#81 - Jess Wright - Caravan Coffee Roasters [Sales & Marketing Director]

0:00Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to Young Founders. Today I'm joined by the brilliant Jess Wright, who is the Sales and Marketing Director at Caravan Coffee Roasters. At Caravan are a brilliant business with both their restaurant size. Caravan is a brilliant business where they've got their restaurants with nine sites now, including one in Manchester. The rest are all London-centric and their coffee roaster, which is where Jess works. I loved getting into Jess's career from the early days of Coca-Cola and what she loved there. Emily's Crisp, Camden Brewery. She's worked for some brilliant brands and it was really fun to take her through the journey.

0:30going back through her career and everything that she learned along the way. Caravan are doing some great things in coffee and I think you are really going to love this episode. So get yourself a coffee. Enjoy. 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 retainers.

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1:25Hello and welcome back to Young Founders. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Jess Wright. So Jess, can you let everyone know where you work and how long you have been there? I can. So I am the sales and marketing director at Caravan Coffee Roasters and I've nearly been there for four years, which surprises me every time. I always say, oh yeah, I'm actually not from the coffee industry. I'm actually from like challenger brand background, but now I'm like nearly four years in. I don't know what point you can actually authentically say you're in the coffee industry i think four years is a good benchmark to be like yeah no my might be in coffee now and for those who have never heard of caravan give us a spiel like who are caravan what do you guys do how did it all come about all that good stuff um so caravan okay it's quite interesting business because we have like two businesses within one business so we have the restaurant setup and then obviously we have the coffee road street as well so we are the same same business same founders so where it all began so our three founders are hospitality through and through so they're kiwis i'd worked together back in new zealand and had always wanted to set up their own thing so when they came here to the uk they kind of set off doing their own various things in the industries that they were in so laura has always been in front of house miles is our chef and then chris um was always in the bar so they couldn't and did their own bits and i guess one of the stories that a warrior resonates with me is they they would say they'd come out of their shift in the middle of the afternoon from their hospitality roles and there just nowhere to go in London at the time this is back in like the kind of eight 2000 2009 time there was no like great places for food it was just all like French bistros or like sandwiches there's none of these all day great food concepts with great coffee all day long so they're like right look that's that's the niche that's the space bringing that kind of antipodean all day dining vibes that they kind of had from home so they were like we're gonna do this ourselves so they wanted to great coffee and great food great vibes great people um back then there really just wasn't great coffee here in the uk so this is back 2010 so they kind of made the decision to roast themselves so the first site was expert market have you been to expert the original i have i have a deal so they were roasting down in the basement on an electric roaster which is obviously a terrible idea because i don't know how i don't know if you've seen how big a coffee sack is but they're like going up and down the stairs like i guess they were kiwi didn't realize there was like a split electricity meter system so it was really expensive to roast in the day so they'd roast through the night sort of sleep on the floor do service the next day and then yeah that was the original caravan site that was obviously very successful quite quickly um which meant that they were able to get a second site which is the one that most people are most typically familiar with which is at king's cross coldrop yard so the roastery moved over there as well back if that was in 2012.

4:11I guess the business is just very organically grown from there, really. So the restaurant's business is kind of probably growing. It grows at quite a rate in the sense that there are now nine restaurants, including our first out of London in Manchester that we opened a couple of years ago. And then, yeah, the coffee business is just kind of, we've just been roasting for ourselves as well as roasting for wholesale coffee ever since then. And we moved out of King's Cross just for the pandemic 2019 19 and to our roastery called Landworks which is in North London and you're very welcome to come anytime I've already invited you to coffee training but it sounds like you don't need it so that's I guess a very long-winded explanation of Caravan.

4:51Perfect no I love hearing about Caravan like obviously since Dan's podcast with Hungary and it was a great episode like digging into the history and everything you guys do but for you having been there for four years what is it about the the job the company or what keeps you there going i love what i do i don't think about caravan which is just quite unique it really is the people there's just such an energy of all the people that work for caravan i think you really get that feel when you go into um i guess it's both sides of the business in terms of the king for the restaurants and the road street if you go into king's cross for example this is energy one's very cool i think there's a bit of a um kind of halo impact to the fact that Central St.

