you know, I don't talk about things like ping pong tables and salad bars, because I always think that sounds a bit naff. But like, it more just came from them that they were just quite grown ups. Like there was none of this like parent child rubbish but they were still very passionate and like keen on on like what could happen and the power of like what people could deliver in the ambition of the business so for me it just came from the way that they particularly ran it yeah love that and um i mean you can see you kind of grew your career within them as well so it seems like i think when you see that on someone's cv where they've been there for a few years and they've had a few kind of role changes it's always interesting to see like actually yeah they're backing who they're bringing in so i think that's obviously from an outside perspective that would be one of my observations of like yeah that that's seems always really nice yeah it was cool i mean to be honest with you they kindly like again it was kind of similar story to the diadro story where what cos nestle invested in the business they were always going to like acquire it at the end of the calendar year for like a multiple or whatever of that was pre-agreed and it was very weighted towards profit and we'd done quite well in terms of getting retailer listings i think we were in like waitrose and ocado and like it was all building nicely but because as you know you know i maybe naively thought this would be like non-alcoholic spirits or you know coconut water where once you get to scale your your cost just like you know half or whatever and i just remember going to the buyers i was like look guys we've got all this scale what we're doing on the price here and he was like henry these are chickens this isn't you know these aren't this isn't coconuts that you're flying in from wherever like that you know we might get 10 saving if you're lucky and you know frozen's quite a as you know an expensive category i was like so turning a profit is looking a little bit tricky i reckon and they were like yeah i'd agree with that you're not going to get a half you know you're not going to get half price even if you launch in tesco and i'd sort of maybe naively thought we could do that and so i was put on the leadership team and all this stuff which was cool and then i just had to kind of quite quickly go like look guys like in this multiple earn out multiple which is quite weighted towards profit there's a good chance that you know my role within this business might not be that helpful so we've probably got a decision to make and luckily they my role had expanded a lot in terms of like other product product categories like everything that wasn't a recipe box and they said you know what like we really back you like why don't you take on the whole recipe box proposition so I moved very much into the DTC world and like was kind of overseeing everything I that was like food and a lot of the partnerships that we were doing and it was great but I feel grateful to them that they kind of trusted me to to move into something that wasn't my like natural area and actually I hadn't spoken to a retail buyer for about three three years or two years until I started with tests so I very much sort of changed roles within it and I really appreciated that they backed me and it sounded weird at mindful chef when we moved into the sort of leadership role i found it quite interesting like how little we spoke about like the food proposition we spoke so much about like you know this big partnership here or fun cotton ambassador or you know can we get i don't know jamie oliver in or whatever i was just like guys like we just never talk about food in here and i'm not really a foodie but like we sort of take it for granted that like our food is just like really good why don't we try and make the food times better i feel like this is a stupid thing that i'm saying because it's so obvious but should we just i feel if we focused on that like all this worry about retention or just like go out the corner because everyone will just buy more because they like it and they're like it's not a bad idea go on then and it sounded weird but we just got a great team together in the kitchen and i think sometimes you need that if you've you know if someone's been doing the menu for so long you know they always put the same stuff on it's probably the same like at the end of our tenure or whatever but we just got a great team together for the last 10 months before the deal and I think we took the food proposition to like a really great place through some fantastic chefs and a bit more insight and a bit more digging into the customer bit and luckily the performance was awesome which led to fantastic like growth and profit results which ended up really helping our our run out but that was a an awesome experience because it was so different to what I was doing and I really had to train my brain to be really customer-centric and worry about the whole menu instead of you know fly down to tesco and hope they hope they're in a good mood and list the product on the day yeah we all i'm sure we've all had those kind of conversations through various parts but um yeah no i love that i think that was one thing that when i spoke to jack at cross to malika yeah they you can just hear how obsessed they are literally board meeting weekly they'll be like okay let's look at the products what can we do better where can we improve yeah it's like the obsession around the product everything else has to come from that because ultimately you can have the best looking brand the best design like the best listings if the product doesn't deliver on that final promise of taste texture flavor like whatever it is you're not going to get repeat and i think that's ultimately where the brands who double down and obsess over it again coming back to bold bean and just that mention of like we're obsessed we're obsessed yeah they've got people excited about beans for the first time in their life yeah exactly that was really cool yeah exactly and it sounds it sounds obvious but and that's why it's it's so it's so good when you have the direct data because i think when you're selling into retail or whatever i don't know if you agree with this like pact or whatever but it kind of come the the the like narrative of the business comes down to like the natural hierarchy within the room so everyone's like oh the product's great like what do you want about whereas like when you're getting the ratings coming back to you from the customer you can sort of say to the