#82 - Ellen Whysall - Pukpip [Business Development Manager]

0:00Ellen Whysall:Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to Young Founders. Today I am joined by the lovely Ellen Whysall who is the Business Development Manager at PuckPip. Now PuckPip make absolutely delicious frozen chocolate desserts using real banana. These come as banana on a stick in milk or dark chocolate. All their delicious bites which are milk chocolate covered, dark chocolate covered, peanut butter covered. We are huge, huge fans in this household. It is such an acceptable, delicious little indulgence when you want it. My daughter's a big fan and it was really nice to speak to Ellen and understand more about what's going on with the brand and the business.

0:33Ellen Whysall:They're a really small team. Zara is a fantastic founder and it's really nice to hear all their progress, their growth, what they're doing. Things like Selfridges, Albert Heijn, loads going on. Ellen is just a joy to speak to. She's got a huge, huge career ahead of her. It sounds like she's really fantastic with what she's doing. And I think you're really going to enjoy this. 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 retainers they really are the full circle agency for growing your brand being the team are absolutely fantastic.

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1:38Ellen Whysall:Hello and welcome back to Young Founders. Today I am joined by the wonderful Ellen Weissel. So Ellen, can you let everyone know where you work and how long you've been there? Yeah, absolutely. Hi, everyone. I'm Ellen and I work at PuckPip. I'm the business development manager and I have been there nearly 10 months now. So yeah, coming up to my year mark. Amazing. Well, we are huge, huge fans of PuckPip in this household. My daughter is just over two now and she's one of the few people that seems to know how to say it properly. So she's always like, PuckPip, PuckPip. But for those who are new to the brand, have never heard of it, give us a spiel.

2:10Ellen Whysall:What do you guys do? Who are the founders? All that good stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. So we launched in 2021 by Zara Godfrey. So Zara founded the brand. For her, it was a real passion project. So from her being a small child, she used to make chocolate dipped frozen bananas and then managed to turn it into a business after having a career working at McDonald's and Coca-Cola. So we want to try and help people consume one of their five a day in a fun, that delicious way. We're most well known for our chocolate dipped frozen bananas come in two different formats. We do the more traditional ice lolly, which I know that your daughter likes to have.

2:48So the more traditional ice lolly banana dipped in chocolate on a stick. And then in more recent, in the last couple of years, we've ventured out into the snacking area of our category. So doing chocolate dipped frozen bananas. We really pride ourselves in the fact that all of the bananas that we use would otherwise get rejected from export and get thrown away. So to date, we've saved, I think it's around 750 ,000 bananas, which is super, super cool. So they get thrown away for the most ridiculous reasons. That can be because they're too big, they're too small, they've got a blemish on their skin.

3:24But the second you peel back their skin, they are perfectly ripe banana. and then we freeze them at source, dip them in chocolate and then sell them to all of our banana fans.

3:34Ellen Whysall:Yeah, love it. I remember the first time I discovered them, it was at one of the trade shows, maybe IFE a few years ago. And it was just everywhere you looked, people were eating these chocolate bananas on stick and everyone was like, what is this? Where have they come from? Who's doing this? And I remember that's where me and Zara first met and we've been good friends since then. But for you, what was your first discovery of the brand and your experience and when I could see myself working there? How did you go? Yeah, this is for me. Absolutely. So I had, I was roughly aware of the brand, like I'm a huge foodie.

4:03I've been following challenger brands and startups for years. And I had seen Puck Pip in a local health food store in the freezer. I hadn't like hadn't looked too much into the brand before I started interviewing, but I was aware of the product and sort of knew that this whole frozen snacking was growing. And then I was in touch with a recruiter and she introduced me to the brand and said, there's this job going that thinks it'd be really fitting with my skills that I had previously and my experience. So it was actually when I was interviewing for the job that my love for the product and for the brand and for the people grew, had a really, really great experience.

4:40and at the time was hired by Andy Allen, who was stepping in as our interim MD, who he very kindly introduced us, Mitch. So yeah, he was great and made the process really, really relaxed. And just, yeah, I just knew that it was the right fit when I was interviewing.