5:32Martin's is next door. And as a result, I think a lot of the team were students there at some point. And I just think it's just that osmosis of coolness. Everyone really cares. And that kind of, not just being cool and that sense that the hospitality and the service is just like amazing. So I just think that is the great stuff from the restaurants and that people really caring and being surrounded with great people who want to have a great positive impact up and down the supply chain. The coffee side of the business, they just really, it's just so apparent. like people just want to do the right thing by our producer partners at origin and then have a great positive impact all the way down the supply chain to all the decisions that we make beyond our kind of b-corp commitments are just like so ingrained into decisions that we make and the people that we hire the like it's a people thing really i think as you say you used to listen to the podcast of the founders historically like they're people people and everyone around the people person as well yeah that was very evident it was very much like we're we're creating a space for people to come and relax and enjoy themselves and we want to be the purveyors of that and I think that's really important to have within a team culture as well so is there anything outside of the the day-to-day working that as a team coming together I mean you must have hundreds of employees having nine sites and whatever else but for you coming together as a team like how does that look from whether that's the coffee teams or just everyone do you have annual away days like what what do you what goes on with the companies so yes there are like a few exciting opportunities that we all come together we actually just had the main one so there's like an annual caravan um christmas party which is in the end of january um which sounds like why is that in january but don't forget we're a hospitality business december is like a absolutely no fly zone like we are literally not allowed to talk so yeah so we had this big party and this year we went to what's called village underground yeah we hired on this there wasn't a sunday for obvious reasons again because everyone's got to go to work through the rest of the week so yeah so there's a big annual party that brings us all together on the coffee side of the business we have obviously a bit more frequent connection points so every Wednesday this is really cool and a really cool thing that we do we have two really cool things that happen on Wednesday half 10 there's something called coffee break so this is for all work head office team members so we have we release a new single origin every two weeks so at half 10 every week we'll have that coffee there so we come into the kitchen or um jamie our head of coffee will pour the coffee out and when he'll go through the story of the producer kind of like what flavor notes we can expect about the process a bit the terroir the region like sometimes they're like war-torn regions are really difficult to get the coffee out and we can hear about the story of why that was so challenging and we try that coffee together that is quite quickly I mean Wednesdays are a good day that is quite quickly followed by our team lunch so we have lunch together every Wednesday which is cooked by someone else in the team so we cook on a rota I'm actually doing this week which is quite scary I'm sous-chefing I'm not actually the main chef I'm gonna sous-chef Carlos and my team but I've got quite strict instructions to stir some pork every half an hour tomorrow um but it's quite cool I think people are all actually quite good at cooking i think just by proxy of the industry that all the company that we're in um and quite often cook things from their own countries and backgrounds we've got a diverse team and last week nick and my team um cooked a whole bunch of filipino dishes which were really cool nice so yeah love that yeah okay i think those kind of things have coming together like the coffee break idea is amazing i'd love a new single origin every two weeks that sounds like my kind of coffee supply um i think having that moment of coming together and then doing the lunches um there's something so kind of tribal about bringing people together over food and i think it's something that many like many people have lost now like people are always like oh i want to grab a sandwich on the go i want to do this like it's head down crack on so having those moments and building that into your week as a business i think is brilliant for sure it's very necessary i think one of the one of the interesting things and unique things about us as a coffee is that we are obviously sourcing, roasting, marketing, marketing.

9:47All of those functions are in-house. So it's not like the operations team are somewhere else. They're in the same building. These punctuation points in the week where the people who sit on the different, have very different responsibilities across the business come together and we sit around a table together and we talk about like, what are you doing this weekend? Oh, that coffee this morning was amazing. I just think, yeah. otherwise we just have you have a like natural separation unless you give people these opportunities to spend time together yeah it's like having having the spaces i mean i'm a i'm a huge fan of queer i literally watched an episode last night and it was teachers who didn't have a teacher's lounge and they were like you haven't got the space to actually come together and you're dealing with kids who have all sorts of issues in america with gun violence and all these things it's like you need a space as teachers to come wind and have that relaxing moment i think that's so important again to to build that in and have those conversations where you are just like oh actually yeah I'm doing this this weekend but this is on my mind or because you don't know what people are going through and I think unless you build that space in some people are then gonna hold things in and it just yeah communication breaks down so it's really really important to have that for sure 100 % I think yeah I think we're always keen to put things in the diary that aren't always centered around like drinking and like non-inclusive activities as well so yeah we have a there is another event every last Friday of the month we have like tools down which is an hour early where we will sit together and that one does have a beer or non-alc but yeah having the coffee break and having lunch as well it just means that there's occasions are inclusive for people who have different preferences and or requirements as well.