ceo it's like look thanks for your opinion that's great but unfortunately the customers think this so we're going to change it there's no it's not really whereas you know if you just have a bit of random data and you're in a room if the ceo says something just hypothetically you kind of have to sort of do it so that was that was really cool and we put the power in the hands of the chefs and it's amazing like when you for us like one instead of telling you know previously there would sort of be like a food team that said to the chefs you know make this stuff there's a moment you said to the chefs right this is your menu here's your cost limits for example but you go for it do whatever you want within these like parameters to like the quality of the food just massively like so and i think for me i've always agreed with that like give autonomy to young hungry people that like are really motivated by it and like the results look off themselves versus you know telling a chef to make this or that it's you know make make seven you know asian chicken dishes next week it's just it's not the same and i think that was the massive game changer that we did which which worked really well yeah i just remember i said going into that kitchen and seeing the chefs trying food actually cooking them some dishes that i created yeah nice bit of imposter me coming in like yeah i had my food business once i could do this and you're a yeah 50 60 million business i'm trying to tell you as a chef what's better but um it worked i mean at the end of the we got some good recipes in there that landed so that was fun um but going now back to all dressed up and what you guys are doing how are you i mean we mentioned at the start how quickly this traction is happening and again down to test and the quality of these dressings but what is it about this opportunity and this category that is so exciting and how you guys are really starting to win in this space because i think clearly you're passionate you know your staff you know about like you talk about incrementality and all these things that make sense to a retailer but to the consumer they're like well it's a salad dressing but why should i choose all dressed up how are you doing that as a business just to help people come and try us yeah i mean i think people are sort of buying it for like three reasons i think people really buy into tests you know i mean i i did without kind of emotionally i guess without really realizing it and you see it you know through our Instagram content or like you know even yesterday we went viral on TikTok for the first time just because Tess told her story and I think like Tess is really cool and she's done an amazing job and I think people buy into her I think the products taste amazing and I think it's interesting working with Tess like the or versus the examples that we spoke about earlier with say Vitacoco or Seedlip you know they aren't necessarily like 10 out of 10 tasting they're amazing brands and amazing concepts but it's not like they you know there can be a bit polarizing say you know coconut water as these products do taste amazing and they are really different to what's out there so they are like you know they are all natural and when you compare that versus what's out there you know like we do loads of data we like ask customers you know did you buy salad dressings before and like 50 of them like said no the reason being like either there's sort of too many additives or nasties within what's out there or they just are foodie type customers that would make their own and never bother buying salad dressings so i think like we're kind of onto something in terms of like tests the taste of the product and like the fact that there's like a gap for us to go and like go after with it within like the category because there isn't much out there and i think it seems obvious when you look at other categories and those brands that are doing well that there's a role for someone like us within salad dressing so i think that's why it's kind of working to be honest with you but it's early days i mean it's got keeps it's got so well in the retailers as you know and you know no doubt the competitors will come quickly but i think those are like the three kind of core bits of maybe magic behind the brand really but you know i think also the we haven't touched on the the bottle like the delivery system in terms of like the twist nozzle and the way it's yeah it's just it's a grazer the olive oil brand like it's that kind of like that twist lid and first time i had it it's like this just makes sense for dressing when it's a big open lid and you pour on half a bottle on your salad you're like well great now i've got a very saucy salad i want the flavor but i don't necessarily want the whole bottle yeah and there's also i think there's a slight chefiness of it you know if you go to kit into kitchens everyone's got squeezy bottles don't they they haven't got the pizza express glass bottle but you know if you're not if you're unlucky you can get some salad dressing with a few leaves if it all falls out so i think that is a big part of it as well and i think you know increasingly customers are coming becoming more foodie they want to be at home chef so to have that squeezy bottle chef experience is also something tess was really keen to capture one because it wasn't on the market and two given she's a private chef if that's what she knows and what she thinks is best so yeah i think that that is also a big part of it yeah love that and just because i'm wary of time moving into 2026 what are some of the things to look out for is there npd is there partnerships anything you can kind of tease without giving too much away yeah i mean as i said we've just launched some vitro's and co-op and booths today so we need those to work alongside obviously our great customers you know feel free to grab some and give us a good rating but that's like the you know those are the huge things that have just happened and we need those to work we are partnering with a great high street brand with an amazing founder and co-creating um addressing together which will launch in the spring and i think i'm really hoping that will be like a massive game-changing moment for us just because you know like it's an amazing partnership i'm so excited that it's happening and it's with a really big exciting brand with an awesome founder so that for us you know we're doing all the obvious things in terms of you know doubling down on our influences going after our paid ads, loading our promotions, trying to get on space.