4:56Ellen Whysall:Amazing. Yeah. Andy, absolutely fantastic advocate for challenger brands, everything he does with like Bidfood Open Doors and even the Frozen World. He's a big fan of there working with like Biff's and all sorts of other brands. So yeah, when he kind of stepped in, we were speaking quite a lot. and obviously now things evolve, Zara's back. So now how big is the team? Do you guys have an office? Are you remote? What's your kind of setup now? Yeah, we're still a really small team, which obviously brings its challenges, but it's so much fun. We are a team of three full-time staff. It's myself, Zara, and then my colleague Emma, who is currently on mat leave.

5:31So technically we're down to two. We have a wonderful fractional sales lead that comes in and does a day a week with us, which has been amazing. I've learned so much from her. And then like quite a lot of businesses, outsource our finance. And then we also work with YF on our ops. We're all in different areas, but we work in a co-working space. So two days a week, we're up in London and they are my two favorite days of the week. I love being with the team. I love being able to pop down to Whole Foods and go and see our product on the shelf and just rearrange the boxes. So yeah, I love being in the office.

6:03Super, super fun.

6:04Ellen Whysall:Yeah, love that. If I'm not mistaken, it's Rosie who has actually She's been on the podcast herself. He's coming to work with you guys. I remember kind of with the Puck Bit path on the YF event and be like, oh, wow, you're here. It's amazing. So, yeah, Rosie, previous guest, absolutely fantastic. Love what they're doing with Blue Turacco. She's a legend. And clearly knows her stuff. She really does. Yeah, absolutely. And it's been great for me being so new in my career as well and having someone that is so commercially savvy and has worked with so many challenger brands. It's been genuinely amazing to learn from her.

6:35Yeah, I love all of the time I get to learn from her. and sort of try and absorb all of her knowledge.

6:40Ellen Whysall:Yeah, love that. I think it's so important. And that's what, I mean, the post that kind of spurred me going, actually, yeah, let's get you on the podcast. You were at various events last week and it was very much a, like, I love the industry. I love being around it. And I think for me, that's so, so important. Like being in the room, meeting other brands, meeting other people in similar positions or more senior than you and just being a sponge and absorbing. For anyone who didn't see your post, like what were the events you were at and what was it that you kind of felt compelled to go, I need to share this right now.

7:08Yeah, no, absolutely. So last week, I went to the Bread and Jam Food Service Summit. So it's something at PuckPip, we're really keen to look into. We've not quite broken into food service yet and still developing formats, but it's something we're really keen to start working towards. So I went there with a really open mind. Obviously, working with Andy in the past, he's super knowledgeable around food service. So it was really good to also hear from other people and hear from brands and met some really, really fun people lots of founders lots of people like myself who are working for founder-led um brands so that was a really cool one and then straight after that was over to the Ocado Roots um meetup which again so so much fun much more intimate um but really cool to meet with you know for me founders are like celebrities as you know as geeky as that is for me to say I really do look up to people and follow them on LinkedIn and then when I meet them in real life it's a bit of a starstruck don't meet your heroes kind of moment but actually they're always so kind and always just want to chat to you so um yeah they were the two events last week i was feeling very grateful that this is the career that i've sort of chosen to um to go for and to you know to build build in

8:17Ellen Whysall:so yeah yeah love that yeah again we're obviously huge fans of ocado at pact yeah it's always nice to to see the team and i think what they do with roots and kind of helping challenger brands get into the space is just fantastic for the industry as is all the retailer ones that are doing that absolutely so yeah I think it's you chose a good industry but I'd love to um unpick that and go right the way back to when you were growing up like what did you think you were going to do for your career or was there a an end goal in mind for like yeah I think when I grow up this is what I want to do yeah yeah so I I kind of went around the houses a bit so I've been brought up around family business my family have run a business since since I was born I've I've seen the good the bad, the ugly with running a business.