11:25So for you like how did you first discover Caravan and go I could see myself working there was it you were a regular at the restaurants or Or how did you get into this world? Were you fully like, yep, coffee is me? I mean, my first touch points with Caravan from a coffee roaster perspective, I used to work for Emily Chris back in the day. And we were based in a shed in Hagerston. And we were the coffee roaster for shed for a very long time. So I was drinking Caravan every day for a number of years. That was probably my first foray into the coffee side of the business. And then, yeah, the restaurants, I think the same as everyone, right?

12:00went to King's Cross one day and thought this is very cool this food's very delightful and delicious I think I'm quite mindful what I eat um and I don't really I don't love going out eating like lots of heavy like fried food all the time and I think the menu at Caravan kind of just like allows for making more mindful choices the food you can have a pizza or you could just have a couple of small plates and kind of have something vegan have one of the one of the grain bowls or something along those lines are just like nutrient dense i think me and my girlfriends would often and still do go to caravan um for those occasions so yeah what was your first caravan gone then at king's cross i think for me it was when i was at hurrah and not being from london kind of didn't know much about the london food scene and it was very much a baptism of fire going around and knowing all the cool spaces and the name caravan kept coming up um i just remember going in and looking and being like wow like as you said you step in the door you know it's a it's a full-on vibe like everything kind of there's a hustle and bustle but then you you have got people just kind of sat and having a nice kind of chilled meal with friends like you can kind of go there for various occasions for me i was like we need our product here like so it was that kind of like on the sales offensive very much like my input was like i want to sell my product to you rather than just going oh okay i can i can sit and chill it was like no like i need to be in this place but sadly it never happened but it was a great first experience Take me through like a typical week or a typical day.

13:27Obviously, we've got your Wednesday coffee and lunch and you've got the Fridays. But for you as a sales and marketing director, what does that look like from a month to month basis? I mean, obviously, no week is the same. I think the only day that's really consistent is those Wednesdays. So yeah, a lot of my team are out in the field. I've got four teams that sit under me. So I've got the sales, marketing, tech and training team and more training and events. So a lot of them are out and about. So a Wednesday is our day when we're in the office together. It's like a fixed office day, which means that we have like a team huddle on a Wednesday morning.

14:01That's when we would have all of our forecasting meetings. If we do any kind of training, I really value training. And I put loads of training into people's diaries for random stuff. So like last Wednesday, we did training on Excel, which I regularly do Excel training, probably at least once a quarter. like we've got training next week some reason the training's coming thick and fast but Justine and my team's going to be doing a training on how to network with impact um so just like some like just random soft skills I do like um negotiation training all this kind of stuff so that will always be on a Wednesday afternoon that's when we'd have our monthly um sales and marketing meeting as well another day that's fixed in my diary um either Monday or Thursday is you're working from home day so like there's a lot there's structure in everything that we have so you either work monday or thursday preferably thursday because that's what i have as my deep work day so that is a day where that there's i don't accept any meetings internally um i often work offline and i encourage all of my team to do the same and that's where if you've got deep work you've got projects like that's your time to do that like go away from the hectic craziness of the office like as i said before like it's a roastery there's so much going on it's so noisy that's why i'm here now i'm at home because yeah that podcast you referred to before when dan was recording with laura he was like can you turn the um hoover off in the background what hoover because it's all just like white noise to us he's like really loud hoover and that's the roaster you can't do anything about that that's not getting turned on and now we have a formful patline which is whirring away yes um those are the kind of things that in my structure every week so one really solid working from home deep work day one day collaboration day and then yeah i think as i mentioned before i do have lots of remote team so i try my best to do at least a half day with each of them like at least every kind of bi-monthly so that they get time with me out and about because yeah i've done lots of round and rolls my time but spending time in the field is definitely one of them so i like to think that i can offer advice guidance support that feels like a nice segue to to go back through your career because things like the the deep work day is this something that you learned from another business or was this just something you were like i think this is really important and i i value this and i want this um to be honest i think the deep work thing is something i've brought in since i've been in this business and i think just like i don't know if we're recording when i said this but the fact that we have this like direct to trade model which is very very common in coffee means that there's probably 25 to 185 000 fires per day to put out so if you're in with all the noise of the roastery my team are constantly walking up to me with to them the house is on fire to me i'm like please don't like work it out um so i just think having some time away otherwise you're not going to get any strategic structural stuff done so i do actually think that's been brought in since i've entered the world of coffee yeah no i think that's really smart i think it's something that i've been thinking of some of my weeks i'm like you're you're midway through a task and then someone just pings you and it just distracts you or like pulls you away from that like deep focus i think yeah i'm not good enough at going right shut everything down hide everything go offline like let's just work it's just always like oh piece of candy oh piece of candy is that like those notifications those little dopamine hits of like someone needs something for me right now whereas it's like no this is they really don't look they absolutely do not i cannot encourage you more to work a plan i did it this morning i structure it into my day but like i'll put it into books so we use use monday and what i do i have like a day start and a day end routine every single day so i book in both sides of my day with this and the night before i will structure my day with like tasks my my am tasks my pm tasks i allocate an amount of time to each of those tasks and then i have like my just one thing and my just one thing for the afternoon so in the morning if there's just one thing i will do and i because it's monday i You can just click boxes.