33:51But I hope that will be a sort of really big catalyst moment for us just at the start of kind of the spring. And, you know, as people are starting to think more about salads, really. So that's probably our big thing that's coming up. Love that. Now, completely flipping it before we get into the music question, through all this experience, there's going to have been some tough days at the office. If you think back, like looking through all your various roles, what's like a day you're like, that one will live with me or haunt me for the rest of my career but we survived and we did this any tough days of the office that come to mind yeah i mean as i said earlier like when when innocent and naked came out in the same way when gordon's and tankery came out and they loaded half prices and the sales just dropped on a cliff that was quite an intense moment because everyone was like what do we do now so like i think on those moments that was quite bad i think for me like the major i've never really got too bummed out about like not being able to make things happen because I always feel like they come and you stay positive.

34:46For me, the bad days have always been when I've had an argument with maybe someone that managed me or that I felt like for me, I think my biggest weakness is I don't really want to get too into the minutiae. So when I've had managers that are really pushing me on what I would call my new detail and not allowing me to empower me to do it, I'm the first to say when I've got it wrong and I'm more than happy to admit that. But for me, I would always just struggle if on the few occasions where I've had managers that were very detailed because I felt I've just suddenly felt unease and intense when I've had in my like manager relationships and on the whole of my life I've had great relationships with all my managers so those have been the ones where I suddenly feel like very enclosed and tense and I guess like my confidence gets knocked a bit because normally I just sort of slightly swing from the hip but and it works and we all are like on the board together and I think it's the same with team members like on the few occasions when I've had team members that are like unhappy or not performing well or you've had to have difficult conversations like it's more like the people stuff that for me like I find I always remember as being like really uncomfortable because either like I'm feeling constricted or I'm having to have a conversation with someone that isn't going to go well and that eats me up inside way more than you know not landing this or you know not achieving that because I always feel confident that we can get there on the business side of things so it's always just been the people stuff when it's bad it and i don't know if you agree with this but like when it is bad it just gets worse and it's like a relationship you're kind of like oh god everything everything we're doing is annoying each other so those would be like this but luckily it hasn't happened too often it's just those those are the times when i look back i think oh that was was unenjoyable yeah no like during my time at hurrah there was definitely some customers we had some friction with but it was more with senior team members i was still the golden child so i kind of skirted around that and i was like well i'm still doing good stuff for you since they're friends so yeah i i very much know that feeling of that that conflict or things where you're like we just need to like move on now come on guys but yeah it sounds like that's a positive if those are few and far between and as you said all these other category ones i think you learn from them and hopefully especially in dressing same with organic veg like you're always going to be competing with own label you're always going to be competing with other people potentially to come into the market so it's like how do you build that brand and keep that message and i think that's where all the things you guys are doing are great and really powerful so keep it up um this is the music question that i ask everyone yeah thinking back to all of your career is there any particular song or some songs that come to mind when you think okay this song has this memory about my working experience well sorry i've slightly prepared a different answer because i thought it was mainly about all dressed up so i was going to go for the sort of the abc jackson five just because it you know talks a lot about shake it shake it baby which you know hopefully we're shaking up the category but also we need to shake up the product um before you use it so that was sorry i didn't didn't prep you can have two i mean yeah last episode we had three so um yeah i think that absolutely makes sense but there's any like i mean innocent um they were saying they played the same song it was phil collins at the end of the day when the drinks trolley came out every