9:01So I think from a young age, that kind of spurred me on to working, probably long-term working for a startup, if not in the future, running my own business. So I think that was really the foundations for me building my career. Then I got into horse riding and thought I was going to own this massive stables and have loads of horses and then slowly realized that I was very much a fair weather rider and realized that that probably wasn't going to be for me and then in my early teens and this is gonna sound so random I was watching 90210 the series on I think it was probably on channel four at the time and one of the main characters was an events manager and that was I thought I'd found what I wanted to do at the ripe old age of 13 I was like that is me that's me set for life I'm going to be an events manager so actually that kind of I don't know that was what inspired quite a lot of the work experience I did in the later years at school as well as in sixth form and then even into my early years at university so I had some really cool experiences working at events agencies one of my favorite ones was that I ended up being in the pride of London parade with King who founded Candy Crush which was really cool super novel what I wasn't told was that I was going to have an 11 foot inflatable jelly bean tethered to my waist so that was really fun um and a real eye opener and it was still that was what I wanted to do it was always events and then I went to Edinburgh Uni to study business and it was 2020 so after a year I decided to come back home I just wasn't really getting much out of it because we were basically trapped in our room for a whole year so I was looking for a job in London and in Kent where I live.

10:47And I got a really fun job working at an events team at a hotel. So on the other side of the event, so not doing the agency side, actually hosting the events. And I loved it. I loved every second of it. However, I was born with club feet, which I don't often share on LinkedIn, but I was born, yeah, with it. My feet were going back to front. It means I really struggled to stand up for long periods of time, etc. And I slowly started to realise that actually events was probably not the right thing to do for my health and that it probably wasn't going to have a future for me because you have to be so active and on your feet and walking around.

11:19So that was really sad for me because I was like, this is what I want to do. This is what I've done on my work experience. So then I started at uni becoming really involved with entrepreneurship. I ran the Entrepreneurship Society and I then started to meet loads and loads of food founders and food businesses. And I've always loved food. I was that weird toddler trying mussels and like seafood and I was I've never been scared of trying food so again it was a natural thing to me for me to have an interest in and to get into and at uni I met a wicked founder of a local distillery so I went to Reading Uni to study business again but met a really cool founder Jacob Wilson who runs the Henley Distillery so it's a small startup artisan distillery and I got a job with him so I worked with the team for two years so pretty much most of my uni time and did everything and like within the business I did the bottling side of things I did what I would probably now not call field sales because I was literally standing in a field selling gin but I did that I oh gosh I did all sorts and that really solidified that FMCG and food and drink was where I wanted to go so yeah that kind of takes me up to now and I started working at PuckPip three days after my final deadline at uni so I didn't give myself much time but wouldn't change it for the world it was great fun.

12:44Ellen Whysall:Love that I think you already said obviously you go around like family business and then I think to really kind of lead like the entrepreneurship society like what was it in particular that within your family really instilled that kind of like hunger and passion and just just because I think entrepreneurs I'm a believer that like anyone can be an entrepreneur you just need the right inspiration or the right kind of motive or the right opportunity to come up and I think it's definitely through family and friends and when you're surrounded by it you can't help but have some of that rub off on you to be like oh I really like this so um what was it in particular like if you look at your your mum and dad and whatever their business was that you were like oh I really can see I learned this from them yeah so it's really tricky because I think I've seen the really tough times as well so I don't I don't see entrepreneurship with this rose tinted glasses, which I sadly, I think a lot of people do nowadays.

13:36I think especially with social media, people see entrepreneurship and running a business is this like easy, you know, easy path to freedom and everything. But, you know, like I've seen my parents slog, you know, work so hard for the last 20, 24 years, 25 years. And I think what I really, really love and have taken a huge amount of inspiration from is the fact that you really can change your life around. Can't say like my parents didn't have a huge lot before very standard jobs. And, you know, I see what they've done now. And my dad built his business in technology, home technology. And that was back in 2000 when you can't even imagine the level of technology that there is these days.