18:01So I will definitely do this. And then my just one thing for the afternoon, I have to do that. So it's structured out like that. And then two of those things might be like, I have an hour block allocated to this. And for the hour block, I will not be contactable. I will get rid of all of my workplace. My emails go offline and I just get it done. And I'll be lying if I say I do that every single day with absolute disclim. But when it works, it really works. So yeah, would record that as a structure. yeah no i think i could definitely learn a lot from that i think sometimes it's that it's the days when you have one task you need to get done you just spend the whole day doing anything but that thing and then it's like i really need to get around to that and i definitely need to get better at that so i will be taking some of that on board i'm saying i say i mean my phone this is a really fun app that i downloaded taught me a lot of these things we find it it's called headway so headway have you heard of it it rings a bell yeah okay so what it is it's like all of the big like self-help development books that are like really boring to read but i've got like a handful of really good messages it summarizes them all into like five to ten minutes so things like there's like blinkist or one of those that's the similar kind of idea is that the one yeah i'm sure that's one but yeah so all of the like for example that just one thing like paradox of like if there's just one thing I need to do today and I listen to that over like a four minute thing on the way to work stuff like the summary I have read Atomic Habits but summaries of books like that it's just full of them would recommend love that well now let's turn the clock right back to when you were younger because um I know looking through your career you worked for some fantastic brands but I'd love to know like when you were young what was it you were like when I grow up I want to do this because I feel like it's like for me it was very much like I'm going to be an engineer I'm going to do all of this and then as soon as I went into education I was like I hate maths I hate physics that's not for me so it's very quick learning but for you like what were you passionate about and what were you like yeah when I grow up I'm going to do this.

20:02What sort of engineer did you want to be? I didn't really know enough about I just thought my granddad just knew how to do everything he was of the generation where he could just something would go wrong and he would fix it he wouldn't be on YouTube like I can fix things because I'll go on YouTube and watch a video of someone doing it. He was just, he just knew how to do everything. And I think I was so inspired by that. I was like, I want to do that. And I want to learn how to fix things and blah, blah, blah. I thought like, yeah, anything mechanical, like putting things together, taking them apart was very interesting.

20:27But yeah, very much realized that wasn't my bag. Yeah. I had a really weird phase where I thought I wanted to be an engineer too, but I don't really know why my dad was originally. So I do not, I thought I wanted to do something in nature and outside. and sports centric so nothing to do with what I do now my grandparents find it quite funny that I ever ended up working in the city because I was so against them I think because they were like pushing me to be like you must go and work in London which I did so they had their way so yeah no I didn't want to do anything in this space really until after I graduated and started my career yeah so let's let's dig into it so what did you study and what was your career trajectory you and you're like right okay i'm gonna gonna study this and then we're gonna do this like what what path do you follow to to get to where you are so my degree was in economics and geography so really you need you need to know geography for coffee if i did physical it wasn't physical geography though because you do human geography so i managed to game the system quite hard because the economics and geography models are very very similar but one is just slightly harder than the other so i used to do the same modules the same object in both um in both camps so yeah that was my way of hacking my degree so then after that I went to I actually started my career at YouGov who are obviously the data kind of like posters kind of like data research company but I kind of specialized in the FMCG consumer brand side of things so I was selling like omnibus surveys and like brand recognition and surveys like McDonald's and all this kind of stuff and obviously quite I quickly realised doing lots of outbound phone calls every day was pretty savage and not something I'd want to do.

