CLIP: We Had £25k of Wrong Product on Waitrose Shelves and 250 Stores to Call

0:00There's actually a really specific example where Alice was just absolutely phenomenal and I can talk about this now without wanting to have a panic attack. But we won our first listing with Waitrose. It was our first national retailer.

0:14Olly Fawcett:And that was your first listing completed? No, that was our first national. What a start. Oh yeah. Run before we can all. This was, I think it was a year and a half into Pimento, which is, we were so happy with that. and our manufacturer at the time had made a colossal blending issue which had meant that one of the SKUs that were going live in Waitrose and one of our cans had it pretty much just tasted like absolute rocket fuel they had not mixed it properly and it tasted terrible so it was too alcohol or was it just like rough a bit of both so they hadn't blended it properly so the alcohol hadn't dispersed equally within the tank and when they gave us a sample to taste because they took it from the top it tasted fine but because they hadn't blended it properly the liquid at the bottom tasted completely different so we yeah so we didn't realize so you had actually tasted that batch yeah we had tasted it we had approved it it was all fine we were the only reason that we knew that something was wrong and kind of similar to the story you just told me i was about to get on a flight to south africa first two weeks i was gonna have off it was feeling just like okay cool everything's in a good place before waitrose yeah alice had got some stock sent to her house um just from the batch which was kind of typical for the which was gonna go to waitrose exactly got it that's what the manufacturer does they'll send us um a case just so we've got it um all of the stock had been packed and sent to waitrose already so this stock was it it was 25 grand worth of stock it was just for the first order um oh my god and alice tried it and it tasted when i say it tasted terrible it was like pure tequila but worse it was just awful it tasted terrible and we've got a 15 delicious smooth cocktail and alice was like i didn't know whether to call you or not winter but obviously all of that stock has gone to waitrose it's now on shelf and they'd already put on the shelves they'd already put on the shelves do they not try it before they like is with what you guys did or are they just there's a whole process of like we're getting the deliveries going on yeah so where we where we got our product manufactured we had to do an emergency batch just because we lost our production slot with our normal manufacturer so it was just like a one-off time with these guys and i'm not gonna not gonna name But as you can tell, I'm so over it.

2:39But anyway, no, Waitrose don't have to sample that. Like our manufacturers should have that all covered with...

2:44Olly Fawcett:So they're talented on the quality control. Exactly. Right. At the start, at the end of the batch. And what happened next was a very defining moment for me and Alice when this was our largest national grocer listing. Like our reputations were on the line. It was rolling out 250 Waitrose stores. and we had to call every single Waitrose stores and visit the ones that we could to get the product off of shelf because Waitrose HQ could not send out like a mass recall email without us getting charged like 40 grand. You would get charged for that? Yeah because it was a recall, a product recall. Which obviously cost them money.

3:24Exactly.

3:25Olly Fawcett:So did you have to call Waitrose and say we've got a problem they said well if you've got this problem you've got two options you get off the shelf or we do yep pretty much hell that's stressful and i'm such a freak with all things liquid quality even if i was to put one of our margaritas in front of you and you said it tasted delicious and i knew it was slightly off i'd be like no it's not blended correctly like not proving it not so this for me is like the worst thing that could ever happen alice so so calm so amazing she's just like okay winter this is what the plan is we've got all of the stores here these are the ones we're going to separate them between all of the team members we're going to call these ones this is what we're going to say this is the script because my brain was just like fireworks um yeah and i was like who can i scream at obviously i'm not correct exactly thankfully no um so yeah she just comes with so much calm and she's always like winter we can manage the relationships, we can get the stock off of the shelf.

4:23And she is always just such a fantastic voice of reason. And whenever we've had any other issues moving forward, I'm like, if we can deal with that and get all of that product off of shelf and it's fine. And we've maintained relationships and all of these things, there is honestly nothing that we can't do. And yeah, she's just phenomenal in the face of really, really adverse situations.

4:44Olly Fawcett:Did you still go on the plane? Yes. Did it all work itself out for the best at the end of it? It all worked itself out. We were able to sort everything out. But yeah, for me, I was just like, this is the worst possible thing that could happen. It's the first pallets that are arriving in Waitrose. So what I thought would happen was Waitrose would lose kind of all trust in us. And then that would tarnish our relationship in terms of growing distribution, like launching new products with them. But most importantly, I think it was the consumer perception. This was the first time that customers could get us nationally like waitrose have stores across the whole country and if their first experience with pimento is a product that tastes like rocket fuel they're not going to come back like all it takes is a little bit of word of mouth for you know rate of sale to nosedive and that's the thing that keeps you on shelf rate of sale and if it's not that i like that's that it can be game over yeah do you know what on this show we've had three stories that are very similar to that Thank you.