friday without fail that was the innocent song so it was a very easy answer for joe she was just like yeah it's that song you can't escape that but for you yeah is there anything else that comes to mind if think for you personally i'm slightly struggling here i think i'm just gonna have to double down on the abc answer because i'm drawing blank that's perfect no it makes absolute sense keep keep it to the brand yeah um and one thing that i completely forgot to touch on um was the old mba yes now looking through again uh before anyone comes on i go through their linkedin through their career and i was like oh what's this and i saw seth godin's name and i was like oh that's interesting see seth think marketing but yeah what what was the old mba and like what made you go i want to do this yeah i don't know if you have this too but i feel when you start out in like the sales commercial role you sort of you love it but the best day in the world it suddenly stops being you know hanging out in the tesco hq you know it's like this you know a moment where you're okay this has been cool but maybe isn't for me forever and you sort of start trying to move into more of a generalist type direction i guess you know you leave the sort of the traveling and the um you know the harassing bias to someone else i think for me like i kind of got to that moment at the end of seed lip where i wanted to move into a bit more of a general generalist type role and i i got quite into marketing and like on the theory side and i'd always like listened and followed a lot of seth godin's content i just think he he's really able to tap into the emotional part of a of human buying behavior or whatever and i think that was really interesting because i think it it doesn't really get used to talk about the idea of, you know, creating a feeling and all that stuff.

39:27It's sort of, everyone's always talking about, you know, how do we sell more or, you know, how to get more acquisition or more impressions or whatever. Whereas I really liked the way that he spoke because it would seem quite simple, but also quite like provocative. I hadn't really thought about like that before. So I guess after I left Seedlip before I joined Mindful Chef, there was just a month's window where I wanted to try it. I would say like, it was really cool to some extent, but it was probably more like a group style activity. So it really depended. I probably wanted to like listen and learn more and even you know maybe do like an exam after each module to make sure I'd nailed it whereas it was probably a bit more about making you like connect with the group that you're with and then get the most out of it that way which was fine but like I kind of wanted to be taught versus speak to someone in you know South Africa about something a bit random you know that was but that's probably just on me and like it was a cool experience but I can't tell you exactly what I learned from it if that makes sense whereas I did a digital marketing course learn a bit more about digital marketing that was worthwhile interesting yeah but that you know that might just be my my way of thinking or liking being taught so i know it's a great program and it was cool but it wasn't it was a lot of group workshops just sort of fleshing out things interesting yeah i think i i think it's always like you're like how do i get this other bit like imposter syndrome for me being like well i haven't really looked at category data before and now i've shown all this stuff and i'm like uh i could do this yeah so actually doing a course in that i was like oh that's actually very helpful for me i needed that yeah for sure so yeah i think that it was that like protection thing that you were like i think i need this but as is evident you clearly know your stuff yeah everything is a another learning on your progress so i think yeah for sure and it makes you realize how you know if you've gone through a school system that actually you quite like that i want you to tell me and then i'll tell you back tell it to you back versus you know which is maybe a weakness to think about learning more from within love that and for anyone who wants to get hold of you or find out more about uh or just that like where's the best place to do that yeah i mean linkedin was would be cool i did put on my linkedin you know please get in touch if you want to chat or partner but it's been a bit dry so maybe this will be the start of the start of the inbox overload amazing i hope so but no absolutely loved it um as i said i think you've worked for some incredible brands clearly you've had a cracking career and i think we're only just starting to see the the glimmers of where you can go so um yeah i'm excited to see all just up in more places next year nice thanks so much really appreciate you having me on no worries and to everyone listening thanks so much we will see the next episode bye