22:10And I would want to go, I kind of thought that, yeah, I do want to be in FMCG, but not this side of things. So I spoke to my dad who knew a few people who were like higher up in like Mars and Mondelēs and stuff and just said, how can Jess get over there? And that they did to me. You've got two choices really. You can either go and try and get back on a grad scheme or just get in the trenches and go and get a rep role. that's what I did so I then went to Coca-Cola so that was my first role. Was it were you actually selling Coca-Cola itself or was it part of their wider range? Everyone thinks everyone thinks that Coke you sell Coke.

22:44I didn't sell Coke. I was selling Capri San, Oasis, random new relentless ski that had just come out like random random random. However I actually a bit of a lie because the first thing that I had to sell was Coke Life. Remember Coke Life? Yeah a little green can. Green coke so yeah that was my first um my first thing so my first role there was a like south london territory rep so i had like 200 independent stores and like pension syddenham but like everybody hates coke reps like they hate you especially because i was coming in like just after the olympics where people have been promised like the world people would be like yeah we're gonna change your awning we're gonna do this we're gonna get all these parasols which none none of it became true so I literally, no one wanted to see it.

23:27I was pushed more times than I can believe. But you're stuck at it. So yeah, got like being in the trenches, learning that resilience. God, you learn so much. Have you done a ret roll? Not per se. I mean, Hura was a bit of everything. Like that was just go out, speak to people, retail food service, just go and try and sell the product. So that was first thing for me. I've kind of done it with my own brand. When I had Mitch's Kitchen, I would turn up to farm shops, be like, hey, this is my brand. This is what I do. Do you want to buy some? So, yeah, I kind of fell into this whole industry itself.

23:59I didn't go the traditional route at all. It was very much like, oh, I might do this now. So, yeah, it's been an absolute baptism of fire. The fact I've kind of landed in now mainly like a retail sales role is wild, considering I've never done any of the training side. Yeah. I mean, I think that's probably the easiest one to learn, grocery, which we'll come on to. I've done my fair share of grocery. So I got promoted quite quickly out of the RET role into like a central London, like high-profile territory roles so I then looked after Coburn Garden and like Soho area but looking after like bars, clubs, restaurants and my job there was much more getting the logo on the menu, try and get them to take our glassware, sell them all four of these Cokes in glass so yeah I know much more challenging.

24:43I then kind of realised I did want to get those kind of grocery national accounts experiences but in coke a lot of the um like national account manager for tesco been in that role for 20 years like it just wasn't going to happen it was going to take such a long time and i was just a bit too impatient slash hungry for quicker growth so i left and then went to emily crisps which are still available everywhere under the nurture foods brand so this was back in the day when it was like proper start-up it was working like in their house like my my interview was crazy we were literally I walked in I think it was like the first interview was in St Pancras in um Starbucks because they were going to Emily and Ali were going to Paris and I just had a coffee with Emily I've just come from like coke which is so corporate to my first interview being in Starbucks and my second interview being at like 7 30 at night in their house and we're walking in and they're being like a cheese platter out and then we're like a glass would you like a glass of piseco i was like what is going on what is happening this is crazy this is so unprofessional this is the startup life right it's just always a bit like unexpected and unusual um i remember going home to my partner at the time being like this is just what happened just what's happened he's like you're not going there um and i did so yeah so quite being working in the house when it was just like three of us to start off with we quite quickly grew to being a whole bunch of the grocers i had massive amount about home distribution all the airlines all the distributors contract catering like over two years like the momentum that we built in that business was crazy and i just think because like what we had was actually quite a unique proposition um there was no one doing what we were doing so yeah that was m &a's should i keep going is this boring yeah just no i i love all of this because i think it's fascinating just how people jump and chop and change and i think the the kind of the narrative of all these conversations is the fact that your career can just take a whole different wiggly route and it will get you to somewhere because at every phase you're learning something so even if it's just I really enjoyed that or didn't enjoy that or like your first interview might be over cheese and prosecco and you go actually I quite like these people I could see myself working for them those moments I think there's so many intangibles but it builds you as a character and I think there's there's loads to be said so from from Emily's like where did you go next then well yes I on such an interesting thing you say about like could I work for these I what I've always said is like all founders will have several screws loose you kind of just have to have several screws screws loose to be willing to like risk it all and start your own business you just need to work out if there's screws that you can work with screwing a little bit tighter crazy or is that just too crazy for me um so from there I wanted to really do grocery completely so I went to Camden Town Brewing so I joined Camden on our first year in Tesco's to look after Tesco's while we were on the incubator program so we went there for that.