14:17But for him to have that foresight so many years ago and to think, you know what, I'm going to take a punt on this when, quite frankly, he's built the business with technology that didn't even exist when he started it. I think, I don't know, I love that you can create something from nothing. And that's something I've really taken inspiration from. Yeah, yeah.

14:37Ellen Whysall:Yeah, love that. I think that's always amazing. I love these stories of when you hear people like, oh, yeah, I've got into this sector, this industry. And you think, what, like 20 odd years ago? I can't even picture. like what we were using back then. Again, the fact that I could even record this podcast sat on my sofa at home is testament to the technology, the software, like the ability to do these things. And yeah, I think it's just fascinating. I also love the fact that like with the event side and you obviously being inspired from a TV program to then go into it. I assume some of that events experience and skills have come in very useful at Puck Pit because you guys are always doing events.

15:12Ellen Whysall:And I think in FMCG world, almost everything is kind of a mini event. you're always planning and having to do things so what are there some of the skills or things that you've learned through your event side that you're now actually applying in Puckbit? I think time management is a really key thing especially I'm sure I'll go on to it with with my answer for some questions further down the line but especially working in frozen and trying to navigate running events sampling events and everything with a frozen product especially when our product shines in the heat of summer and that can be really tricky so I think time management I also think being able to connect with people and be personable when you know where a lot of the actually when I was at the distillery a lot of my job was rocking up to a random food festival not knowing anyone having to go and find the right connection and you know be confident enough that you know what was I like 20 20 and 21 being confident to walk up to someone and go and say like I'm here to representing this brand where do you want me everything and that's Something that I still have to do at PuckPip, you know, if I'm in the summer going to events and just having to walk into Whole Foods and try and find the right connection and be like, I'm here to do something, but no one knows who you are.

16:25I think it's all of those skills that I learned. But yeah, so time management and just being personable and being able to connect with people. And also when people are trying products, not making them feel awkward by being able to have quite a good conversation with them. for them to have an honest opinion and an honest review I think it's really important to to allow people the space to open up and be honest about what they think about the product which is obviously always that it's delicious so we have no problem with that I love that and I

16:53Ellen Whysall:think with the recently when you look at data obviously I'm a huge advocate for frozen I'm always talking about whenever I can I think the stats are on our side showing the growth in frozen the growth in frozen snacking in particular so obviously that's where you guys fit perfectly the the rise of more dessert led more occasion led indulgent or kind of acceptable indulgence this is where the the chocolate covered fruit situation fits perfectly and you can just see like the rise of that market it felt like it's come from nowhere and it's just exploded for you guys like what are what are some of the different products you do because obviously i know you said you've got the bites and the sticks but i know you've got different flavors of the bites um so for again anyone who's like oh actually i really like frozen banana i like chocolate banana like what what are some of your favorites or what are the SKUs you guys sell?

17:37Yeah, so start with the sticks. They were our, they're our OG product. They're the SKUs that we launched with. So milk chocolate stick, dark chocolate stick. So banana on a stick dipped in chocolate frozen. I love those. They were kind of the first product that I actually bought off Puck Pips and I really love them for the fact they, they feel so naughty, but they're not. You are, you're eating a banana with a, with a small coating of chocolate and we find they work really well in a family setting I know that's what your daughter likes having them so yeah really good for a family setting and for that family snacking occasion but where we're really seeing the category going at the minute is with that with the frozen snacking the bite format so I love now going into the frozen aisle and seeing just like a whole freezer full of frozen snacking which is you just wouldn't have got to like maybe even last year there just wasn't there weren't the brands there weren't the products out there so yeah so with the bites we have milk chocolate dark chocolate and peanut butter we do have quite a lot of MPD launching soon which I can't quite mention however yeah it is coming it will be here before summer and we've got some really exciting flavors and products launching all in the bites format so yeah that's kind of what we do and it is delicious and I think something I am a real big advocate of is that I actually really struggle eating bananas by themselves.