27:49What was the foray into beer for you was it like about Camden did you go this is a really cool brewery was it the opportunity was it just they had an opportunity in retail and you thought I could I could do that because for me I think over the last what 10 or so years that brand's just kind of blown up and really become a household name and you find it so many places now even like one of my local pubs down in Southampton we've got it on draft so it's like it's really expanded but from a retail perspective they've got a great presence now so for you what was the appeal about working at Camden? I think like I've always wanted to do and I always will continue to want to work for very exciting brands that are like breaking the ceiling in the category that they're in so obviously alongside a few other players like Camden really was pushing the boundaries of what was crafts at the time and was the first and the real biggest craft lover with Hells.

28:36So I think working with the business that is kind of pushing those boundaries in that space was kind of the real driver for me. And the fact that it was just a really exciting company to work for with really fun and exciting people as well. I think it was a great time. There was obviously so many great events that we were part of that you could go along. Even though we were in the very boring grocery team, and we could go to some of it. G-Scops kind of stops you from having lots of fun in the grocery routine. A lot of my friends in the entree team were getting to take their customers to Germany.

29:08Oh, we're going to go to America to do that. And then, yeah, I'm just sitting behind my desk crunching category data. But hey, someone's got to do it. So, yeah, so I was working at Camden and originally just looking after test codes, but quickly picked up Waitrose. I was going to travel a few of the other kind of parts in that space as well as doing a lot of the projects on MPD projects and some other bits and bobs with Jasper here and there. Love that. And then from there to where you are today because I know when we first met it was An Soda. I mean is An Soda still around? Like I remember when it came out the can was amazing they're absolutely delicious it was very early in like the hard seltzer kind of space and I just remembered it coming out and be like wow this is really cool and I think we very kindly got sent it over and we had some events with Hura.

29:56And yeah, I just remember having it in my fridge for a very long period of time, just going, oh, I really like this brand. And sadly not. There is a run in between. You missed, but only for a short phase of time. So no, at the end of COVID, it was a tragic time in my career. And it does feel that tragic. But Camden was getting two feet into the ABF, AB InBev, kind of Budweiser Brewing. Group kind of master portfolio. as a result we were all going to get absorbed into various other teams and i got promoted into the zx ventures team so i spent six months in zx ventures which is like the incubator element of abm so i think that also doesn't exist anymore either but they either build buy or move the brands across the different markets so i worked in that incubator team for six months as a seed product owner so i looked after michelov ultra nice in the uk so i did that but not for me blue chip so much i like let's let's unpack that a bit so like what was it about the change from like this very cool trendy camden going like oh this is happening exciting and then going to like that blue chip corporate phase that you were like this isn't quite my vibe anymore i just think there's a lot of reporting on the stuff you're supposed to be doing but not doing the stuff that you're reporting on if that makes sense spent so much time like building decks to communicate internally about what i've been up to but i didn't have the time to be like reactive and hustle like the actual hustle that is required when you're like a small team to make something happen you're not allowing for that creativity and so i think that's quite frustrating that was quite frustrating and i wasn't um in those teams you're not very often slash not surrounded by people who have actually worked in challenger brands like there's a lot of people who have come from the brand teams and stuff of the big brands and i think they just they do operate exactly differently so i think actually those people being the people who were in incubators probably isn't the quite the right like people fit like you should have more people with backgrounds like myself so like people who have actually sat in the meetings and built the boxes and done the weird outreach knocked on the door like I think you kind of need the people who've done those things to be the ones in those teams absolutely like nowadays I'm hearing a lot more like resistance when people are like really well-known marketers are really known sales people and they're trying to advise kind of younger brands who are like in there in the doing but it's been like it's been so different from when you kind of did your career and you're like doing what you're doing you don't actually know what it's like kind of being in the trenches right now so it's actually understanding like who to take advice from and who learn from and that's where I think the FMCG community is amazing because there's always people who are at the same stage of growth as you like a little bit ahead of you like way ahead of you or coming up behind you that kind of naturally if you all come together there's something you can learn from each other 100 I think everyone's so friendly as well I think I will always try my best to answer questions like like it's not hard to have a phone call with somebody I think it's like it's so surprising how a few people realize that sometimes like I would more than happily have at least one phone call a week with someone why not like what have I got to lose and I think especially when you're in a position where you are building teams like when you meet people who are great at different points in your career when you when you go do you know I actually have a need for someone who of that profile I spoke to them two years ago I'll check out on them see what they're doing and the fact that they had the tenacity or the like the go get attitude that they reached out to in the first place goes a long way later down the line no absolutely and then let's let's round out so then back to an soda yeah final piece in the puzzle before caravan exactly that so i got into zx and then joe ben reached out to me saying that he had been working with a vodka and soda brand and was looking for someone to come over and kind of run the show in that space and would I be interested so yeah so that's how I ended up at Ansoda so Ansoda was a subsidiary of a really exciting design agency called Analog based in Leeds I don't know how are you familiar with Analog?

33:59I didn't know any of this tie and I just thought this is a really cool drink never like dived into it further than oh it's delicious I like the branding yeah I mean the branding is excellent and that is um a product of analog so yes barry who's the founder of analog like loves vodka soda that is like his drink of choice obviously they were what they still are a fantastic design agency in the fmtg space mostly like in games so they've that's why they've got that really fun playful um kind of like tone of voice and energy to them so yeah he was like do you know what i'm going to give this a go i'm going to make my own vodka soda drink obviously this was in the point of adjacency to the hard seltzer absolute boom i think i just come out of zedex ventures where we had four seltzers in the incubator like trying to like see if they could work so i think yeah really noisy um marketplace we did win distribution in tesco's and sainsbury's and did a whole bunch of festival deals international stuff but yeah as you say What a competitive place, hard seltzers, vodka, sodas, RTD, drinks.

35:04I think the challenges with that space is the barriers to entry are super, super low. It's a very, very simple product to make. You just go to any canner and boom, you're in. You're in the category. That's it. That's all it takes. I think, yeah, and I do also just think that this is such a case in point example, that when a trend is flying in other parts of the world where they have a completely different palette, they have a completely different climate, they have completely different occasions, that does not mean you can cut and paste like a brand or a category across the Atlantic, across whatever market you're looking at.

35:41More commonly, we do look at the US. We don't have frat boys and spring break here and we don't drink on the beach. We drink higher ABV pints in a pub. So I just think the occasions just weren't here. So I think the category was kind of doomed to fail in a way. I say that now, but then you look at someone like Moth. I think it just, the drinks have to have something more about them in the RTD space and have a bit more of a position to be successful. But yeah, it was at An Soda and now Caravan. So just to, yeah, love that. For you, like along all of these journeys, like what are some of the kind of key lessons or ways of working?

36:20Obviously the blue chip, like too much reporting, not enough doing. that's one big thing but for you looking back is there anything you're like I really loved how this brand or this company did this and I still do it today I mean it's an interesting one I think quite a lot of the like big learnings come quite early on for me like in my career I think there's a lot to be said for like the resilience that you have to learn like as a co-grab like those are real hard like proper I was like selling stuff out of my boot every day so I'm like dealing in cash actually selling like cases and cases and cases of you know cherry capri Sun who knows whatever I was supposed to be selling that week and then activating out and I think there's something to be said for like the structure of some of those like mass big sales um techniques and strategies there was hundreds of me so a new product comes to market and bam it's out it's everywhere there's point of sale absolutely everywhere I think um there's a lot to be learned from that and I just think some of the resilience i actually just learn it in that role is just crazy i'd go into places that would have like a coke fridge and it would be full of cheese like sheep's heads i have found a sheep's head in a coke fridge before and then you have to go through this like negotiation where you're like i'm gonna take this away and you signed a agreement that this would be a coke products in here and now there's body parts can i i take this away with me so i think there's a lot to be said for the resilience i learned in those early roles to be honest i mean she says yeah I'm rambling so hard.

37:47You're giving me such permission to just chat rubbish and I'm taking it. I'm a big fan of it. I love a good, yeah. I mean, sheep's head would not have come up otherwise. No, why would it? That was my weirdest find. Just the state of some of those fridges, wow. But they don't care completely because they don't belong to them. So whatever. Coke's going to give me another one, won't they? But if not, Pepsi will. Yeah, exactly. Now, I would love to dig into some of the tough times throughout these roles or even at Caravans. As you've already kind of mentioned, when things go wrong, it's the certain suppliers, it's like the end of the world to them.