19:01For me, it's a texture thing. I really struggle with just peeling a banana and eating it. But frozen, it's a completely different, completely different experience. And we actually had a really lovely influencer on Instagram reach out to us. And she has a neurodivergent son. And she said that that's the only way that she's ever been able to get him to eat bananas is through our products because of the texture again so i love that side of the story that we are also opening fruit up to to different people who may not have tried tried or liked bananas before yeah

19:33Ellen Whysall:i think that's that's wonderful and for a lot of people again if you can go i know i should eat some fruit but actually a chocolate fruit yeah i'll go for that like it's it is that like that whole acceptable indulgence people feel bad having a chocolate barb actually having some chocolate covered fruit you're like i'm getting some fruit it's not quite as bad yeah so yeah i I think they're obviously, I can see the rise of this kind of frozen snacking just continuing to grow. I mean, I do my frozen roundups every Friday on LinkedIn and Fruit Riot is one of the wildest ones I've seen where they're frozen grapes in like a sugary candy coating, like sour ones.

20:06Ellen Whysall:And I need to try some just because I think they sound absolutely wild. But in America, they are huge. So, yeah, I think it's a very exciting sector to be part of. For you, what does a typical week or month look like? Like, obviously, if you're down to just you and Zara doing everything right now, I can imagine your weeks are very varied. Yeah, it takes you kind of a typical week or month. Like what are you working on right now? Yeah. So I was thinking about this and I'm sure as I've heard from previous people, like super cliche that there really isn't a typical week working at a startup. That's something I learned very quickly when I joined PuckPib.

20:41So at the minute, a lot of our time is based on our MPD. So we're really gearing up to it, especially for the fact that we are coming into the summer months. It's when our product really shines. But a typical week, like take this week, for example, it's a pretty varied week. So a lot of my time is spent on prospecting and outreaching and also account management. So I'm working with our existing customers. I am going to film for a giveaway tomorrow with a really cool brand in London who also loves bananas. So that's going to be really fun. And we have, so yeah, client meetings, customer meetings.

21:18And then Friday, I've got to try and ram a quite a large barrel freezer into the boot of my Kia Picanto and take it to our storage unit ready for the summer months. Let's see how that one goes. So yeah, super varied, which makes it really exciting. So yeah.

21:32Ellen Whysall:Love that. And going back onto the event side, coming into the summer months, are we expecting any event appearances, any trade shows, or is it mainly sampling with suppliers? Like what's your setup for the summer? Yeah, so it's still a work in progress. We're still going through it. We're working on a few hopefully exciting partnerships with some London brands to showcase our product. So that should be happening. We won a listing with Selfridges last year and we've been loving supporting them. And they're really excited for us to get in the store and do loads of sampling, especially with one of the new products we're launching.

22:05They are already obsessed with it. So that's exciting. In terms of trade shows, we've not confirmed one yet. we're just trying to find the right one and also just make sure that we've yeah we did IFE last year which was amazing and met loads of loads of great people but yeah we're just we're just trying

22:21Ellen Whysall:to pinpoint the right one for us this year no they're not a cheap uh cheap punt you have to make sure you've got the the calculations right as to go in okay who do we need to find or what's the what's the angle we're going for um I think for for PACT last year was very much like we're going to do a mix of kind of trade and consumer ones whereas this year it's all about consumer it's all about getting product into people's hands so taste of london big feast of all what's it called the fern cotton um happy place yeah so we're gonna do the happy place festivals so yeah a really nice kind of like festival season for us is just getting out there and getting sampling and i think you can't beat that especially when you're a frozen brand which is again the reason i keep banging on about it is getting people into that frozen aisle is the toughest thing like online is amazing but actually getting people into that frozen aisle in the store it's like people just don't want to be down it so there's lots of exciting mpd lots going on so please if you're listening get down your freezer have a look check everything out on that where can people get hold of puckbip so where what are some of your stockists obviously you've mentioned selfridges which is amazing but for anyone going oh i really want to give these a go um where would you send them yeah absolutely so our yeah major sort of grocer is a cardo so we've been on a cardo for a couple of years now love working with them um we selfridges whole foods we are in independent shops farm shops health food shops um delis all up and down the country so on our website we've got a really comprehensive map of everywhere that we're listed um one a listing with alberheim last year which is amazing so if you're abroad in amsterdam or in belgium and the netherlands then you can grab us there as well so that's been really interesting trying to yeah learn about the world of the world of export that's been fun um so there yeah there are major listings and yeah it's exciting love that and in the time that you've been there so obviously you're going to be coming up to a year very soon and what have been some of your kind of favorite highlights or kind of proudest moments of being involved with the brand yeah well one of my proud moments was I went to the bread and jam wellness summit at the I think it was September last year and I managed to win us a pitch with Cotswold Fair and we got listed so I'm super happy with that it It was, I mean, as you can probably have seen through this podcast is I love to talk.

24:38And a 10 minute speed dating style pitch was a nightmare for me. I loved it. And it was really good to practice and really get that pitch down to a tee. But yeah, it was super proud. So, so proud to win that. And I've been working with them for the last couple of weeks since the Frozen catalog launch, just to get people coming in and getting stockists purchasing us. I think there's no I've got loads of proud moments but they're such like minor things because so much that I've done over the last year for me is a first pretty much everything I've done is a first right so every little milestone every day that I've learned something I've I've really celebrated all of those wins and I think that yeah I'm excited to get to the year mark and do a bit of a roundup and look at everything that I've I've achieved big and small.

25:23Ellen Whysall:I love that. I think as well for like actually being able to recognize and celebrate all the small wins is so important because often as you get more experience and do more, it's very easy to overlook what at one stage was like the biggest thing. Like at Pact, we're saying like the volumes of which we're ordering now are like 10 times what they were a few years ago. And it's just like hearing Alex and Linus in our operations team being like, we would have only dreamed of like these numbers a few years ago. and it's like now actually just every time it's like you kind of say in passing like oh it's like 500 tons you know oh wow that's quite a lot of products if you start talking about these big numbers it completely changes so i think it's really really important to celebrate all these little wins and it's something that people especially entrepreneurs and founders themselves are pretty bad at because it's always like oh i want to be doing more i need the next thing i need it bigger but it's like actually when you look back you're like wow all these steps along the way there's so much to celebrate and be proud of so yeah I'm glad that's your mentality already I'd love to now flip it the other way to when things haven't gone to plan so events there's always things that go wrong but for you what have what have been some of the tough days where things haven't quite gone to plan for you yeah um so I mean the first sort of funny one as I said previously is who knew sampling frozen products in the height of summer could be so difficult that was a real challenge for me at the start especially for the fact that quite a lot of the sampling events we did were quite small so they didn't they didn't warrant taking a whole freezer so I would be traveling into London with a cool box stuffed with so many ice packs and our products just race against time to get there sometimes sometimes it worked out sometimes we had some slightly defrosted bananas so that was a real challenge and one that I'm looking forward to trying to overcome this summer finding stronger solutions to keep bananas frozen again like similar to my previous answer I think the whole idea that everything I've done is a bit of a first and it was my job role has changed quite a lot since I started to where I am now quite organically and I started off coming into the business having no idea of what all of these acronyms meant So I really was extremely green when I started.

27:34And I've got to the point now where, yeah, it's completely shifted into account management and to prospecting some really big potential customers. I think a lot of it is just everything is new and it doesn't always go to plan, especially with having MPD. And, you know, I've been really involved in that process. And it's, yeah, it's at times been really stressful because it's I've not got any contextual background on is this the right thing? Is this not the right thing? But again, it goes back to just having a really good support around me and having Zara, who is super knowledgeable in the industry and also Rosie and all our manufacturers and having all of this support and actually knowing that even if things do look a little bit like they're going to go they're going to go wrong actually quite often we pull them back and we make sure everything's okay so yeah it goes back to just the fact that everything I'm doing is first but nothing nothing so far has gone really really drastically bad so I'm happy about that