38:19You're like, come on, guys, it's coffee. Like for you, what are some of the days in the office where you're like, oh, that was a really, a really tough day for me? Obviously, I have had some time to think about this. And I thought of this one day, which is just, I will never forget it because it's kind of funny. But it all turned out well in the end. So it was back in my Camden days. So we had never done an IPA. Like we decided to do one. So we obviously developed off-menu IPA, which was the pink one. So it'd been like a massive development project internally, like Jasper, all of these great American IPAs have gone for a massive development project.

38:56We've nailed it. Beer's tasting amazing. All the emails go out, lovely. Tesco's get the samples. Get the email back from Tesco's, yeah, we don't like it. We're not going to list it. Like, nah, this cannot happen. We know that this is good. And I think this is one of the challenges you have. with a lot of categories it's very rare that the buyer is actually really an expert in your space and especially if you've got one of the fringe categories like craft beer we would get like a new grad buyer like on on cycle like every year so we were like yeah we're not having this so jasper and i got in the car drove up to well and gone city like we we got a meeting we didn't just like hostile take over them but so we drove up i remember sitting in the car like being like i I don't know if you've heard this with founders, but they're kind of like wild animals in a sense.

39:41Like they're very unpredictable. They're very energetic. They're very charismatic. Sometimes you don't know what they're going to do when you've got them in a meeting. So we got into like, we got into Wellingod and City and we got coffee because we were so nervous. And then Jas was like, we'll ruin our taste buds. We have to throw the coffee away. So we're like, oh God, throw the coffee away. So we threw the coffee away, panicking, panicking. That was such a stupid decision. And then, yeah, we sat in there. he obviously did his whole founder energetic jazz hand show and we got it in but i guess it just shows that don't ever take no is like for face value like there are there are always ways to be creative and work around it and yeah just be really confident in the products and the proposition that you're putting forward but back out with data etc when you can yeah no i love that yeah i love the the founder energy part but that was one of the best founders i've ever worked for because he was just you never knew what he was going to say or do or anything um and it was just always so fun like if you could get him into one of the meetings you never knew which direction it was going to go um but it was always memorable exactly sometimes you're like oh that's definitely not how many um but okay we'll go with it say it with confidence now just to final couple of questions this is the music one that i ask every guest i would love to know what song comes to mind for you when you think about your your career whether it's a caravan anthem or camden like who is it like what what is the song for you when you think back through your career so it's so funny because i'm actually so bad at music and knowing what songs are however i did think about this and i do i think it's like m &m like one shot you know you're just like you're waiting you spend like weeks like months sometimes even years trying to get that meeting you're sitting in the reception waiting to go and you've got that anthem in your head it's go time and then you're performing absolutely yeah people said that i feel like that's probably quite no it's surprisingly not like there's been a queen yeah elton john we've had all sorts but um i don't think we've had one shot but yeah i completely agree because it's also the fact that we've just literally touched on you don't just have one shot every moment feels like it's like your one shot but it's like yeah i'm gonna come back and yeah it will happen keep going keep going resilience be creative that's So that's the key.

41:53And for anyone listening who goes, I love this. Like Caravan sounds great. Like I love just as energy. Where's the best place to get hold of you when you're not blocking everyone out and turning the world off? So you're not on a Thursday. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to go for coffee. Have a chat. Love that. I'll put your link in the show notes and link to the Caravan website for those listening. But any sneak peeks for 2026? Is there anything exciting coming out that you can share with us or anything to watch out for? Yeah, for Caravan. We launch a new coffee every two weeks.

42:30Yeah, the one that's coming out now is very cool. So there's a coffee that we've just launched next week with Sholi Co-op, which is in Rwanda, who most of, well, there's components in three of our core blends. But this coffee is Sholi Top Lot. So this is the top lot from all of the women. It's a female-led co-op in Rwanda. so these are their best coffee lots and it's competition that we go out there and judge every single year and the prize is goats so that's why the logo is goats goats are really useful in coffee production because they help clear the ground fertilize it and they're just you can you can obviously drink their milk so yeah the sholey top lot goat competition coffee is coming up so that'll be their best coffee amazing what a way to end love that but no i've i've absolutely love this i think it's it's fascinating kind of touching through your career digging into like what each role was like and um and obviously caravan um it sounds like you're very happy and very settled there so i'm excited to see where you guys continue to grow and what you continue to do i'll send you some goat coffee i'd love some goat coffee now your sage is um fixing it'll be back by by the time you're listening to this my coffee machine is back and in working order and so yeah i'm very excited but no i've loved this jess thanks so much thank you and to everyone listening thank you so much we will see you on the next episode goodbye